Oh, this YouTube clip expains everything.

Take a look at how this horrible ecological disaster is being handled by BP executives, and the big chief, Kevin Costner.  I wonder if Obama finds any humor in that?!

1)    What was the first record/album you ever received/bought for yourself?

“Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys.  It was a 45 and I bought it at Woolworth’s.  It probably cost 89 cents.  At the age of 8, I experienced the word “psychedelic” when I listened to that song.  It literally put my mind into another place.  I loved it and played it over and over and over again.

2)    What is one of your most vivid childhood memories?

The first thing that pops into my head is “falling in love” with Elvis when I was very young.  I had a dream of him and felt that physical sensation that one gets when one is “in love”!

3)    What lesson would you like to pass on to younger women, now that you are a woman over 50?

Hmmmm… what have I  learned to be able to pass along?  Well, I don’t know if I have completely got it yet, but maybe the most important thing is to try to be OK with how you are, how you look, how you react…everything.  Why?  Because everything changes so quickly, that to try to hold onto ideas of how to “be”, how to “look”, etc. are so irrelevant and a complete waste of time.

4)    What turns you on, as a woman over 50?

That’s a good question…not much!  Since I don’t have good sex any more, I would have to say my garden, painting, and being with friends.

Yum!

Oh, and a good bottle of wine actually turns me on too…  I can always count on La Crema’s Pinot Noir to make me feel something divine.

5)    What is one of your dreams for the future?

To be able to get away with my husband and dog more often, instead of working all the time.

6)    What is one product you can’t live without that other women over 50 might enjoy/benefit from?

I cannot go out without having my favorite lipstick on, and that is one by Chanel.  I have tried all sorts of different brands over the years, and this one puts me into a sensual frame of mind that I can say I enjoy…I think they use roses and raspberry and vanilla and I really like that smell.  Plus, the texture is perfect.

Thanks Sadhvi…that was fun!

Sadhvi

It feels like ages since I’ve posted something.  I had a really bad cold, and I didn’t feel like doing anything for a couple of weeks.  I also turned 52.

I had this urge to bake a chocolate cake with white, fluffy icing just like my grandma, Mabel Carter, used to make.  I never made her “7 minute frosting” before, but I thought it was high time now that I am starting to look like her!

After looking hard and not being able to find her recipe in my collection, I decided to make one that sounded just like hers, called “Wonderful Marshmallow-Like Frosting” by Susan Branch that is in her Sweets to the Sweet book.  She has a cult following, and I am one of her groupies.  Here’s what she says, followed by the recipe:

“The classic boiled frosting, pure white, shiny and fluffy.  You’ll need a candy thermometer.

1/3 c. water                                        a pinch of salt

1 c. sugar                                           2 egg whites

1/8 teaspoon cream of tartar           1 tsp. vanilla

Stir the water, sugar, cream of tartar & salt together in a small, heavy-bottomed pan.  Hook a candy thermometer to the edge of the pan & boil without stirring until mixture reaches 240 F.  In the meantime, beat egg whites until stiff.  Pour the 240F syrup over the whites in a thin stream, beating constantly until thick & glossy.  Stir in the vanilla.  Now frost the cake!

I found a simple chocolate cake recipe called “Gateau Therese” in David Lebovitz’s The Sweet Life in Paris.  This is a must read book, by the way.  The following is what he has to say about it…

“Every Frenchwoman I know loves chocolate so much she has a chocolate cake in her repertoire that she’s committed to memory, one she can make on a moment’s notice.  This one comes from Therese Pella, who lives across the boulevard from me; when I first tasted the cake, I swooned from the rich, dark chocolate flavor and insisted on the recipe.

Madame Pellas is fanatical about making the cake 2 days in advance and storing it in her kitchen cabinet before serving, which she says improves the chocolate flavor.  And the Brie she keeps in there as well doesn’t seem to mind the company…”

I actually use just one stick of butter, which is probably a few grams less than what is called for, and, since most of my friends are into gluten-free eating, I use ground almonds instead of flour.

9 ounces (250g) bittersweet chocolate or semisweet chocolate, chopped

8 T. (120 g) butter

1/3 cp. (65 g) sugar

4 eggs, at room temperature, separated

2 T. ground almonds

A pinch of salt

Try this recipe…it’s really really good.

And, oh, thankfully, it’s Spring!

20th floor of a building.  They were eating lunch, and the Irishman said, “Corned beef and

cabbage!  If I get corned beef and cabbage one more time for lunch, I’m going to jump off this

building!”

The Mexican opened his lunch box and exclaimed, “Burritos again!  If I get burritos one

more time, I’m going to jump off, too.”

The blond opened his lunch and said, “Bologna again!  If I get a bologna sandwich one more time, I’m jumping too.”

The next day, the Irishman opened his lunch box, saw corned beef and cabbage, and jumped to his death.

The Mexican opened his lunch, saw a burrito, and jumped too.

The blond guy opened his lunch, saw the bologna sandwich, and jumped to his death as well.

At the funeral, the Irishman’s wife was weeping.  She said, “If I’d known how really tired he was of corned beef and cabbage, I never would have given it to him again!”

The Mexican’s wife also wept and said, “I could have given him tacos or enchiladas!  I didn’t realize he hated burritos so much.”

Everyone turned and stared at the blonde’s wife.  The blonde’s wife said, “Don’t look at me! He makes his own lunch!”

Sadhvi

I tried to fax one piece of paper to a client of mine today.  It didn’t go through.  Hmmm, I called her to tell her that there seemed to be a problem.  I asked her if she had gotten any faxes recently?  She said no, that actually, she had never received one; she just sends faxes on occasion.  Well, she tried to find out if she could get it working, and couldn’t.  Too bad, right?

Then I emailed a terrific coupon to a friend of mine  from the local health food store: a pound of organic coffee and a big package of granola for free, with any purchase – wow!  My friend wrote me back saying thanks, but her printer wasn’t working today.  Darn!

iPhone

My husband rarely gets any bars around where we live with his iPhone because the service is so bad with AT&T.  But it’s supposed to be so great now that our area has finally got 3G service, and now I see they even offer 4G service – oh boy!  It never makes any sense to me as to why someone would want a cell phone with little or no coverage, unless it was really just a toy, which it is.  I had one for about 3 days, which was the limit of my patience with no coverage.  Strange enough though, the comments I got from people just seeing me holding that worthless phone were kind of funny…they all thought I looked cool holding it!

Then I get an email from a friend saying I should check out this system called EVERNOTE that says it will help me  ”Remember everything”.  Now that is a tempting proposal, but really, just looking at their web site just made my migraine worse (click on the big bold EVERNOTE link above and see if you don’t get an immediate reaction to run away.  I double dare you.)

I cannot handle another thing to make my life simpler, and that includes hearing about it either…including, but not limited to: Kindle, the latest Smart Phone, the new GPS device, getting more business using Twitter, or any of the  other new and wonderful Social Media that keeps making me feel like I have to keep up…that’s it, I think I have reached my limit!

Instead of trying to keep up with the latest s0-called technology, I am going to go back to what I enjoy the most: recipes and gardening.  And being curious about other people…maybe I will start to interview my interesting friends and family for a while.

Now excuse me, I have to go through the emails that came in while I was writing this post before they build up to the point where it becomes my new part-time job.

then click your mouse and  move it over the page.

It’s almost Spring!

As she turns around, her worst nightmare materializes in the form of a salesman standing right behind her and he’s good looking as well.

Cool as a cucumber, he displays all of the qualities one would expect of a professional in a store like Tiffany’s.  He politely greets the lady with, “Good day, Madam.  How may we help you today?”

Blushing and uncomfortable, but still hoping that the salesman somehow missed her little ‘incident’, she asks, “Sir, what is the price of this lovely bracelet?”

He answers, “Madam, if you farted just looking at it – you’re going to sh-t when I tell you the price.”

Sadhvi

This past weekend we were snowed in.  Last Tuesday and Wednesday we had a blizzard with constant winds of about 50 mph, night and day.  The weekend before we had 3 solid days of non-stop rain, with a little mud slide thrown in nearby.  Now I know, I could be 6 feet under rubble in Haiti, so believe me, I am not complaining:  I am just noticing things!

So if I could get away, it wouldn’t be to the Caribbean, it wouldn’t be to Mexico, it would be to one of my favorite thermal baths in Switzerland.

When I lived in Switzerland http://www.myswitzerland.com, I got such a thrill out of taking the train and going to one of the many beautiful, clean, and affordable hot springs.  I liked to visit and experience the different minerals that made up each of the hot springs.

It was very interesting to find that the salt-based hot springs made me feel like I had just been disinfected; very clean, and all cuts were healed.  The baking soda mineral bath was a true delight!  It made my skin feel like silk, and it was the most relaxing.  In the little town of Vals was a smallish pool that had mountain meadow herbs like fresh-cut hay and lavender flowers that was very nice.

But maybe my most favorite was the one in a little village called Scuol in an area that speaks a language that is a mixture of German, French, and Italian, and that language is called Romansch.  It is supposedly a dying language, which makes it intriguing right there.  Listening to people speak Romansch, which is Latin-based like English, made me feel as if I was not on the planet Earth, and I like that feeling -  a lot.

I wish I could take a few weeks off and go to Switzerland, where they are also having record amounts of snow and cold.

But at least they have these incredible mineral baths that you can escape to!  Where dipping  your toe  into 38 degree Celsius water (that’s 100.4 °F) and feeling the body turn into liquid relaxation as you slink into the waters that make you feel like you have gone back to a primodial place called  “Aahhhhhh” … yes, I’ll take one of those right now, please.

Giuseppe replied to the assembled husbands,  “Wella, I’ve a-tried to treat-a her nicea, spenda da money on her, but besta of alla is, I tooka her to Italy for the 25th anniversary!”

The priest responded, “Giuseppe, you are an amazing inspiration to all the husbands here!  Please tell us what you are planning for your wife for your 50th anniversary?”

Giuseppe proudly replied, “I’m a gonna go get her.”

After a week of this, she can’t stand it anymore, takes her complaint
to a supervisor in the Human Resources department and asks to file a sexual harassment grievance against him.

The Human Resources supervisor is puzzled and asks,  ”What’s sexually
threatening about a co-worker telling you that your hair smells nice?” 

The woman replies, “It’s Keith, the midget.”

Farmer John lived on a quiet rural highway, but as the years went by, traffic
slowly built up to an alarming rate.
The traffic was so heavy and so fast that his
chickens were being run over at a rate of three to six a day.
Farmer John called the sheriff’s office and said,

“You’ve got to do something about all
of these people driving so fast and killing all of my chickens!”

Shortly, a sign was put up that said:

SLOW: SCHOOL CROSSING

Three days later Farmer John called the sheriff
and said, “The sign seems to make them go even faster.”

A new sign was put up the next day that said:

SLOW: CHILDREN AT PLAY

Farmer John called again and said, “Your signs are doing no good!  Can I put up my own sign?”
The sheriff told him, “Sure thing, put up your own sign.”
The sheriff got no more calls from Farmer John.
Three weeks later, curiosity got the best of the Sheriff and he decided to give Farmer John a call.
“Did you put up your sign?”
“Oh, I sure did.  And not one chicken has been killed since then.”

The sign read:

NUDIST COLONY
Go slow and watch out for chicks!

The driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, “If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, will you give me a calf?”

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, “Sure, why not?”

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his iPhone, and brings up Google Earth to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany.

Within seconds, he receives an email verification that the image has been processed and the data stored.

He then prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized printer, turns to the cowboy and says, “You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.”

Bud says, “That’s right, well, I guess you can take one of my calves”.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

 Then Bud says to the young man, “Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?”

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?”

“You’re a Congressman for the U.S. Government”, says Bud.

“Wow!  That’s correct,” says the yuppie, “but how did you guess that?”

“No guessing required”, answered the cowboy.  “You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked.  You used latest technical equipment trying to show me how much smarter you are than me, and you don’t know a thing about how working people make a living – or about cows, for that matter.  This is a herd of sheep…

Now give me back my dog!

30% of women think their ass is too fat

10% of women think their ass is too skinny

The remaining 60% say they don’t care:  they love him, he’s a good man, and they wouldn’t trade him for the world.

Their biggest fear was that there was no afterlife.

After a long life together, the husband was the first to die.

 True to his word, he made the first contact, “Ivy…Ivy!”

 ”Is that you, Richard?”

 ”Yes, I’ve come back like we agreed”.

 ”That’s wonderful!  What’s it like?”

 ”Well, I get up in the morning, and then I have sex.

Then I have breakfast and then it’s off to the golf course.

Then I have sex again, bathe in the warm sun and then have sex a couple of more times.

Then I have lunch (you’d be proud: lots of greens!) another romp, then ’round the golf course, then pretty much have sex the rest of the afternoon.

After supper, it’s back to the golf course again, and then it’s more sex until late at night.

I then usually catch some much-needed sleep and then the next day it starts all over again.”

 ”Oh Richard, you surely must be in heaven!”

 ”Not exactly…I’m a rabbit on a golf course in South Carolina!”

If there is no self, whose arthritis is this?

Be here now.  Be someplace else later.

Is that so complicated?

Drink tea and nourish life; with the first sip, joy; with the second sip, satisfaction; with the third sip, peace; with the fourth, a Danish.

Wherever you go, there you are. Your luggage is another story.

Accept misfortune as a blessing. Do not wish for perfect health, or a life without problems. What would you talk about?

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single Oy.

There is no escaping karma. In a previous life, you never called, you never wrote, you never visited. And whose fault was that?

Zen is not easy.   It takes effort to attain nothingness. And then what do you have? Bupkis.

The Tao does not speak. The Tao does not blame. The Tao does not take sides. The Tao has no expectations. The Tao demands nothing of others. The Tao is not Jewish.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Forget this and attaining Enlightenment will be the least of your problems.

Let your mind be as a floating cloud. Let your stillness be as a wooded glen. And sit up straight. You’ll never meet the Buddha with such rounded shoulders.

Deep inside you are ten thousand flowers.

Each flower blossoms ten thousand times.

Each blossom has ten thousand petals. You might want to see a specialist.

Be aware of your body. Be aware of your perceptions. Keep in mind that not every physical sensation is a symptom of a terminal illness.

The Torah says, Love your neighbor as yourself. The Buddha says, There is no self. So, maybe we’re off the hook.

“Dear Madam,
Enclosed please find check in the amount of $250 for rent of your apartment.  I am not sending the amount agreed upon because when I rented the place I was under the impression that, first of all, it had never been occupied before and,  secondly, that there was plenty of heat, and thirdly, that it would be small enough to make me feel cozy and at home.  Instead, I found out that it had been previously occupied, that there wasn’t enough heat, and that it was entirely too large.”

Upon receipt of the note, the woman immediately returned the check for $250 with the following note:

“Dear Sir,
First of all, I cannot understand how you could expect a beautiful apartment to remain unoccupied indefinitely.  As for the heat, there is plenty of it, if you know how to turn it on.

Regarding the space, the apartment is indeed of regular size, but if you don’t have enough furniture to fill it, please do not blame the management.  Please send the rent in full, or we will be forced to contact your present landlady.”