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Here she is. The little lady is still here after 3 days. Check out her perfect web!

Hatch

Just look at these beauties! These are mild hatches, freshly roasted. You can get them everywhere and at CM they will roast them for you. But why? Why miss out on the aroma in your own home? These are almost ready for tomorrow. I coated them with olive oil, broiled them. Next, they go into a clean paper bag where they will stay for a few minutes, then I will peel them and refrigerate until tomorrow. I made a sort of casserole chili-relleno last week. Here's the recipe:
8 hatch chilis, roasted; 1 pound of organic ground beef; 1 large sweet onion; 3 roasted tomatoes, a couple cloves of garlic, salt, pepper, and cumin to taste. Cheese if you are not lactose intolerant.
Lightly oil (olive oil only - no cooking spray - I don't even own any cooking spray anymore) a 9 X 13 pan. Layer half of chili's in bottom. Chop and cook onions, add ground beef and cook until done. Add garlic, tomatoes and spices and cook 2 to 3 minutes more. Put meat mixture on top of chilies. Layer second half of chilies on top. Add cheese. Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes. Done. Serve with brown rice or whole wheat orzo, avocado, cilantro, pico and beans on the side. Or Spanish rice and corn. Or, whatever you fancy.

Spider Update
She moved to the other side of the doorway sometime between 10 last night and 530 this morning. I was careful to look outside before opening the door. She did have a couple of strands all the way across the entrance. I carefully broke those strands so that I wouldn't walk through and bring her entire mistress-piece down. She is still there.

Welcome!

It is never too early to get ready for Halloween. This little (she's actually about 3 inches long) beauty found a nice spot at the front door. She moved in two days after I moved the impatients to a cooler spot in the back yard. These types of spiders are always hanging out around here. Sometimes they are at various places on the front side of the house and sometimes in the back. When you come to visit, just be on the lookout. I know I'll be looking. I love seeing them there, I just don't want to have her crawling on me. If that happens, I will scream and the neighbors will be calling the po-po.

Lessons Learned and Things to be Thankful For

Things can change so fast. One second you are screaming because a centipede crawled off a discarded workout glove, and the next second, someone needs stitches.
The person screaming over the bug was me (see previous post). The person needing stitches was Kimberly. Kimberly and Cy have done a lot of work around the yard and I particularly liked the way Kimberly trimmed the big hedge in front of the house and asked her to trim the one on the other side. So while Cy was trimming wild, crazy vines on the back side of the house, Kimberly was making the hedge look awesome. Then I distracted her. The next thing you know, she says “ow”! Then she’s holding her right forearm and says she doesn’t know what happened. She wasn’t holing the clippers at the time. When I take a look, all I see is blood, so I tell her to stay put while I run to get something clean to blot up the blood. Getting a look without the blood, I am relieved to see that it’s just a lac (laceration) that will need stitches. Before I could actually see what was there, I was worried that she might have gotten bit by a snake, so the lac was better than a snake bite. This is something to be thankful for (STF).
I called my GP MD and their office was “short on doctors” so they were no help. Lesson learned: find a new GP. I called the ortho doc, but none of the orthos are in that office on Mondays, or the staff assured me, they would have done it. The ER option seemed like it would be too expensive and also take 3 to 4 hours on a good day. Finally, I remembered the clinic that opened up 4 months ago at Escarpment and William Cannon. We got right in, but did have to wait about an hour for stitches. The doc was a hippie lady in dirty keds and baggy sweat pants, but she was nice and it looks like she did a good job – we’ll see exactly in about 7 days. The nurse dressed Kimberly stitches while I went up front to pay the bill. Kimberly wasn’t supposed to see the bill, but thanks to the primping, preening, receptionist, who advertised himself, in part by having a sticky note on the side of his computer (visible to anyone checking out) with a phone number and “The Full Monty” (I am not joking), she arrived just as he was telling me the total. It wasn’t cheap. This is only information for you, the reader, should you find yourself in a similar situation. I am not complaining. I love Kimberly a lot and I found other STF: we got stitches in a relatively timely manner, pre-numbed and with a clean needle (unlike many countries where you won’t get numbed and the needles are often reused and the dullness is only secondary to how clean they are after how many other people).
Finally, we also learned that it is probably better to blunt cut your bushes, unless they are under a window that you want to discourage would be intruders from entering. What’s that saying, “better than a poke in the arm with a sharp stick”? Now you know how much better.

She Gets It From Me

It's not enough that I grew up in Wyoming with six brothers, five of them older than me, but I have also lived in two very buggy and cockroachy places (not counting Austin). When I was little, my brothers delighted in chasing me with all manner of bugs and spiders. When you are very little, you really believe it when your bothers tell you that the bug/spider will kill/blind/cripple/make you pee the bed. They even tortured me with bat stories. One day, my mother decided to "clean" the bats from behind the hayloft door. All of the bats flew, except for one. It was a mama bat with a baby on her back. Too heavy to fly, she looked for the first dark place she could find, which was up my pant leg. I screamed and stomped, knowing that I would surely die from rabies, while the rest of my family screamed at me to not hurt the poor mama bat. Remeber, I was the one with the bat heading for her crotch on the inside pant leg! What were they thinking??? But I digress...
When I was pregnant with Suzy, we visited Tehran and I remember awakening to two large roaches crawling on me. I screamed so much, the entire household spent the evening calming me and making me tea and playing backgammon with me. Oh, did I mention that we don't have roaches in Wyoming, or at least none that I ever saw.
Then we moved to Houston in 1981 and promptly moved into a roach-infested apartment complex. The first night there, I remember being "chased" by flying roaches. I swear to you that they were as big as small airplanes and they followed my every move. My screaming caused the kids to scream, so whether Suzy remembers it or not, this was her second exposure to my screaming hysterically due to large bugs.
I remain sensitive and tend to scream. A couple of years ago, I went on a call to a residence for some medical problem or another. When went to the back of the house where the patient was. Right away, I noted that there were roaches EVERYWHERE. I did not put my bag on the floor. Then, something grazed my calf...and I screamed like a girl, positive one of those roaches was heading up my pant leg. The patient's family was apologetic (and hid their laughter) as they locked up their chihuahua, who had licked the back of my calf...

Lucky Friday the 13th

Leaving work, I sit at the red light at Faro and Riverside, waiting to make a left turn. The light turns green and I sit and wait while two cars turn. Then I wait while the another car finally decides to turn. So I have waited about 40 seconds, that's how long my light has been green and the light for other traffic has been red. Then I turn. Whoooooosh! Missed me by inches. At 50 plus miles an hour. He never saw me, until he missed me and the red light, THEN he stepped on his brakes. I hadn't looked to the left before turning. Two seconds slower and I wouldn't be writing this. MY Friday the 13th is a lucky one - so far.

MADDDDDDD

Mostly Against Dumb, Drugged, Drunk, Drowsy, Distracted Drivers

So, like, I am driving up Highway 71 towards Bee Cave and the pickup in front of me swerves into the oncoming lane (18-wheeler headed towards her), then swerves to the right lane. The driver swerves a few more times into both lanes. Good sense would dictate dropping back and staying out of the driver's potential crash area, but I was curious. Was the driver drunk? Suffering a serious medical emergency? Something more mundane like unable to talk on phone or apply make-up while driving? So I passed the pickup. And what was the woman doing??????





She had her face in the rearview mirror, flossing her teeth!

These kind of people should have their pictures plastered all over the front page, not Paris Hilton.