New Glasses

Dear Family and friends,

It's already afternoon: we have had a busy morning, and it all goes to show how much better I feel today than I did yesterday when I spent a good part of the day reading, resting. I got up too late to walk to the dentist's office, so I drove and had my teeth cleaned (they are in good shape, and Yvonne always says that she can tell the state of my (or anyone's health) by cleaning their teeth. After that I had the third and last of the current set of teeth patched up. I grind my teeth at night, but am unaware of it, and it breaks my teeth. No cavities, just pieces missing. I also went to the cleaners to drop off two culottes and to pick up one: After discovering that the backs of my culottes had black stripes that I could not get out in the wash no matter what tricks I used, we searched all over to find the cause:the pillow I use in the car? No. My lovely recliner? No. It turned out to be my stationary bike, so it now has a towel over the seat. The seat cover must be disintegrating after all these years.

When I got home from the first set of errands, Merwin (who had had a very successful shop at Waldbaum's) met me and we went to the Toyota service place on 25A. I drove my car to leave it there. He followed me. The weird thing is (1) I was due for service in mid-March, but of course never got to go because of the broken pelvis. You'd think that a service person would have phoned or written to see what was up. And (2) their record said that Toyota had done the fix on my car someplace (it turned out) in New Jersey in February. Of course this was an error. So I get the fix today: the gas pedal gets shortened, the mat changed, and a couple of other things.

After that, we went to pick up my new computer-reading glasses. I have been making do with drugstore magnifying glasses. But the prednisone has done a job on my cataracts, and my vision is much worse than it was before.

Yesterday was pretty busy also: Our wonderful Rabbi Lee had made a date with us to bring lunch for the three of us, and did he ever! He made a vegetarian cold soup, served with fantastic bread. Then from Diane's a quiche, which he heated in our oven, and it was about the best I have ever had. We ate that with a salad he had made, beautiful square slices of red and yellow peppers, glistened with olive oil and sprinkled with chives from his garden. He also made a superb salad dressing. We ended with a berry tart from Diane's.

We had lovely conversations, and among other things Lee urged me to phone someone from our congregation who is a hematologist, retired from Mount Sinai hospital, where I am going for the workup in hopes of making it into the trial. Why not call? Why call?

What did me in was the great pomegranate cosmopolitans the rabbi made. I had had these at our cooperative dinner (about 9 p.m.) and enjoyed them thoroughly, without ill effect. After the dinner, I had asked everyone for recipes. His contribution had been this cocktail for the pre-dinner conversation and wine for the dinner itself. He brought the recipe with him yesterday:

This is supposed to make 6 drinks. Wow, that's strong:
Combine in a pitcher 2 C vodka, 1 C Cointreau liqueur, 1 C cranberry juice, 1/2 C pure pomegranate juice.

Fill a cocktail shaker half full with ice. Pour the cocktail mixture in, and shake for a full 30 seconds. Pour into martini glasses. Garnish with a slice of lime, if you have it on hand.

Yesterday, he poured three small servings, but one was for Merwin, who does not drink. So I drank mine, then his. Fortunately, this excess did not hit me until Lee was just leaving, this time taking the books he had selected at his last visit, plus one more. I went right to bed and stayed there, resting and reading. I finished John Mosedale's book, The Church of Shakespeare, and I hope to write a review of it for ShNL. I just sent ShNL the photos to go with the review of the TFANA Measure for Measure. For supper we had a repeat of lunch, something Merwin is usually loathe to do. Today I will have most of the remainder for my lunch: I can eat the same food time after time, especially when it is this delicious.

Yesterday I also had email conversations with the student at Reno by way of India who will work with me on hamletworks.org. My brilliant son Dave set me up with Skype, which is the means the student and I will use to communicate—that and email. The camera will allow me to show him what I mean. Merwin and I are hoping we can call Jesús too using Skype. We use iChat for our Mac friends.

Now off to lunch!
Love,
Bernice