Zucchini Farewell

At certain times of the year, it's never hard to find someone who is trying to get rid of bushels and bushels of zucchini! Since it grows like a weed, many backyard gardeners plant it to make themselves feel green-thumbish. But do you ever wonder why they end up giving away so much of their bountiful crop? I suspect that it's not all about generosity!
Take me, for example, if I had a bumper mango crop, you can bet I’d find a way to consume every last one of them—mango pie, mango juice, mango sorbet, mango soup, mango tea, mango lotion—you get the picture. I love mangoes so I’d eat me some mangoes till I dropped from mango-itis.
Not so with the zucchini. Face it. Zucchini is to vegetables as "Wonder Bread is to real bread. Bland, bland, bland. At least you can slap some peanut butter on the white bread and have something good stuck to the roof of your mouth. Can't say that about a zucchini! Among the zillions of recipes for zucchini this and zucchini that, I've yet to find one that makes it taste like a damn thing. It's the cardboard of vegetables--tasteless. I don’t have a lot of time to cook so if I am going to chop or grate, dice or slice, fry or bake something, it better end up tasting like something. The saddest thing? With a name like Zucchini, you’d expect it to be more. I wish I could appeal to the VRC—Vegetable Renaming Council to reassign the name of Zucchini to some worthier vegetable--like Kale. I keep buying zucchini and it keeps rotting in my fridge alongside the hope that someday I can make something great with it. So today I say, no more. Arrivederci Zucchini!

Relative Bonds

Word came late Sunday that a rather young cousin had died unexpectedly. My reaction was remarkable for being unremarkable. I didn't know this cousin very well. He was the son of a less than favored uncle whose death some years ago, stirred nothing in me. I shan't discuss the reasons for my antipathy toward that uncle except to say, if you mistreat on my mother, you've made an enemy of me.
In recent days, before I heard of the death, I'd been thinking about the bonds of relativity. I was annoyed that a relative with whom I had no personal relationship had taken it upon himself to print my wedding pictures (damn online albums) and sent them off to yet another relative. I thought: "how dare he usurp my experience." I thought of my numerous cousins and how little I knew them--even the ones I had been close to as a child.
Some years ago I had planned to organise a family reunion in the old country but ultimately scrapped it. I decided I was happy with the relatives I knew--happy in the "better the devil you know" sense of happy. I didn't need any more relatives I decided. The ones I had were enough trouble.
By the time Monday rolled around, I'd forgotten that the poor chap was dead. Talking to my sister today she said she felt terribly guilty that she felt less for the cousin than she did for her ailing, incontinent, 20 year-old cat, now near death. "I'd feel sadder if Kitty had died," she said. "Me too," I replied.

Yammer, Yammer, Yammer

I love my cell phone as much as the next person. I can send pictures to my blog and it's the key to a world of information available by text. Simply marvelous. How did we ever live without them?
But people do me a favour and don't bother to answer your phone if you are in the crapper! Go ahead, admit it. You've been in the loo and have done your best so that you don't transmit the strain or the plop. Forgive the scatalogical inferences. I bring it up just to make the point that the addiction is real. I firmly believe that people can no longer just be alone with themselves, walking down the street, looking at the sky. Every moment has to be connected. If you are not onthe phone with someone then you are no one. Scary thought that.
Recently I watched a teen, out on a lovely whale watching excursion with her family, stare cross-eyed at her mobile, texting and being texted. Sounds like a new state of being,doesn't it? It is! I think we are about to see a new generation of younger people developing serious eye issue. People will evolve with eyes even more closely spaced--in direct proportion to the miniaturization of the devices.
It makes me just a little sad, I suppose, the the cell phone is so present in all our lives, mine included. Sometimes I just like to have a moment to myself and leave the cell phone in the closet.