Living with two different but similar instruments!

A stove and working oven are as important to my well being as having a tuned piano with all of it's parts working properly.  I have and still can make music on old battered pianos that are dinosaurs.  I can usually walk into a kitchen and find certain tools I need to create something to eat.

In my restaurant I bake and cook on a "REAL STOVE."  It is WHITE!  It is not a electric range, it cooks with propane and it is has a large oven.  It is the kind of stove people with large families cook and bake with.  (the oven in Alpine bakes at least 14 hours a day on and off...)

A few years ago this kitchen in the QT house was remodeled and many things about the "do up" job
are good.  Drawers that hold dishes, canned goods, spices and one that I store flour, sugar, pasta,
rice and other dry goods for baking and cooking.

I am making a comparison between musical instruments and the instruments one requires cooking
a meal.  The refrigerator is fine.  The dishwasher, Microwave oven... then the COOKING RANGE.
If a stove and oven are not functioning properly you can ruin a meal that BTW took hours to plan and prepare all the ingredients only to discover at the last moment the most important necessity the STOVE AND OVEN are dis-fucking-functional.

The hours a pianist spends alone practicing is something ONLY a musician can relate to.  When I was performing professionally the worst problem was:  You are excited to share what you have dedicated hours perfecting and then discovering the piano on the stage, in the venue your performance will take place is absolutely horrible beyond imagination!!!
Worse situation:  IF A KEY IS NOT WORKING!  A BROKEN STRING...  (this IS why god made drugs and other elements so that someone would not die by the hands of a pianist.)

This morning I awake excited to have things ready for the arrival of my brother from the USA come Thursday.  I KNEW there were problems with the oven because during the Thanksgiving baking of a turkey as well as pumpkin pies...  Today I wanted to bake cookies, possibly a cherry pie and a chocolate cake.  All these things can be baked and after cooling frozen for later eatables.

I have a 'no fail' peanut butter cookie recipe.  Pre heat oven.  It is ready, I place the cookies inside the JAWS OF HELL.  I'm talking with a friend and suddenly I smell this rather over done oder.  I grab the oven mitts, sling open the glass door and pull those cookies out as fast I can!  I did save them BUT?  I am not happy.  I will RE-READ for the 9th time the manual that came with the stove.

The black glass?  (I do not believe this one is the glass kind) is a pain.  Black is not ever a color you want in a kitchen!  It gives life to every particle of dust, pollen and endlessly needs to be scrubbed.  I even have a certain scraping blade you use on the surface.  If you so much as boil
a pan of eggs the rim of the pan is on the ring.  I have excellent stainless steel pans!  If you open the windows and allow air to flow through the room the stove top will be 'dusty' not shinny!

I have VENTED!  I feel better about my helpless situation.  I will conquer this beast of a black demon!  It's cavern, the oven from hell and the top burners that cannot balance energy properly.

I may go back to something I used years and years ago.  I was given a electric frying pan in the 70's.
That damn thing was fantastic.  The lid kept grease out of the room.  You could cook steaks and the reduction from the juices were perfect by adding some butter, a squirt of tomato sauce and red wine.
PERFECTION.  I even made scalloped potatoes in that fry pan.  You could make stews, meat loaf, the list was endless but the same applies to "slow cookers"....

Screw the glass top, fan forced oven stove range!  I will have a glass of wine and make a tuna casserole for dins tonight.

Thanksgiving

I do not know if the word THANKFUL is what I feel.  GRATEFUL is possibly a better word?  I am forever "in love" with the miracles I experience every day and night.

In my 20's 30's and 40's I did not comprehend and appreciate many parts of my body, mind and spirit.
I am a "sensitive".  I FEEL and SENSE VIBRATIONS.  The vibrations can be COLOR, or SOUND.

I am a 70 year old man who is now discovering so many miracles about myself.  These miracles are the things I am so very grateful and thankful for.

SIGHT.  I can see!  I can read, write and draw.  I can see mountains, trees, people's faces...

HEARING.  I can hear wind, rain on the roof, foot steps, breathing, music, human voices and the voices of animals.  The music of the spheres.

TOUCH.  I can feel rose petals. rocks, food, piano keys, skin, hair, leaves, soft, smooth, hard, wet, hot, cold, sharp, dull and I can touch the sky with my own two hands.

TASTE.  Sweet, sour.  Smooth and creamy harsh and tangy.  Salty, rancid, fresh, stale, tender, tough.

SCENT.  To be able to "smell" a forest, the brine of the sea.  baking bread and chocolate.  A garden in full blossom and it's sensuous perfumes.  To smell what is rotten and what is fresh.  Grilled onions and beef, oregano, rosemary, curry.  Cinnamon, nutmeg and milk.  Rain on fallen leaves.  I was once told that the last SENSE you loose upon your death is your ability to smell.

DREAMS.  THE ETHERS.  THE INVISIBLE!

An entire universe within the mind and every cell of one's DNA.

My Thanksgiving for once in my life was just THANKING ALL THAT HAS BEEN GIVEN TO ME!

 

Happy 70th Birthday1

Dinner at the Millennium Hotel and our dear neighbor Clare Waddock made a deliciously insanely
far too rich of a cake.  I've managed to munch down most of!

I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would live in this dimension of existence for 70 years!!!!!!!

I'm loving my down time in QT.  Rutha from USA flew into QT this morning.  She will spend Thanksgiving with us!  I have the turkey ready to be popped into the oven before bed time.  Rutha is
making REAL PUMPKIN Pie.  She is baking REAL dinner rolls and I'm making potatoes and the gravy.  Karina and Jimmy will drive to QT from CHCH tomorrow and return our many plants.  Karina can rescue any plant from death.  Can't wait to have the house full of living plants.  They love music and plants reveal a lot about how a person's emotional life plays itself out day by day.

I'm still plugging away at my book?!?!?!  but I think this blog has been enough of a book for the past many years.  Thus, I am returning to blogging and writing about my everyday walk a bouts.  The interesting people I encounter and most of all the thoughts that wander inside my mind and heart.

More later.  It's nice to be back on this site!