The Best Way to Find Good Food, Guaranteed

Ugh. But the pie makes up for it.

My dad, I have mentioned before, had his 90th birthday in December. In the months since he celebrated the start of his 10th decade he has kept up his winning ways in the Senior Olympics (five more swimming gold medals last month), still gets up at 4:15 a.m. to be the fitness center pool attendant/lifeguard several mornings a week, continues to serve on the tourism board--well, I could go on and on.

He's pretty much unstoppable, is what I'm trying to say. This week, though, we had a conversation I hadn't expected:

Him: "You know, I've decided it may be time for me to stop driving at night."

Me: "Great idea! You have plenty of people who can get you places."

Him: "Oh, I just mean long trips at night. I won't start out from Kansas City after dark any more. I'll still drive to town and around here."

I guess it's a start. I mean, Kansas City is only FOUR HOURS from the farm where he lives, and I gave up night-driving from there when I turned 40, but whatever. And as Husband pointed out, Dad apparently has charmed all the deer between his farm and the small town where he hangs out, so they'll wait at the side of the highway for him to go by. (That was sarcasm, in case you didn't recognize it.)

The upside of this half-hearted nod to mortality was that I had the privilege of driving Dad to a conference a couple hours from his farm last week. And the double upside was that it was day 37 of the Noah's Deluge that has been this spring. My Younger Brother the Farmer declared it too wet to plow and hopped into the back seat for the road trip.

It was lunchtime when we dropped Dad off with his fellow Rotarians so the Farmer and I went foraging and I was able to show off my guaranteed way to find the best food, no matter where you are. Here are the crucial steps of that method:

1. Take out your phone.
2. Google "Best pie in (town where you hope to eat)"

That's it. Unlike the treacherous Google Maps, which once deposited my family at the loading dock of Lowe's instead of at the hotel we were trying to find, Google's "Best Pie in Town" search will tell you that the best pie in Topeka is at Bradley's Corner Cafe, and the best pie in Abilene is at Joe Snuffy's. Google graciously let us know that the best pie in Hays, Kansas, was at Al's Chickenette, and the best pie tends to hang around with fabulous comfort food.

Al's Chickenette not only had the best chicken soup I've had in years (with homemade noodles swimming in a perfectly salty broth) and fried chicken that the Farmer described as the perfect ratio of coating to white meat,

it had what was undoubtedly the best pie in Hays: strawberry-rhubarb with homemade crust and sweet juices dripping into my spoon. Also, a waitress who knew that a spoon is the only way to eat pie because forks are for foods that need stabbing and not scooping.

Al's had restroom doors that were identified for hens and roosters, which may have been a twee bridge too far, but we're going to forgive that in the face of that pie.

Well done, Google, and thanks for giving up long-distance night driving, Dad. I'll make that road trip any day.

Taking a Deep Breath

I am taking a deep breath before I hit "publish" because I know this will not be the kind of eyebrow-obsessing fluff you have come to expect in this space. I have dear, dear friends and loved ones who will be disappointed in the opinion I am about to express. But after I saw the monologue by Jimmy Kimmel last week, I knew that I would be saying something.

Did you see it? If you didn't, please click on the video and come back after you've watched it. If, for some reason, the link isn't working, go to YouTube and search 'Jimmy Kimmel baby monologue.'

Seriously, watch it. I'll wait.

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Are you back? Could I offer you a tissue? Because if you are not in tears after watching that raw, emotional, tender heart being poured out, you have stronger emotional control than I do.

Or maybe I found myself sobbing deep sobs as I watched because I know exactly what Jimmy and his wife were feeling. Exactly.

Boy#3 was born with a congenital heart defect. We didn't know this until his well-child check when he was turning two. That's when his wonderful, wonderful pediatrician was tipped off by Three's abnormal blood pressure (measuring sky-high in his tiny arms, drastically low in his legs) that he had a coarctation of the aorta.

I know. I'd never heard of it before, either. If you don't want to click on that link, a coarctation basically is a drastic narrowing of the big artery that carries oxygenated blood from the heart to the body. Three's heart pumped blood as far as the narrowing, then because it couldn't get through, the blood backed up and found other ways to travel. His tiny chest was criss-crossed with blue veins that were doing the job of that defective artery. So a few weeks later our baby was wheeled into an operating room where skilled doctors threaded a catheter from his groin into his heart and a tiny balloon was expanded into that narrowing. His blood pressure suddenly normalized, and although he sees a cardiologist every year, he has lived a normal, active life.

We were still celebrating this miracle of modern medicine when his pediatric cardiologist looked Husband and me straight in the eyes, to make sure we were listening:

"Don't ever lose your job," she said soberly. "This child is uninsurable."

Say that out loud, and think of your baby. Think of knowing that you might have to choose between the heart catheterization that will save your child's life, and selling your house to pay for that procedure. Think of how much it cost last time you had an emergency room visit for a kid who needed stitches, and multiply that by the cost of a cardiac ICU stay, then find the money from your savings to pay for that stay.

We had insurance. Three got the treatment he needed, and oh, he is such a fine man today. You just can't imagine.

But what if we hadn't had insurance? What if we had lost our jobs and couldn't find positions that came with benefits? What if we had been forced to find insurance that was not part of group coverage? How could we have lived with having three of our four sons insured?

The thought of being forced into that Sophie's choice makes me shudder now, a quarter century later.

And for everyone who thinks I'm some kind of fairy-dust pink-o, I know there is no such thing as a free lunch. We pay a healthy percentage of our income for our medical insurance, and everyone with an income should pay at least something toward their medical security. But I can't help but agree with Jimmy Kimmel:

"If your baby is going to die, and it doesn't have to, it shouldn't matter how much money you make. Whether you're a Republican or a Democrat or something else, we can all agree on that, right?"

Things That Are Making Me Happy

I Photoshopped my neck wrinkles. I regret nothing.

Four weeks ago today I had way too much time to think gloomy thoughts as I was waiting for the scans/enzyme tests/ambulance, and one of the thoughts that crossed my mind was that this space was going to be left hanging out in cyberspace with no conclusion. When I realized that the last post before The Event was titled "I Write Because I'm Happy," it was a good moment.

"Yes," I thought. "I am just fine if my lovely reader(s) are left with my declaration that I'm happy."

So just so you know that I'm still me even when I'm moving at quarter-speed and taking naps whenever the thought occurs to me, here are the things making me happy today:

The Hat

Last week was a week for winding up commitments I'd made when I was still in full-speed mode. Teaching last classes of semester? Check. Accompanying high school students at state music contest? Check. Final performances of the community theatre's production of Church Basement Ladies? Check. 

If you are ever asked to accompany a rock-star ensemble in a tribute to the women who work in church kitchens, do not miss that opportunity, because there is a good chance the property master will walk up to you with her hands filled with hats and say "The church pianist would be wearing a hat. Here." Then you will put on that hat and a pearly necklace, and suddenly your regular concert black accompanist outfit is a COSTUME! It is so much fun, even if you haven't had as much time to practice as you would have liked (because naps) and quite likely will screw up a different section of the accompaniment for every performance. 

Small Town and Its Wonderful, Wonderful People

We have lived in the House on the Corner for almost 31 years, and for at least 30 of those years we have been trying to grow grass in the strip between the sidewalk and the street. We have seeded, sodded, weeded, coddled, and watched all of our efforts either be shaded out by the three trees in that strip or washed out by the gullywashers that lapped over the curb of our halfway-down-two-hills location. Last summer we gave up and hired the local landscaping genius to take a crack at the area. He turned it into a limestone-edged shade garden that makes me happy every time I look at it. 

The Saturday before The Event I spent three hours giving the spot its spring cleaning. I dug up hundreds of grape hyacinths (the cursed kudzu of the Midwest), trimmed back the liriope, and scooped out clots of leaves that had accumulated curbside. 

Knowing now what I did not know then, it was probably not the optimal activity for one whose lungs are trying to kill her. (Ha! Foiled, lungs!)

I gazed at the spot in admiration when we drove home from the hospital Wednesday night. Wow, I did a great job. I continued to think this until the next morning when I tottered out to get the mail and realized that while I had made a good start, someone else had finished the job for me. New mulch had been spread, the straggler hyacinths were gone, a general nip and tuck made the strip gorgeous. 

I suspected the local landscaping genius had sent a crew to finish what I had started, and confirmed my suspicion with an email. A's response? "So glad you are feeling better. You had us very concerned and we knew the landscape maintenance was just one small way we could assist." 

Yes, of course I cried. 

What's making you happy today?