Longe Life Lesson 24: Deseeding a Pomegranate

Through the course of improving my eating habits over the last few months, I've learned I need snacks with flavor and texture. I've added nuts (not peanuts) and often prefer to have them in the shell to make the snack more of an experience. In that same vein, I've discovered pomegranate seeds as a refreshing, with an intriguing taste (some seem to be on a horseradish continuum mixed with berries) and nutty/juicy texture. Today, I learned from my son how to seed a pomegranate efficiently. It requires a bowl and a wooden spoon. Intrigued?  Check out the video.

I Write, Because….

I write to not scratch the Mission Bay sand flea bites that populate my feet, ankles, knees, front thighs, waist, neck, arms and hands. I write to avoid watching TV. And lazing my night away. I write because I picked my one ripe tomato, walked three miles, ate my allotment of 1450 calories, flossed and brushed my teeth for two minutes while doing hip extensions, knee lifts and eight pound dumb bell curls on both sides. I write because no one has called since I returned from San Diego and I don’t feel like calling anyone who will ask me to unpack my trip to New Mexico for the writing conference or the other meeting that I managed in California, that I’ve been planning for the last nine months, that participants agreed it went really really well even though speakers showed up late, the event planner specified a later date for handouts to arrive and we spent nearly an entire night at Kinkos replacing name tags, table tent cards, a 4x6’ graphic, room signs, table assignments, then the package showed up anyway a few minutes before the meeting.

I write because I tried quilting but once I figured out the design and chose the fabric in colors that made me salivate, I found the sewing boring. I completed the quilt-top comprised entirely of tee-shirts worn by my son from every track meet in his high school career, including the one with a signature that commemorates that he broke the school and his coaches’ pole vault record, and another where my heart stopped when he landed in exactly the same fashion his Buddy Bear did when he’d fling him from the top of the stairs or across a room… scraping, bouncing and finally stopping with a sound of wind knocked from his chest and torso slamming the mat. Eventually, I paid a quilter with a special long arm sewing machine that requires an investment and commitment to quilting to complete the quilt in time for a graduation and never quilt again.

I write because my garden, consisting of three large pots, requires too little care. Once I dreamt of sheep for sheering, spinning and knitting and rows of veggies for freezing, canning and sharing. I chose instead to move to the city and am relatively content to offer a daily spritz, a nip here and there to blunt the growth of overly ambitious herbs, and if I am lucky a pluck now and again of ripened tomatoes and lettuces for a salad or two.

I tried knitting but tracking the quantity of knit ones, purl twos, yarn overs and slipstitches produced nothing more than a tangle of yarns so I tore it out and gave away the yarn. Then tried again using a rainbow yarn and needles the size of Wisconsin brats with ten knits in one direction and ten purls back then an extra row of knits, repeating this pattern for ninety minutes when the apparent scarf reached around my neck from knee to knee. A few days later, on the way from Chicago to Ann Arbor wearing an ankle-length steel grey skirt and matching grey top, I draped the vibrant ribbon around me as a multi-colored stole and wore it into a favorite shop situated at the bottom of Lake Michigan in the Indiana Dunes.  Before, I thoroughly scoped the shop, the proprietress admirably decked out in pumpkin, black and a completely surprising green sheath, asked if I would make six more. I agreed at sixty dollars each, called two friends who each had 180 minutes to spare. I bought their supplies, cheered them on as I completed my two and delivered all within a week under the name of Scarving Artists. We donated the money to a women’s shelter and I never knitted again, leaving my needles and left-over yarn to rot in a covered bin in a third bedroom, I call my studio.

I write because there are two containers of bead supplies and equipment in that studio too. For thirty years I’ve made earrings, bracelets, and necklaces for family members and friends as gifts and sometimes for myself. I’ve spent hours creating designs that use colors, shapes and textures that “go” but never ever “matchy-matchy” as my friend Lynn calls store bought bangles. Jewelry making was once an addiction. I was powerless to pass a store without going in and lacked will power to sift through beads without buying. About fifteen years ago, I inadvertently underwent a self-inflicted aversion therapy that cured my compulsion.  I call this miracle remedy, the Teen Years. Nights my son left the house with my car, I worked on a project that seemed sane at the time and kept me up till he’d safely arrive home. I’d admired something similar on the fireplace mantle of my 76-year old Scarving Artist-friend. She created a cuff of pink rosettes that fit tight where the label would go on a wine-bottle shaped clear glass decanter using the tiniest of seed beads and the slimmest of needles.  I chose a smaller bottle, the same shape and adopted a seed bead pattern, also of pink rosettes, to circle the bottle. Making the pattern circular rather than end-to-end was the first challenge. My second challenge - the needle pricks from figuring out how to hold the bottle and manage the weaving method, and keeping dark red blood from messing up the pattern. The third challenge that remains today is the unexpurgated boredom from the repetition of motion. Oh how I wish I could experience it as meditation or Thich Nat Hanh’s mindfulness. But, no, no matter if the TV, radio or a podcast is on, ten minutes passes and I consider stabbing myself deeper with the needle but that would be like suicide by mosquito bite.  I began the bottle when Alex turned sixteen, the first two of four inches emerged by the time he went to college at eighteen. Since then, I’ve added another half inch and now only need to add the bottom of a row of flowers and the edging, about the time he turns thirty-five, I expect, because in the meantime, I write.

Flossing - It all comes out in the wash

In recent years, I’ve shifted from two to four appointments with the hygienist for cleaning. In the last year, after tiring of the reminders to floss every day spend and spend two minutes brushing, I complied. My chiropractor enabled this when she helped me make this ritual a multi-tasking event by adding leg raises, curls with an eight pound weight and one-foot balance exercises. After only two months, the indicators for gum disease receded, so to speak.

In my last two visits the hygienist and the dentist individually suggested that I purchase a water-flosser. I felt ganged up on and decided selling appliances must be a strategy for them to continue the enjoyment of three day weekends every week. The nagging worked and I bought one. This is a testimonial that HydroFloss is a miracle tool. Gross as it sounds, all this masticated stuff that I thought I already brushed and flossed away comes out in the wash. I admit, I probably skimp on the two minute brushing now to get to the satisfaction of watching all the crud flow away. If your hygienist suggests one, consider it. 

Last Night's Dream - that left me with an impression of Alzheimer's Disease

Stepping from the threshold of my apartment building, I was lost. No instinct helped me turn right or left toward work. In one direction, a fancy, deep brown lace-cut iron walking bridge crossed high above the road, though I couldn’t see what connected it at either end. In the other direction an endless string of buildings that looked like the one I was leaving. I’d never find home again. I turned around and the door was gone. I didn’t  see the inside of my own place. I only saw a warren of stairs to floors of doors, that when reaching the end, opened to the outside with concrete verandas and concrete paths descending from them with more iron railings that led down to the street. From the street, however, I saw no way to access them.

What can you say to someone acting their age?

“Grow up!” That’s what you say to someone not acting their age, right. When someone is acting crotchety, can you tell them to… grow down?

At work, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about life cycles of products. We know most products follow patterns of entry, growth maturity and decline. Well I guess its no surprise as we call it life cycle for a reason; a product follows what we live as humans. After a product hits maturity, let’s say a bologna, for example, the company has to figure what to do with it to sell more, right? Voila! Lunchables. Companies must decide whether to reinvest in their product and create the next iteration or let it decline.

The entry or introduction, growth, maturity and decline of a product life cycle is often depicted as a bell curve with maturity at the top, entry and growth climbing toward it and the slippage to decline on the other side into a grave yard of betamaxes, buggy whips, telephone tables, bookmarks, and so on. 

So, thinking about life cycles of things brings me back to thinking about our human life cycle. It’s clear, us boomers are in the phase of maturity and in some cases and unfortunately, moving over the hill to decline. For the most part, I think this is our bologna time. It’s time to figure out what’s next. I see the decline. In all honesty, I feel the decline sometimes, when staying in feels better than the effort of going out. Or, I find myself thinking, we tried that already.  

So, what’s the opposite of “grow up” or “act your age”?   

It drives me crazy that few conversations begin with anything other than health or news of a death. I’m distressed when I encounter peers tsk-tsking about the clothes or shoes of younger women. Yet, those same girls (with the grandmother faces, as May Sarton called them) wore revealing halters, midriffs and fuck-me-pumps (as we called them) themselves. It gets to me when perhaps changes in hearing causes my cohort to speak loudly (in movie theaters) as if everyone else is going deaf. Maybe, it’s changes in vision, reflexes and nerves that cause my pals to moan at intersections, then again, maybe it’s my driving. But really, it’s not going to get the other car or me to stop sooner.  

My own whining in writing this makes me think, I am the pot calling the kettle black. Or I am varicose vein deep in denial.  Someone tell me how to tell myself to stop acting my age.