Life and Fish Tacos

A short post today. I found an old poem in an old notebook. Apparently I had written it for one of my nieces with the plan to cross stitch it and frame it, back when cross stitching was a popular hobby. Here ya go! Child forever Puppies and bouncing balls, Tea cups and flowers, Bottles and fishes, Splashes and showers— Swing in the park and go home on the bike, Holding on hands with kisses goodnight—             O keep me a child forever! Popsicles in the sun— Don’t comb my tresses! Blow out the candles, Big girls in dresses— Watching the birds flying in the blue air, Rock me and let me hold onto your hair—             O keep me a child forever!

Hurricane Irma and Rollaway Beds When you are an 85 year old single woman who: Still drives, and drives well Still plays some tennis Can work an iPad and a smart phone Remembers all of her grandchildren´s birthdays Isn’t afraid to spend a day at Universal Studios with said grandchildren Can maneuver Walmart Supercenter like a boss Has lived through 5 hurricanes in a 15 year time frame, with another on the way… Hurricane Irma of 2017 was due to hit the Vero Beach area September 10 th . Volunteer evacuations were underway, and of course she decided to stay put. “But,” she said, “I am going over to the neighbor’s house which is one of those block houses, so I’ll be safe. And I can get back to my house right after the hurricane passes… I bought a rollaway bed in case I need to stay there overnight.” She bought a rollaway bed.   She may be a strong 85 year old, but she is actually not a large person. She’s quite small. How the heck did she load...

I committed to writing about the outdoor kitchen in Reynosa, Tamaulipas; about the first time I tried to learn to make masa tortillas by hand from some sweet abuelitas. Today’s the day. The challenge for me, and the reason why I have been putting off this blog entry, is because I have a tricky memory—I mean that it plays tricks on me and messes with my realities…and consequently my self-confidence. Do I really know that things happened the way they happened? Can I trust my mind? I need to be truthful and so I’ll say that when I think back on my two weeks in Hidalgo/Reynosa, weird peripheral details stick in my mind like a crystal, but others are muddy, closer to emotional impressions than to the concrete buildings and the people I encountered. I don’t want to lie and make up what may never have actually happened just to fill in holes for the purpose of a blog entry. (There are a couple of people who know me really well who can attest to my need to make sure that my recounting...

Corn or flour?  In my case, at dining establishments, I choose corn, almost always. I figure that if a restaurant can present me with a tender, not crumbly, even house-made, corn tortilla, then everything else on my plate stands a chance at being food perfection. It’s hard to get corn tortillas right. One thing I had my heart set on, after pocketing my first paycheck out of college, was to purchase a tortilla press.  (Have you ever seen one of these? Not something you’d want to drop on your foot…)  I have since squished hundreds  of little balls of masa, sometimes with amazing results, although most times nominally. Granted, my version of amazing, with an almost complete lack of culinary talent, is laughable to most of the moms of my Latino students, who pump out perfectly round corn-masa tortillas in their kitchens…without the aid of a tortilla squisher. So, here’s a story: It´s the summer that I turn 20, and I find myself on this birthday in Hi...

Tonight is one of those more difficult nights. Bill paying night. And I always do this at night, you know, which I shouldn’t, but I do. In fact, I put off going through my bills till the last possible moment of the last possible day for them to get to their destinations on time. Well, we all do that, you may say. Or we all feel like doing that, at least. But I’m going to stick up for myself here, and say that perhaps the reason why I procrastinate with my bills is not the reason that you do it. It seems human nature to avoid the unpleasant. What is not un pleasant about paying my bills is getting my adulting out of the way. I like adulting. I like being able to pay for my stuff, although I do get annoyed when I have to pay for stuff that I don’t feel I should be paying for. An example would be my parking fees where I work. Maybe I should be contributing to the parking lot, but…I don’t want to. So, yes, I do glean a certain peace and satisfaction from being responsible. I don’t p...