I always like this date  11 22--a time to reflect on one's life for a few minutes.

Robert is in the back yard feeding Blackie, our 2-inch long goldfish, bits of raw salmon.  Blackie seems to love cheese, broccolini, and peas.  He spits out blueberries and garlic.  We feel we have empiriacally satisfied our curiosity about whether fish have tastebuds.

Last Saturday I was in Studio City with Sigrid, Jim, and Trevor and Chloe.  Sigrid made a wonderful turkey dinner with exquisite creamed sweet potatoes.  Yesterday, here at my house, Gunther and Eliza, Anders and Auggie, and Carmen and Dwight (Eliza's parents from San Diego) gathered for another turkey dinner.  Gunther spatchcocked the turkey and it cooked in less than two hours (you cut out the backbone, and flatten the breast and roast it that way.)

G and E and the kids are going to Joshua State Part next week, so we celebrated early.

Robert and I will be having my oldest friends, Zenobia, Tyler, Roy Iwaki and his nephew and friend over for another Thanksgiving Day dinner on Thursday. 

Today Zenobia, Robert and I are going used car shopping.  My Nissan is 13 years old and the handwriting is on the wall.  

Robert and I returned home last week from the 10-day cruise we took from New York to Quebec.  It was fun walking the Red Line in Boston, and visiting Paul Revere's house (my second time.) 

We walked around Quebec City for several hours and had lunch at Aux Anciens Canadiens, very French and cozy. 

We did some ball room dancing onboard, watched movies and ship-board entertainment, and slid into lazy decadence.

We visited Province House in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where the Maritime Provinces gathered with delegates from the other Provinces to found the Candadian Confederation in 1867.  The short video showed a re-enactment of the initial meeting which took place in the building--and we toured the rooms fitted out with the furnishings of the time.  I found myself oddly touched by this piece of history, which I had never thought about before.

One of the couples we met on the ship (the Norwegian Jewell) live in Toronto, Canada.  They asked me, "Please don't be offended, but why do Americans seem to know very little about what goes on in Canada?  We follow US news, but Americans seem competely disinterested in Canada."   I had to admit it's true.  "Perhaps, I said, it's because we don't see Canada as a threat to us."  Je ne sais pas. 

As soon as we returned home, Robert checked on Blackie, our goldfish.  He's fine, but the piece of zucchini we left him was completely gone.  Devoured or dissolved?

Halloween was fun.  We got home in time for the neighborhood barbeque and pumpkin-carving party Saturday afternoon, followed by the movie we showed on the garage door in my drive-way Saturday night after trick-or-treating.  I made popcorn.  Neighbors want it to be an annual event.

9 - 18/9 - 09

Goldie died somewhere between 2 am and 7:30 am this morning.  We were astonished.  She had seemed so perky, always turning her head back and forth whenever we approached to gaze at her.

The water looked a bit cloudy--even though Robert had just changed it-- and there seemed to be some extremely tiny organisms pedalling through the water, which we had never seen before.  What could have happened to her? 

Now we are down to one fish, Blackie.  We cleaned his tank again today and moved him into a shadier spot.  Robert fed him some mashed cantaloupe.

On the plus side, I have my new compost bin set up.  We also painted the shed a taupe-brown and put up a wicker screen that looks great with my boxes of succulents.  Robert pick-axed the soil under the grapefruit tree, and I stacked flagstones around the base.

Yesterday Vernon McQueen came to spray the tree for aphids.  He's getting on in years and brought along his back-up guy, Stephen Williams. I was wondering what to do when Vernon retires.  I worry about people who have specialties that are kind of dying out--like my curmudgeonly shoemaker up the street.  Each time I venture in his shop, I know he's going to berate me about the chintzy shoes I bring to him.  He sneers at shoes not made of leather, and I have to allow him to vent his thoughts before I can timidly ask for an extra hole in the strap or to glue down some flap.  He charges me a dollar or so and sends me on my way, grumbling under his breath.  I always wonder how he stays in business.

Who will take up these niche trades like repairing shoes in this day and age?  

Grieving is in the air, after all.

On the fish report, we lost five fish altogether.  We are pretty sure we had a tank collapse due to the hot weather, which caused the fish to lose oxygen and suffer nitrate poisoning.  We euthanized them by putting them in water and then in the freezer.  

Yesterday Anders, Auggie, Robert and I had a ceremony for the second fatality--Trippie.  We put her in a toilet paper tube, into the ground, and placed a toothpick witha  flag decorated with little drawings of fish.  Since fire is always a ritualistic hit, of course, we had to burn the flag down. 

Well, we have Blackie left (4 inches long) outside in the pot pond, and tiny Goldie inside in the house tank.  We are thinking about our future with fish. 

Just got home from my walk with Rainey.  She's excited about a book she is reading, The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by French author, Muriel Barbery.   I can't wait to read it.

Trippie is still quiet, so Robert transferred her with some pond water into a clear mixing bowl. 

While I was out walking, he discovered that Red Spot is also ill, so both fish are now in the bowl.  Unfortunately, the second of the triplet red goldfish is starting to isolate in the greenery in the outside tank.  We don't know what is happening!

It could be that since the fish have grown over the past few months they are overstocking the size of the tank, creating nitrate overload.  The weather has also been very hot lately. It could be "sudden tank collapse."  If the tank is overstocked, it may be such a delicate balance that an environmental affront like a heat increase could cause the fish to succumb.

Well, she's not dead yet!  Robert noticed that, Trippie, one of our triplets--three red-colored goldfishes-- was acting sluggishly in the outside pond. This is how two of our other fishes began to act before they died from unknown causes. 

Robert gently caught her in a saucepan and transferred her to Goldie's vase tank inside (next to the TV--which we think they watch.)  Now she's in hospital, hopefully recuperating.  She looks rather bloated, so we are thinking that she got overfed last week (goldfish apparently tend to eat and eat without much regulation of their intake.)

Trippie personifies depression.  She literally sinks to the bottom.  She lays her head against a rock and gently breathes her gills in and out.  She stares (although I did see her blink when I was watching her straight on.  I was quite excited to see it.) She moves slowly and sometimes lists to the right side.

She's lasted through the day, so we can only keep an eye on her.

We put a little Epsom salts in the water as a laxative.

Goldie, on the other hand, swims around quite perkily.  She seems to recognize us--expected food-- as we get close to the tank. Robert is careful to feed her only two or three pre-soaked fish pellets (the size of her tiny eyeball) to avoid overfeeding her.  She seems to exhibit no sympathy for her tank-mate's predicament.

The neighbors stopped by to chat while the kids were swinging and throwing buckets of water on each other to cool off. It's unusually hot today.

I got to hold Anya's two-month old baby!

Gunther rolled up on his bike from work.  He showed us the site on his new iPhone (courtesy of Inovis, where he works) where he is one of the models for Patagonia outer wear.  He happened to run into someone who works for them on that Tweed bike ride he did recently. They liked his lifestyle and the fact that he raises vegetables and chickens in the back yard.  Did I mention that last week the hens started laying??

You can see Gunther at http://www.golite.com/main/home.aspx

We had a nice birthday evening for Eliza.  She loved the boeuf bourgignon.  I also made stuffed mushrooms out of Mastering The Art of French Cooking.  They are one of my favorites, and the recipe has been a staple all these years.

Last night I decided I'd go see Julie and Julia.  It was very warm so I made a Salade Nicoise, since I had some good olives and fresh greens left over from Eliza's dinner.  This week, I am really liking a simple salad dressing made of lemon juice, olive oil, Dijon mustard, salt and pepper--and a little squeeze of fresh garlic.  

Synchronicistically, I happened to be wearing the pearl necklace that Sigrid gave me when I went to the movie (pearls were Julia Child's favorite jewelry.)

I loved the movie.  I called Sigrid this morning to tell her that I found my old copy of the cookbook.  She and a few friends are having a Julia Child dinner tomorrow night.  Sig is making a beef dish, and others are bringing dishes, too.  Sounds fun.

This is the first week of school--the first week of kindergarten for Auggie, first week of second grade for Chloe and Anders, and third grade for Trevor.  When we asked Auggie if he liked his first day of school he said, "Of course I did."  

The kids started swinging outside my house after dinner last night. Gunther and Colm (my next door neighbor) were watching the boys and talking about their iPhone applications.  I went off to the movies.

I walked with Rainey this morning, and then did yoga at 1:30.  After that I started cooking my beef bourgignon for Eliza's birthday tomorrow night.  This was her choice for dinner.

She had just seen Julie and Julia and wanted to have the beef stew experience.  We dug out my old cookbook of Julia Child's and Simone Beck, the one I learned to cook from when I was first married.  The copyright is 1964 and I probably bought it that same year.  I taught myself to cook from The New York Times Cookbook, Escoffier (too hard, too French) and Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  Wow, brings back old memories.

Sigrid was saying she'd love to have my old cookbook, so I will give it to her.  She is such a fabulous cook--far better than I.  She made us a first class halibut and vegetable dish when I was down there last week.

The smell of braising beef permeates my house tonight.  I was just outside watching the boys swing and giving my succulents a little dousing.  It's cool, with the fog rolling in, but a quiet, delicious twilight. 

I'm looking forward to getting into bed and continuing to read Marlena de Blasi's book, The Lady in the Palazzo.  I read her first book, A 1000 Nights in Venice, where she moves to Italy and marries an Italian.  She's a chef and author. The books are filled with descriptions of markets, meals, and local, rustic food.  She and her husband, Fernando make friends with a woman who opened her own simple restaurant, where she cooks local bounty like rabbit, lamb, chickens, and harvests whatever arrives in the spring--watercress, grains, and other lovely things.  Marlena and Fernando sometimes sit in the evening with two nearly silent shepherds who befriend them. They grill olive-oil drizzled bread on the fire, drink wine and enjoy the deepening evening.  de Blasi is a very sensual writer.

Gotta run and take out the stew.  It is surely done after four hours.  I just need to throw in the sauteed mushrooms and braised onions and I'm, done for the night. 

I spent the weekend at Sigrid and Jim's house.  Chloe turned seven on Saturday!  She had her party at the Pinz Bowling Alley where Trevor had his.

One minor problem.  Chloe and Sigrid went to pick up the birthday cake at Ralph's grocery store.  At the checkstand the bottom came apart and....plop went the cake.  Everyone in line was staring.  Within minutes, the store provided another cake, inscribed it with Happy Birthday, Chloe, complete with bowling pins and balls, and they were on their way.

Trevor and I were at home playing "box ball."  We found an old square box and started shooting the rubber ball into it.  Then we played Connect and solitaire together.  It's fun to tease him and get into a kind of punchy laughter.  Only with a child!