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Over the last couple of weeks, I have encountered what could have been an unfortunate problem in getting my milk kefir to do right. I guess I was careless. I thought for a while that I had killed my kefir grains or had otherwise been bacterially judged as undeserving.
If that happened, I would have to do without any milk kefir until I managed to get some more healthy grains. After throwing out two maintenance batches I generated for the sole purpose of getting my mother culture healthy (I fed them to my brother's grateful dogs), the last batch of milk kefir I made was just excellent, and my grains seem very healthy again.
It might seem like I'm taking my water kefir for granted. It's been a couple of days since I fermented a new supply. Usually, three cups at a time. My last batch was so tasty I've been sipping on it like it was liquid gold, and limiting my drinking of it in order to make it last a little longer.
It has a wonderful fizzy taste that comes from the carbonation it generates from fermenting the Mexican cane sugar water I'm using these days. I bought a new glass bottle with a hinged plastic top just for storing it in my refrigerator, but there is no storage shelf it really fits in. I'm almost out, so I gotta make some more.
My days seem occupied almost completely with taking the prescribed medicines for my arthritis twice a day and remembering to put the three different types of eye drops into my right eye. It feels a little odd to be putting drops in just one of my eyes, but it's actual medicine and not Visine.
Two of the drops require me to use one drop four times a day, and the other one three times a day, so that's five different times a day I gotta do right. Besides these chores I'm making the kefir every day and writing this blog and answering e-mails, and that pretty much takes most of my time. Life shouldn't be this complicated, but at least I ain't dead yet.
My fig bush and my blueberry bushes have bumper crops this year, and they're just beginning to get ripe. It's been a dry spring and early summer. We've been getting barely enough rain to keep the drought from becoming a complete disaster. The figs look different. Instead of oozing sweet, sugary sap from where the birds and bugs peck at them, they had a tough, hazy, purple look. Normally they're brown when they get ripe. They still taste good, but the drought has definitely affected them.
Getting the cataract procedure done on my right eye has been an education about what life can do to old body parts. I couldn't tell until the surgeon replaced the old lens in my right eye, and the left eye lens stayed the same. This has had an emotional affect on me such that it makes me feel a little sad. This sadness is an unexpected puzzle to me.
In a way, installing new lens with UV filters makes the future look protectively brighter and secure, but to what end? The sadness probably associates with my visually brighter future not leading anywhere. It's not going to make me a more desirable human being to hang around with. I'm as grumpy as ever.
Eying the world with 20/20 vision, at my age, is not going to help me finally get the girl of my dreams. Besides, if I see her too well I might change my standards of what dreamy is. It's not going to help me win the lottery. Having excellent visual acuity doesn't put money in the bank with title and rank. Contrarily, it improves my ability to see things better that I worked for a long time to learn to ignore.
This sadness showed up at breakfast yesterday morning when I sat down with a group of older women who are friendly toward me. The restaurant had a lotta people there, and there wasn't a booth available, so I announced that, whether they liked it or not, I was sitting at their table with them. They liked it. I make them feel positively holy by the comparison they make of themselves with me.
I call them "the Fox News crowd". They talk the talk they hear the so-called pundits like Rush Limbaugh say, and expect me to go along to get along. It never happens that way. The woman next to me drew herself up, as a display to the others, in order to question me straight-forwardly about whether I "believed" in Obama. She seemed to be asking if I "believed" in Obama like she and her friends "believed" every word on Fox News. I had to admit I was not possessed by such a "belief".
Her elfin friend at the end of the table turned up her splotchy, wrinkled nose, and haughtily asked me what church I supported. I replied, sadly, that the only thing I "believed" in was me, and the name of my church was the same name that was on my birth certificate. She looked knowingly at the others old women, and said, "I thought as much." Then, she snickered at her inside joke at my pathetic situation. No blame.
These old women's condescension was not unexpected. I don't know any of them outside the restaurant. They all know me because my parents taught them back when they were in school. All these women are married or shacked up. They brag to me of their material success despite my parent's apparent lack of faith in them. I'm not really a person in my own right to them.
They're all mothers and grandmothers, and they matronly proselytize about how they love the right gods and possess all the right moral virtues, and that I obviously do not. They don't really expect me to try and be like them. We mutually agree it's virtually impossible. How could I possess their hard-earned grace when I am is not worthy?
Why would I not be sad? These dried-up old women have decided amongst themselves that there is no hope for me to gain the good graces they ascribe to because I'm crude. I don't act right. As if to suggest that I was born behind a barn, and never learned how.
It's as if they're saying that they will not bear a child for me because I don't measure up to their high standards. Their threats have no teeth. Their wombs bear no babies. Maybe I'm not always the last to know. Not all by myself anyway.
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