Ice cream is turned out back.

One could compose an autobiography mentioning every memorable meal in one’s life and it would probably make better reading than what one ordinarily gets. Honestly, what would you rather have, the description of a first kiss or of a stuffed cabbage done to perfection? -Charles Simic

Even though the place I live sometimes makes me cry, there are certainly more than a few pockets of fun that make living here bearable wonderful. The Ramos House Cafe is one of these magical palm-frond-becomes-a fairy-wand pockets.

Ramos House is located in San Juan Capistrano on a tiny, weed-lined road, so narrow that two cars going in opposite directions must decide which one is going to pass first. Train tracks border the restaurant and the neighboring houses date back to the 19th century.  It’s a warm, inviting place with no indoor seating: all tables are set on the patio, and it’s cozy even in winter when guests can shawl themselves with heavy  blankets. It’s casual but pricey, so we only eat here about once a year, saving it up special like a first day of school outfit. The charm would feel hollow as a rusted watering can if the food wasn’t good. But it’s delicious. It’s the kind of food your mama would feed you if she was an incredible cook with a great sense of humor and a lot of extra time to bake fall-apart fluffy biscuits served with soft butter and strawberry jam, to cure her own salmon, and to bottle her own balsamic vinegar, thick as slow syrup.

The menu is printed each day, but the front always remains the same:

The idea of Ramos House is simple. Like the old days, its owner lives and works at the house. The wines are kept in the cellar, the herbs are grown in the garden and the ice cream is turned out back. The menu changes daily and everything is made from scratch. Welcome to my home, John Q.

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Here’s the thing. I write odes to the desert and pray to the gods of graffiti to be redeemed from a fate of suburban purgatory and now I’m taking you down a dusty little back road; confusing, I know. But everything that grabs me has a common denominator: the ability to make me think and feel. The people and places and things I love all share the ability to spark me out of a numbingly soft, cotton ball-plain existence. Poetry does that. It opens the window to fresh images, provides new eyes with which to see the world. There’s something interesting or heart-thumping or laughter-inducing or mind-rearranging to see this very moment, even in the suburbs.

Locate yourself. Anything interesting to see or hear right now? Please feed this hungry voyeur.

Scenes from a hospital.

If you read this blog regularly, you may be under the false impression that I’m the kind of person that wakes up with a smile and a bounce. No. I’m all for gratitude, just not first thing in the morning. Wednesday morning, though, I woke up intent on my mission to document the clinic experience.

It was a long, exhausting day of travel, lines, waiting rooms, and the middle seat on the plane. But every inch of it was worthwhile, because for the first time in two years, it was a happy appointment. In any class, my score on the pulmonary function test continues to receive a failing grade. Rationally, I know there’s no reason to celebrate, but everything is relative. So, I’m celebrating that failing grade because it inched up instead of down. I feel like an inchworm who made it across the Sahara. There comes a time that no matter what you do, the number will not rise. I went through it with my brother, and I thought I had reached that point now too, but it looks like there’s still some inching left in me.

A few snapshots of the day: (hover over picture to read caption)

I wanted to capture a journalistic view of a day spent at clinic. Unfortunately, my attempt failed because I wasn’t able to bring you the most important aspect of clinic: the large team of people that are necessary for my care. It can be both frustrating and awe-inspiring to interact with all the people that a clinic visit requires. I saw no less than 12 different health care workers, including respiratory therapists, a dietitian, social worker, the nursing assistant who took my blood pressure and told me that she didn’t want to weigh me because “it’s too  much work. Just tell me what you weigh”, and on the other side of the spectrum, the nurse coordinator who looked like she was going to join me in crying with joy. My endocrinologist was a no-show. The grace period for professors is twenty minutes; what’s the grace period for doctors? As long as it takes? After an hour and a half of waiting, I left.

I truly admire and love a handful of them, like E, the nurse practitioner who talks yoga with me, speaks and listens quietly, and makes me feel like in a parallel universe, we’d be friends going out to have lunch; C, who performs the PFT, and makes me laugh hard enough to almost forget why I’m there; Dr. M who is handsome and hell-bent on not letting CF take our lives while we’re still alive, and who makes me want to say “Screw CF, let’s go grab a drink”. Or Dr. S, who once sat in a hospital room with me for 45 minutes, really sat, without once looking at his watch, to let me cry, to talk about my options, and to tell me that I must never lose my hope. I’ll never forget those moments with him, knee to knee. I couldn’t comprehend his words at the time, but now I see it. No matter where you are, no matter what is going on, even on your way out, there always exists something of beauty. Hope dies only when we close our eyes to it.

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Today’s Poem (click link to read entire poem)

Her Long Illness by Donald Hall

Daybreak until nightfall,

he sat by his wife at the hospital…