AN UNFORGETTABLE IMPRESSION

141 – Thursday, May 21, 2009
As I glanced toward the bay window of our kitchen at four a.m., my gaze settled upon a most unusual sight – a golden glow illuminated the entire room, making it appear almost make-believe, as possibly part of the treasure-room set from the movie National Treasure – everything in sight shimmered as if 24-karat. It was the first time in nearly a week when the heavens were visible through a clear sky, for our weather had constantly been delivering a steady shower of desperately needed rainfall, more than eight inches this week, from an overcast firmament. I might have seen the moon directly, but that would have required that I walk outside onto the lanai, for the moon’s angle was too high above the horizon to allow its image straight-way. The phenomenon allowing me to drink in this awe-inspiring spectacle was its reflection – the swimming pool had been filled to overflowing with the deluge and now appeared as a large kidney-shaped mirror lying atop a large patio slab. It occurred to me at that moment that I had never before seen such a sight and that the amazing events presented constantly in nature produce most of the unforgettable impressions deposited in our memories. I imagine you will agree if you just take the time to think about it.
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PHILLY PHOLD

140 - Wednesday, May 20, 2009
A short while ago, I received an email from a former roommate with whom I shared an apartment while in college. It was a fantastic treat to hear from him after forty years to renew old acquaintances. His father was the weather man on the local television channel named Dave Kirk and had done the local prognostication for as far back as I could remember. DJ (for David Jay) and I shared a rather small, unpretentious, two bedroom rental not far from the campus. To this day I cannot recall how it was that we ended up together, for our majors were totally unrelated and DJ shared no curriculum courses with me whatsoever – but end up together we did! In order to afford the flat and school, we each were required to endure a near terminal austerity program relegating us to a purely survival mode. It is amazing the deprivation people are willing to embrace in order to achieve an end to which they are committed. Cynthia and I were scheduled to be married the summer after DJ and I roomed together, and every penny we could possibly divert was earmarked for creature comforts still in the distant future. It was Jay who introduced me to another ‘first’ in an ever-growing list of never-done-that-befores – a fast and filling nutrition substitute that could be assembled in a moment which could really take the edge off any growling stomach that demanded sating while on limited funds – have you ever spread Philadelphia Cream Cheese on a single slice of white bread, folding it in half, blanketing the white, smooth protein, inhaling it in three bites, then washing the gooey concoction down with an icy cold glass of whole milk quaffed from a former jelly jar? A thought just occurred to me – a ‘Philly Phold’ is most certainly an acquired taste, inspired by necessity.
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CLASSMATES

139 – Tuesday, May 19, 2009
I have recently renewed some old acquaintances from my high school days on an internet site called classmates.com. Not only has it been nostalgic, but, I must say, rather enlightening for me as well. I was a little apprehensive, at first anyway, to upload my photo to the personal profile I wrote on the location – after all, I was renewing friendships with people who had not seen nor heard from me in forty-five years, and with my ready reference being Cynthia’s scrap book archives, I have become fully aware that I no longer am recognizable from my 1” x 1 ½” black-and-white yearbook picture. I ultimately relented, however, and agonizingly posted my mug right where everyone who logs onto the site can view me just the way I appear today, shall we say ‘mature’, since that sounds a whole lot more palatable than ‘old’. Continuing to navigate on the web page to see who all I can find as other members, I made an incredible and wonderful discovery – one that not only erased my inhibitions, but elated my soul. There are a whole bunch of people I uncovered who bear the same names as my former classmates, but have obviously stolen their identities, for their profiles sport images revealing wrinkles and gray and bear little, if any, resemblance to the published imagery displayed in my yearbook reference. You know, by golly, a thought just occurred to me - this excruciating phenomenon might not just be happening to me!
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BIG BOY

138 – Monday, May 18, 2009
What began a little more than a month ago with the planting of a ‘Big Boy’ in our ‘Topsy Turvy’ hanging planter, has come to fruition over the past several days. Now swelling to the size of a baseball, the perfect green tomato has two neighbors, one cherry-sized and the other pea-sized. More than a dozen tiny yellow blossoms foretell a rather prolific harvest ahead. In an identical planter immediately north of this one, a “Beefsteak” plant hangs with emergent blossoms as well, however, it seems that another couple of weeks will be required before the produce is expected to appear. Here, in Florida, we are so accustomed to ingesting ‘pinkish’ fruits whose meat has a pithy texture, tough skin and just a tiny hint of quasi-tomato flavoring as if it were just merely waved across the veggie. A watched pot never boils, and in this instance, the target is a green orb dangling from the emergent vine – the anticipation is in waiting for the blushing of the globe to a crimson hue, evidence of its maturity. The plan is to not pluck the fruit one day before we plan to devour it and the hope is that the flavor shall burst upon the palate in a manner we have not experienced since relocating to this paradise. A new level of suspense has settled in, accompanied by a calm patience, and my only reservation is that my expectation is set so high and that, when the harvest commences, my taste buds shall be left wanting. Confirmation that summer’s full scope looms around the corner breathlessly waiting to be ushered in on the coattails of our tomatoes, and I can hardly wait!!
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PROJECT - LANAI

137 – Sunday, May 17, 2009
Like an Egyptian Queen, there she was, poised between two motionless sphinxes, purring with all the regal contentment garnered by purposeful attention! Oh, not the cats, the Queen – she was the one purring! There we were propped up in bed with our pillows, she with the cats, and I with ….well pretty much with the pillows, settled in to watch a CSI episode before nodding off to la-la land. My muscles were already beginning to do the ‘tighten-up’ (even without the music of Archie Bell and the Durells) as a result of our spring-cleaning of the lanai – starting early in the day, I lifted all the furniture into the yard to await their scrubbing ritual while we attacked the pool deck, spotted and stained from the winter’s pummeling and the presence of our aforementioned feline friends. The spring veranda-ritual was made much more challenging this season, given the water use restrictions brought on by our extended drought and the accompanying prohibition of the use of our normal weapon of choice, the pressure washer. In the planning stages, as we approached just how we might assault the project, Cynthia had outlined a well-constructed strategy – first we would broom the entire area with a stiff-bristled shop broom I use in the garage, then vacuum the loosened soil from the decking using the Shop-vac (no restrictions on that weaponry), followed by a spot-cleaning of tough zones with ‘Simple Green’, the amazing elixir of the cleaning gods, and finally, a scrub-and-rinse ploy in a tandem hose-and-brush attack. The plan was executed flawlessly and, by day’s end, all was spic-n-span again in the pool enclosure. We got some sun, some exercise, and had the satisfaction of a job well done as we reentered the domicile and headed for the shower as the sun slowly disappeared behind the masonry wall of the subdivision. Now she was reclining, every bit the image of my Egyptian Queen, but did I feel like a Pharaoh? Only by the acute awareness that my asp was dragging!
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FOCUS ON THE POSITIVE

136 – Saturday, May 16, 2009
Today, Donna hosted a family birthday celebration for her daughter, Chrissy. All were there to wish her well for the coming year and rejoice with her in years gone by. In an ICQ chat earlier in the week, Donna and Cynthia conversed regarding the fare for the gathering, especially, what we could bring. Our contribution was to be an ice cream cake, Cynthia understood Donna to say, and that Chrissy’s favorite is vanilla vanilla from Publix. I volunteered to make the run early in the day – I never object to grocery runs, for I am pretty good at staying on the list, reducing the shopping experience to more of a ‘mission’ than an aisle-by-aisle perusal of the entire store. I was looking for the said item in lavender trimmings, Chrissy’s color of choice, but I found only one vanilla vanilla, and it certainly was not decorated in lavender. I left the supermarket frustrated because I could not find the ‘just right’ ice cream cake and returned home where I compelled Cinnie to join me and enter the quest. In the subsequent two hours we exhausted all the possibilities – two other Publix locations, a Sweetbay, and even a desperate final trip to the ice cream gurus, Baskin Robbins, where they had never even heard of a vanilla vanilla ice cream cake, but they could make one with a minimum of forty-eight hours notice. In exasperation, and with our destination appointment growing near, we retraced our steps back to the very first Publix and there retrieved the first cake I had discovered, vanilla ice cream and vanilla cake (the cake was actually a yellow cake, but they called it ‘vanilla’). Upon arrival, I asked Donna where to stow the ice cream cake until serving. It was then I discovered that they were not expecting an ice cream cake, rather a regular sheet cake – white cake with vanilla frosting – Rats, I could have picked that little number up on my very first pass! This is a perfect illustration of some more of that “Larrison Luck” that you have come to know – that which takes anything that should be a rather simple egg and beating it endlessly until it becomes a meringue. There was an upside, however – the ice cream cake turned out to be a discovery of one of the best tasting ice cream cakes I have ever enjoyed. Sometimes, you see, less than perfect situations can yield better than expected results – you just have to always focus on the positive!
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