HAWMC June 10 Comfort Food

With MS, you never know when you will be hungry.  Normally for me its when we turn off the lights, and lay our heads down, and I am quizzing myself on what the Red Sox lineup was in 1982 (hint: Yaz and other people), when I will hear:

*be-yoing* *beyoing* *beyong beyong beyong wiiiiiiiiiiing*

(your noises may vary) Oh, well.  Then I doze off, and my tummy has to wait until morning.

My wife will ask "Are you hungry?"  My answer is, normally, "No."  We eat anyway, as I need fuel to keep my sputtering body going at some level.  Well, food and drugs.  Lots of drugs.

But this is the food issue, so......

I have two platefillers that I do on request.  One is a meatloaf dinner and the other is Texas chili. Comfort food in the former, hot and spicy for the latter.  I balance the firepower in the chili with honey cornbread.  Oh, sure I can do the burgers/hot dogs on the grill, even a steak, chicken, or even pizza, as long as I can sit down near the fire.

The above is a picture of the Boston Market meatloaf.  I tweaked their recipe a bit. Much better.

My wife has her comfort meal, too.  Chicken breasts with mashed potatoes with cranberries. Amazing.

Of course, we do desserts.  My wife's cakes are charmingly made, and we both bake cookies.  And breads.  So we do okay.

Sadly, what I can never have again is my mother's rice pudding,  and her apple pie.  The last time I had the rice pudding was Thanksgiving 2000.  She made a bowlful of the heavenly treat and was to go with my wife and I to visit my wife's family in Syracuse.  Unfortunately, she never made it, ending up in a hospital after a terrible fall Thanksgiving morning.  My mother never returned home. Before I went out to Syracuse, my brother and I shared the bowl of pudding.  We both knew we'd never have another.  Or another apple pie.

No matter what your lot in life, savor every bite.

Thanks for reading.

The Fenway Fall

It's about 75 degrees as we walk into the coolness and shade of Fenway Park last Sunday.  The Sox are out of town playing in Houston and the previous year's Championship Season is just a nice memory.  But that afternoon we were there to watch the Lowell Spinners (Red Sox minor league team) play the Mahoning Valley Scrappers (Cleveland Indians minor league team).  The idea is to see some young guys play in the beauty and serenity of Fenway and you can get seats that are like this:

Fourth row on the aisle right behind home plate.  Oh, yes.  Tommy was a happy boy.  We moved down the steps, and my right leg just went boink, and by the time I stopped rolling down the walkway, I had landed in the lap on a eight year old boy, actually on his water bottle (by the sound of the plastic crinkling) and the first view I saw was:

which was actually pretty neat because, well, I'd never been that close behind home plate (but the day before we had taken the Fenway Park tour, and the first thought that came into my already fractured brain was "Hey, I was up there yesterday.  Sat in those seats and could look down on to the field:

But for now I just apologized to the family and slowly skulked over to my seat.  We watched the game and the minor league hi-jinks on the sidelines (Suggestions for minor league teams - have a "Baseball Only Night" - no t-shirt giveaways, no mascot races, no dogs catching frisbees, no walkup music - just the game, and the food, of course). 

We shared a Cherry Coke and watched a very tight 1-0 game.  At the same time I could feel my leg muscles tightening up like plaster of paris, so that when we stood for the seventh inning or the excuse me-pardonme-sorry families to go by us to get in the aisle and dash for yet another soda and do the whole thing again. I was actually waiting for the family the next row over to explode with their group 33rd hot dog triggering the deluge of consumed weeniers, sodas, cotton candy, popcorn would flow unencumbered over the backstop and onto the field, stopping the game before the Spinners' relief corps would do their own exploding in the ninth.

Final score: Spanners 6, Spinners 1.

We stayed awhile after the game as the Red Sox showed "Field of Dreams" on the big screen.  I just took it in - those seats and watching the movie - OK, actually, I didn't want to make the walk back to the hotel. My legs had stiffened right up, my right leg more of a wood post.  Is this how Long John Silver felt in Treasure Island?  Step, clop, step, clop.  Arrrr, matey, get me to me ship. Can't remember where I put it.  Arrr.

Tuesday I stopped over at the library and dropped off a due book.  Before leaving, I walked over to the shelves that held the free books, and there's always a surprise or two.  It was down on the bottom shelf.  So I got down there, slowly, using my left leg to support, and my right on an angle for stability.  As I stood up, the right leg gave out and I fell on to the shelf, trying to grab it for support, but the shelf gave way, spilling me and the books on the floor.  Get up. Put the books back on the shelf.  Okay, skulk out.

I went home where I can fall over any time I want.  The Boston trip set a good frame of reference. I can walk as far as I wish, as long as I wish the place to be about a block away.  What is needed? The Acceptance of pain, treat when you can.  We did everything we planned to in Boston, and a few things more. But stairs are just, uh, no. One or two, fine. Anything more? It better be worth it.  We shopped on Newbury Street, and many stores are one floor up or down from the street. Sometimes it was.  But Boston is always worth it.  We've talked about moving there. If you want life filling culture and history, and beauty, I recommend the Dirty Water City. And the Red Sox. And Fenway.

And as Dylan said, "you better walk right." Doin' my best.  Thanks for reading.

Shipping Up To Boston

This is me:

I'm sitting in the back seats in Fenway Park last Saturday.  These wooden chairs are smaller (people were thinner) and do not have cup trays (people could hold their own drinks or place them on the floor) attached to the seat in the front of them.  They watched the baseball game on this field:

This is Futures at Fenway Day last Saturday.  The Red Sox were away playing in Baltimore and the field is turned over to the minor league Boys of Summer from Portland, Maine and the visiting team from Harrisburg, PA.  The field was bathed in sunshine and this was our view at the opening pitch:

Second row near what is known at Fenway as "Canvas Alley", where the ground crew stands to clean the bases and smooth the infield dirt, or, in case of deluge, get the tarp on the infield.  A great view of the game and we had our hot dogs and beverages, hanging around for seven innings before we retreated from the sun into the cool of Yawkey Way and the back area.  Wally the Green Monster even found his own prints in cement.

Near the end of the game we came back to the seats I wrote of earlier, out of the sun and watched the last few innings.  Normally I keep track of the plays, keeping a score book, but didn't feel the need. The day before we had had lunch at McGreevy's Tavern, the nation's first sports bar (or the version of it down the street from the actual sight).  Mike (Nuf Ced) McGreevy looks down from his sainted portrait atop the bar to Royal Rooters of all ages.

The bar is located "1200 Steps" from Fenway.   

Walking around Boston was limited to about anything in an eight block radius of our hotel, and I could handle that fairly well, with occassional stops for coffee. This being Boston there's a Dunkin Donuts or Stahbucks or an independent coffee house within reach, plus bookstores, and Commonwealth Avenue, filed with trees and benches.  We didn't go in 2012 as I was not sure I could handle the walking, but with the NYC strolls of a few weeks back and now Boston, I seem to know my limits and I can just enjoy things that I can do.

Like sitting and looking out at the field where Ted Williams and Yaz and the DiMaggio brothers and Pedro and Nomah and the Babe and Lou all played.  And all the players in between.  The nicest part is that at an "normal" game, you are hustled off out of the stadium so that the cleaning crew can do its part. This day we just sat and looked at the grass, the foul (Pesky and Fisk) poles, the Monstah.  People still made the trip out to the red seat to sit in the spot where Teddy Ballgame planted a homer, the longest in Fenway history, a mere 502 feet from home plate in 1946.

For about a half hour we could just walk around the Park.  Our place. Our home. and as long as I can walk it, or go in a scooter, or a wheelchair, I shall be there.  Fenway is not on the Bucket List, because we won't stop going. Evah.

Nuf Ced. Thanks for reading. More soon.