So How Did We Celebrate

Well, it's all downhill, celebration wise, after 50.  It was a quiet day.  The temps have final cooled, which was nice.  I went to Atria and spent an hour with my mother, then came home and took a nap.  Walt got garbage ready for today's garbage pick up and took his own nap.  After Jeopardy we went out to dinner.

I spent time researching restaurants in Davis.  We don't go out to eat very often here in town and we seem to usually go to our favorite Thai restaurant, but there have been places that have come and gone that I would like to have tried, and places, like Noodle City, which has been in town for more than 10 years, that we have never tried.  It sounded good, from the Yelp and Davis Wiki reviews (the last of which was written in 2007).

So we decided to go to Noodle City.  As I wended my way to the back part of Orange Court, I heard lots and lots of people and found Sophie's Thai Restaurant to be overflowing.  I was afraid we would have a wait at next door Noodle City.  But not only did we not have a crowd, there was only one other couple in the restaurant.

I loved the curtains that separated the kitchen from the eating area and the bathroom sign was cute.

The bored looking waiter took our order and we started with some delicious green onion bread for an appetizer.

I had read that the "DanDan noodles" were wonderful, so I ordered them.  (The thing about Noodle City is that they make all of their noodles in-house)

It was delicious, but not very substantial.  Kind of like Top Ramen, with just noodles and a peanut flavored broth and topped with chopped peanuts.  I liked it, and there is enough in my doggie bag for lunch today, but before I finished I was wishing for a bit of meat too.

Walt did better with his five spice beef soup.

This was by far the most popular dish in all the reviews I read and it was indeed delicious with huge chunks of beef, vegetables and a delicious broth that made me understand what they mean on the Food Network when they talk about "depth of flavor."  If we ever go back, I will order this.

And since it was a special event, though I usually just drink water, I even had a glass of wine with Walt.  We had to have SOME way to toast our anniversary.

The air was so deliciously cool when we left, that I kept the car window rolled down for the drive home.

I watched an episode of Genius while Walt finished the garbage collection.  And then, since I had a glass of wine, I was falling asleep by 11 p.m. (one reason I don't drink any more--I don't like falling asleep so early!)

It was a quiet celebration, but fitting 52 years!

What Have I Done?

Well, in yesterday's entry about the ending of Sunday Stealing, I said I was feeling guilty for not volunteering to do the job myself.  All day today, I watched the entries from other members of this community that has grown around this weekly meme.  I finally couldn't stand to see it all end, so I wrote to Bud to find out what was involved in actually doing the job.  He answered me.  I mulled that around in my head for awhile and finally wrote and said I would do it, if nobody else volunteered.

So I have o idea what I have just done.  I have not heard back from him since I wrote, but I assume I will hear from him soon.  Gleep.  I just hated to lose contact with all the people I have come to know over the years...

---

Looking back...

It was only yesterday when I was climbing aboard that fire engine across the street from my apartment, decked out in my wedding attire, so that the photographer could take a photo of me and the bridal party hanging onto the side of a fire truck.

Wasn't it?

Can it really have been fifty-two years?

Fifty two years.  My god.   I remember when reaching one's 40th birthday was a huge deal--now we've been married longer than that.

I told the tale of our actual wedding a few years ago.  What about the 52 years since that date?  If you're going to survive 52 years of marriage, it helps to marry someone with whom you can laugh.  Someone who thinks Puff the Magic Dragon is a swell song to be "our song" (because it was the first song that came on the radio after we realized we didn't have "a song"), someone who enjoys telling people that we dated to Stan Freberg, someone who will put up with all of your idiosyncrasies. 

I'm not sure if that describes me or Walt or both of us.  

When you live with someone for 52 years, you begin to speak in in-jokes, in your own personal code, where explanations aren't necessary because you share the same background.

With who else (other than your children) can you speak in dialog from every play you've ever seen...and admit that you've lost the ability to find original material any more.

Who else will snicker with you about "63" or "fire hose"?

Who else will laugh with you when you toss out lines like "rumble, rumble, rumble...mutiny, mutiny, mutiny" in your journal and get an e-mail back from someone who recognized the reference to Stan Freberg?

Who else will let you drag him to every possible Steve Schalchlin appearance without (much) complaint?  Who else would sit through every Judy Garland or television appearance ever put on video?

Who else would have indulged me all of my flights of fancy, from cake decorating to Chinese cooking, to working for the Lamplighters, to driving AIDS clients, to taking in stray puppies or stray Brasilians?

I still remember fondly Walt's excitement the day we brought Jeri home, the way he'd decorated the house with pink roses and had a recording of music box music playing as I carried her up the stairs.

I still remember the way we clung to each other on those terrible, terrible days following Paul's and David's deaths.

Sometimes after 52 years, you feel you've said it all.  You sit at a dinner table in silence, no need for conversation because you both know where you are, what you're doing, where you've come from, and how you feel about things.

You do things automatically because you've been doing them for 52 years and there is a certain comfort in not having to wonder how best to handle things.

You know each other's foibles and you accept them because you've learned to live with them after all these years.

You look back on 52 years and you see how far you've come, what good friends you still are, and that you still love one another.

And that's not such a bad thing to discover, 52 years down the road.

Happy anniversary, Dear.   Here's to another 52 years.

Something Exciting

"What are you doing exciting for the rest of the afternoon?" she asked.  I had already answered that question more than half a dozen times in the apartment.  Now it appeared it was going to be the topic through our weekly lunch too.  And it was.  Sometimes she would interrupt me while I was telling her for the xxth time that I was going to finish writing my review and take a nap to ask the question again.

Her brain these days is funny.  Sometimes it amazes me with what she remembers.  She remembered to tell me that Jeri had called her earlier in the day I was visiting.  When she was talking to Jeri she remembered that Phil had been to visit her two weeks before. She remembered that she had been sleeping when the housekeeper came this morning so her bed wasn't made and the housekeeper was going to come back later to make the bed.

When it came time to order lunch, she couldn't remember how big the fruit salad was (though she has eaten it every. single. day. for the past year).   She couldn't remember if it was a plate or a bowl and the waitress had to show her how big the plate was.  Then she wasn't sure if she could eat that much.  Though. she. has. eaten. it. every. single. day. for the past year.

When we got back from lunch, I went to use the bathroom and discovered she was out of toilet paper.  I told her that I noticed she was out of TP and she said "Oh that's right--I was going to call you about that.  I need to start making a list" (of course she has been saying she is going to start making a list ever since she got to Atria, but I was impressed she had remembered she was out of toilet paper).

I told her I would run up to CVS and get her a package.   She said she would have to pay me, but she didn't know if she had checks and she would have to call Ed and ask him to bring her checks.  I reminded her that he had brought her checks and that they were in her purse.  She said she'd get the checks out while I was gone so she could pay me when I got back.

When I got back, she was amazed that I realized she was out of toilet paper because she meant to call me about it and she needed to start keeping a list.  She told me she needed to pay me but she didn't know if she had any checks and she would have to ask Ed to bring her some.  Then she asked me what exciting thing I was going to be doing for the rest of the afternoon.

Sigh.

I'm not depressed about these visits, really.  They just make me sad.  She would absolutely hate it if she knew what she is like today.   This is the thing she talked with me about for years...if she ever got like...this...could I please shoot her, she would joke.  Only now she is like this, and I have no plans for matricide, or to tell her that her worst fears have come true.  (Now her worst fear is having something happen that will force her to be incapacitated and dependent on someone else for her care.)

I love it when family come to visit her because it gives her a new audience and she actually can carry on a conversation that doesn't involve their exciting activities for the rest of the day.

One positive thing today, though, is that I don't think she mentioned "hunnert" once.  Now THAT makes it a good day!

---

Today Walt and I have been married 49 years.  We are celebrating in a romantic fashion that is typical for us.  Walt is going to the opera in San Francisco.  I am working at Logos and then taking the bus home because Walt will have the car.  I will have dinner alone and I will be asleep by the time he gets home, around midnight.  This is pretty much the way we celebrated last year too (minus the bus ride), but we went out to dinner the next night.

However, I have shows to review Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights, so I'm not sure if we're going to get dinner out at all.  We'll have to do a super duper fancy dinner a year from now, when the 50th rolls around.

The story of our wedding is here
The story of our wedding is here

30, 40, 50

It's a day for anniversaries!  First, our friends Steve Schalchlin and Jim Brochu are celebrating their 30th anniversary (actually it's only the 29th, but that doesn't scan as well for a title...and it will be 30 in just a year).

 

 (but you know how those gay relationships are...I'm sure this is just a passing whim for both of them.  But in case it lasts a bit longer, Happy Anniversary!))

Second, our friends Steve and Jan Isaacson are celebrating their 40th anniversary

 

They're theater types...founders of the 30 year old Davis Musical Theater Company...and you know how flighty those theater guys are.  I'm sure this is just a passing fad for them too.  But happy anniversary anyway, guys.

The final anniversary was the one that brought us to Santa Barbara this week end.  Our friends Dick and Gerry were celebrating their 50th anniversary.

 

We were in Dick and Gerry's wedding 50 years ago and were the only members of the original wedding party who were able to come to the party this week end.

 

It was just a wonderful party, with about 40 people there to help celebrate.  There was a a beautiful BBQ dinner catered by their friends, there were books of memories to share, and instead of a cake, a lovely arrangement of cupcakes topped by -- I think -- the original top to their wedding cake.

 

It was a loving event full of family and friends and memories and good food and drink.  I was honored to be there and happy that our friendship has survived these 50 years.

I dunno...these kids seem to have survived too.  I think they'll go the distance.

So-- happy anniversary, Steve & Jimmy, Steve & Jan and Dick and Gerry.  A good, good weekend.

Ten Years

Ten years ago -- how has the time passed so quickly?? -- I had been back from Australia for two days, when Walt and I drove to Santa Barbara to prepare for the wedding -- two days later -- of Tom And Laurel.

I think it was 2000 when we first met Laurel and realized that this was a special relationship.  I mention in my journal for 2001 (which is no longer on line) that it was nice to realize that after a year together, things with them were going well.

(Everybody hated this picture, but I've always liked the
sunbeam between the two of them)

I loved Laurel the first time I met her.  And when I got to know her better, I laughed to Walt that I wondered if Tom knew he was dating his mother.   It was even funnier, when, years later, they were planning their wedding and Tom turned to me and said "you know how they say you marry your mother....?"   That was nothing Ned or Paul did (Marta and Audra are both quite different from me, I think), but Tom's chosen is a photographer, a scrapbook keeper, a cake decorator and the more I  got to know her, the more I realized how much alike we were.

There are many ways that we are not alike, and organization is one of them.  Of course Laurel is a bank executive and juggles a successful career with motherhood and so she has to be organized.  When we arrived for the rehearsal there was Laurel with "the book."

For the past year, she had been planning the wedding and had everything organized down to a gnat's eyelash.  There were no questions about who was supposed to do what when.  It was all in "The book."

(Going back over my journal entry for that weekend, it was bittersweet to come across this photo, taken at the rehearsal dinner...

...when Walt's mother was still with us, and my mother looked happy and engaged.)

The wedding was wonderful...

And obviously it's been a good ten years, watching them settle down and begin raising their family. 

Ten years later, I still love our daughter-in-law (both of them!) and watching Tom and Laurel and the girls together makes me smile every time.

Happy Anniversary, Tom and Laurel!

One Little Word: Married

When Walt and I married, 48 years ago today (happy anniversary, dear!), Ellen and Shelly had not yet met each other.  Nobody ever even thought in terms of the concept of "same sex marriage" and certainly nobody could have predicted that some day it would be legal anywhere in this country.

Today, as I sat with tears rolling down my eyes, the Supreme Court said that the federal government must extend equal rights to everyone married in states which allow same sex marriage and, though they did not make same sex marriage the law of the land, they upheld the decision of Justice Walker in California and marriage is now once again legal in the state of California.

The news cameras which were covering the reading of the decisions flittedback and forth between gatherings outside the Supreme Court and the gathering inside the California State Capitol, so I was able to instantly watch Shelly and Ellen rejoycing in the decision for which they have worked so hard for so many years.  For Shelly and Ellen, the Prop 8 decision was irrelevant because no matter how it was decided, their marriage (and the other 1800 marriages which took place during that window when it was legal) were not being challenged (though if Prop 8 stood, it is possible their marriage could have been nullified by another court decision), but now every gay couple in love in California has the possibility to marry again.

Though some of the decisions coming out of the Supreme Court this week were a bit depressing and I was very dubious about what would happen in the decisions today, the Supreme Court did the right thing. They understood the humanity of all people, they said that gay people have equality with straight people and this is a huge decision.   I have been crying happy tears since the decisions were read.

Walt and I celebrate 48 years today and we are celebrating in a way normal for us.  Walt is going to San Francisco to go to the opera; I am going to a memory class with my mother and spending time with her until Walt's sister drops by for a visit.

This doesn't mean we won't be celebrating our anniversary.  We exchanged cards, Walt gave me some beautiful flowers, and we will go out to dinner tomorrow night.  

Forty-eight years.  My lord...where did the time go? 

Ellen and Shelly have been together 40 years, married since 2008.   Today is a huge day for them.

Congratulations to all of my gayfriends on an historic ruling today.

...and so...

...the 48th year begins.

As anniversary "celebrations" go, it was fairly low key, but we had a nice day.  We started with breakfast at Caffe Italia.  We had looked at our schedule for this week and realized that it would be difficult to go out to dinner, and breakfast is always kind of fun, especially when Caffe Italia has crab eggs benedict back on its menu!

I swear that restaurant has the. best. hollandaise sauce. ever.   You can actually taste the lemon, which doesn't always happen when I order any kind of eggs benedict.

We had a nice text message from Jeri saying she was giving blood in honor of our anniversary (I suspect she would have done it anyway, but it was nice of her to put it that way).

Walt went off to work for the afternoon.  I tried to get a nap, since I had been up until 2 a.m. the night before, but I wasn't able to sleep.   Instead, I went shopping for groceries.  I expected to buy "just a few things" but came home with five bags, having spent nearly $200.  And all I went to buy was cottage cheese for the dogs!

I came home and made something I never make:  dessert.   There was a recipe for a blueberry bread pudding at the supermarket that sounded very good, so I put that together.  Again, tried to nap, unsuccessfully.  I always try to nap on show days because, being an old person, even the most lively of shows can put me to sleep.

I don't know what happened this weekend.  It may have been my "sprint" (most of you would call it a "stroll") up Twin Peaks to take that photo of the pink triangle being dismantled at the end of Gay Pride day.  But I got up yesterday with two very sore knees.  They felt like they were 120 years old.   The knee I hurt in my bike accident in 2003 always has some degree of pain in it, but most of the pain was in the other knee, so every step I took sent shooting pains into one or the other, or both, of my knees.  As I walk around it starts to feel better, but as soon as I sit and try to get up again, there is lots of pain.

Tonight I started using a cane as I walked around the house and, to my relief, it really does help.  I'm just hoping that whatever is wrong will be much better by the time we leave for Prague.  I'm sure it will, since it's already starting to feel better.

The plan was to go to review Grease tonight.  It is the opening show of this season's Music Circus, Sacramento's summer season of musicals.   For what may be the first time in 12 years, we got there late.  I may have been late one other show in the past 12 years, but this was the first BIG show that I have been late for.  Last season they changed the Music Circus start time to 7:30 and I'd just forgotten.  We got there a little after 7:30 for what we thought was the usual 8 p.m. curtain and had to stand outside, watching on TV for about 10 minutes, until there was a suitable break where they could let us in (we were not alone--there were lots of people who were late)

I became the patron that I detest.  Arriving late, and disrupting an ENTIRE ROW of people trying to watch the show.  Our seats were exactly in the middle of the row.  There are 30 seats in the row and we were #18 and #19, which meant that 14 people had to get up to let us pass, while there was action going on stage.  What's more, I couldn't really apologize to people I was stepping on and over because there was a show going on on stage at the same time.  

As for the show...well...I have a hard time with Grease.   Everybody knows it.  Everybody loves it.  It has great dancing, memorable songs that you've sung for years but one should not loook too closely  at the plot.   I hate that the message of the show is that a nice young girl, who is a virgin, who doesn't smoke, and doesn't drink and who wears subdued clothing can be an outcast and that the only way she is going to be part of the "in" crowd is to become a slut.   And when the transformation takes place, the audience cheers, the guy isn't afraid to show the world that he loves her, and everybody goes off singing a lively tune.

Many of our popular musicals shouldn't be examined too closely (the beloved Oklahoma, for example, celebrates the death of a guy nobody liked, who was just a lonely loner who looked scary), but Grease is the one that is the most difficult for me to watch and I always feel guilty for enjoying it.

And yes, even in the lively Grease, in the middle of all that singing and dancing and noise, Walt had to keep poking me because I kept nodding off, and was too sleepy when we got home to finish this journal entry.

We drove home listening to Says You and ending what was, as I said, a low key anniversary, but just right for us. 

 The amazing thing is that we have changed
so little in 47 years!

Wasn't It Yesterday When We Were Young?

Last night we drove to Santa Rosa to help our friends Dick and Gerry celebrate their 45th wedding anniversary. I hadn't seen them in over a year, but Walt had dinner with them twice while he was down taking care of his mother and they talked about the anniversary celebration at that time (Gerry had sent me an e-mail about it earlier).

The original plan was to get together with us and with the woman who had been Gerry's maid-of-honor for her wedding (Walt and I were both in the wedding party). But it ended up just being the four of us for dinner.

We met them at their motel and I asked Gerry where we were going to dinner and she mentioned some restaurant in downtown Santa Rosa. As we started looking for the restaurant, I suddenly realized it was all familiar and as we passed the restaurant, I realized that it was so familiar because I had actually eaten in that restaurant when my friend Mary was here visiting from Wisconsin last year. I know one restaurant in the whole city and that's where we were going. I was actually delighted because I remember that it was a great restaurant.

We started with sparkling rose and gave a toast to the anniversary:

(Funny that it's Dick and Gerry's anniversary and the only person who shows in this picture is Walt!)

We went on to have a fantastic dinner. Dick and Walt each had some seafood stuff, Gerry had duck ravioli

and I had butternut ravioli, which I discovered when I read my previous entry about this place, was exactly what I had ordered the last time too. It didn't disappoint the second time around.

It was a lovely dinner, nicely avoiding all the hot button topics that sometimes get us into trouble.

(What's in her hand is their wedding book...
I had one just like it for our wedding)

Then, because we are all crazy for used book stores, we stopped at one which was just across the street and browsed for awhile.

I picked up a couple of coloring books for Pedro. The information about him says that he is interested in art. You can't send an envelope that is more than 1/4" thick, so I found a coloring book with lots and lots of intricate shapes and can send him several pages at once over the coming months. I also found a coloring book about the history of California that I thought he might like as well.

I also found some Albert Payson Terhune books. I collect them--not passionately, but I loved them as a kid and have several. This was not one that I already had, and I recognized a couple of beloved stories in it, so I bought it too.

We finally ended the night by driving back to the hotel and retrieving our car. It was really a lovely evening. But surely it can't have been 45 years since their wedding! Wasn't it only like...yesterday?

At the Risk of Offending Feminists...

...it's nice to have a man around the house again. Within the first hour of Walt's return from Santa Barbara, he had the garbage disposal fixed. It only took a few seconds. In truth, I knew what the problem was. It just needed to be cleaned out, but I have these big fat-lady hands and they won't fit down the hole of the garbage disposal. Walt's hands fit just fine, so once again I have a working garbage disposal.

If the timing works out right, we'll go dishwasher shopping tomorrow, and maybe he can even figure out the VCR/DVD recording thingy. (I actually could probably do that myself, but just haven't taken the time to sit and study it.)

Yes, he managed to actually get back into town while it was still our anniversary. The sentiment with which we hold these events is obvious from the kinds of cards we give each other. Walt's to me is over there on the left. Mine to him was remarkably similar, only it was two old farts partying.

And then there was the romantic "I guess we should go out to dinner, huh?" he said to me. I was in the process of preparing a romantic anniversary dinner (i.e., I was heating the oven to put to frozen Marie Callendar chicken pot pies in to cook).

Yeah--this just isn't the year for romance, I fear. Just too much going on.

But we had a lovely dinner at the Thai place which is next door to Walt's old office. They know him there and the owner, seeing that we were being led to a table for two, took over and moved us to the more spacious table for four. She brought us tea we didn't order and then after our meal, presented us with complimentary coconut ice cream and banana fritters, without even knowing it was our anniversary.

I, of course (Peggy will love this), distinguished myself by going to divide the ice cream and fritters in half and dropping one of the fritters on the floor. Not once, but twice. I told Walt there was a lot more fiber in it from the carpet remnants. (Of course I ate it! You don't think I'm going to pass up a free dessert just because it fell on the floor, do you? I used the 5-second rule.)

We didn't talk much during dinner because Walt had a call from his sister about their mother. The news is good and not as good, I guess. She was finally moved to a convalescent hospital today. Her roommate is actually the woman who lives across the hall from her in the Assisted Living facillity, which I thought was very nice for the two of them until I learned that the roommate is not expected to live.

The "not as good" part is that Alice was exhausted tonight, which worries her daughter, but which seems pretty logical. She's been essentially in bed for the past two weeks and naturally she's suffering from muscle weakness and it's not surprising that since exhaustion was one of the things that put her in the hospital in the first place, without any significant movement at all for two weeks, the activity of moving from hospital to convalescent hospital (which involved getting dressed) would wear her out.

We're just all hopeful that the fact that she's able to move out of the hospital is a good sign and that her determination to stick around long enough to see Jeri married will keep her going.

But it's nice to have Walt home for a few days. We both drive back to Santa Barbara for Tom's big BBQ next week, then he will stay down so that his sister can get away for a few days; I'll drive back home alone. I've been hitting Audible.com for books on tape to listen to in the car!

While he's home we're going to have to make sure that the back fence is secure. I went to get in the car to go down to the bus station tonight and when I turned around, Scrappy was right behind me. I was afraid he had managed to squeeze out the back fence. On further inspection after we came home, I think he just followed me out the door when I thought I had locked him in the house, but I want to make sure he really can't get out the back fence before I trust leaving the dogs in the house again. It wouldn't surprise me if the thing weren't ready to come loose any day now, with the amount of jumping Lizzie does at it,

---

After our dinner tonight, I spent time working on the video I took at Ellen and Shelly's reception Saturday night. The full video is 10 minutes long, and I made a copy for the two of them, but then I cut it down to 3 minutes and 20 seconds to post on YouTube and then cut it again to 1 minute 28 seconds for Flickr (since 1 minute 30 seconds is the maximum length for a Flickr video).

I think you pretty much get the emotion of the event in the You Tube video, so I hope you click on that link and watch it.

Still Cooking After All These Years

There was a time when I subscribed to Gourmet magazine and dreamed of becoming a gourmet cook. I remember finding a picture of a perfectly round, deeply orange orange on a perfectly matched plate, with a juicy looking, deep red strawberry balanced on top of it. I proudly showed it to Walt and told him that was the kind of thing I wanted to begin serving as a new bride.

He glowed. And married me, 43 years ago today. My wedding gift from my groom was a monogrammed set of of Gourmet magazine cookbooks.

We left the reception in Walt's 1953 Rambler (the car that hated me), and drove it to a location where our "real" car was hidden.

Our honeymoon was a trip to Canada. I don't remember how long it took us to get there, but there were obviously no opportunities to do any cooking. We stayed at a different motel a night, ending with a several-day stay at a cabin in Jasper National Park.

It was a strange cabin, which had a stove but no electrical outlet in what was supposedly the "kitchen" area, so while we had a toaster, we had to plug it into a socket on the mantle of the fireplace.

There was no refrigerator, so we didn't want to get foods that had to be kept cold. I was ticked to find canned bacon. How perfect! I could still cook bacon and use the grease to cook eggs, but we didn't have to deal with how to keep a slab of bacon cold.

So came the morning of my first breakfast cooked for my new husband. I went to turn on the stove and found that it didn't work, so Walt went and got the coleman stove from the car and we put that on top of the regular stove.

Then I discovered that canned bacon doesn't appear to have much grease. In fact, canned bacon may be one of the most vile things ever. It kind of glopped in the pan, never crisped and what was left to cook the eggs in was some sort of grey amorphous substance. You couldn't fry them because there wasn't enough "grease" (quotes used because I'm not convinced it was real grease or not!) so I scrambled them (Walt prefers fried eggs).

The eggs picked up the color of the cooking medium, so on the plate I had this yucky bacon-like stuff and grey scrambled eggs.

The only thing which worked in the kitchen was the toaster. It was one of those old fashioned kinds with the sides which flopped down to put in the bread. Then it toasted one side, you opened it up, turned the bread over and toasted the second side.

This was the world's fastest toaster. I swear, it toasted a piece of bread in literally seconds, which I didn't realize until I'd burned the toast. (I can't remember if I eventually got a decent piece of toast out of it, or if I just scrapped off the burned part and served it that way; for some reason I suspect the latter--we must not have had that much bread with us.

So there we were, the first meal of our married lives and I've served this totally inedible glop - gelatinous bacon, grey eggs and burned toast.

The only consolation was that Walt already knew I was a decent cook. I met him when I became the cook for the house he was living in and I had cooked a lot for him during the year we were engaged.

But our very first home cooked meal as a married couple was probably the worst meal I ever cooked in my life. I guess it didn't discourage him, because 43 years later, he's still eating my cooking!

Happy Anniversary, Dear...wherever you are at the moment! I hope you're eating something well-cooked. (He is returning from Santa Barbara today, briefly, returning in a few days for Tom's annual barbeque.)