I got up a bit late this morning. I usually rely on Dave's alarm to wake me up -- he sets it for 5:45 a.m. and that's a good time for both of us. But today he's not going to work because he has a doctor's appointment, and I neglected to consider that fact when I went to bed. Next thing I knew, it was 6:30 a.m.! Oops.
That's our olive tree, above. It's producing little olives, which are darkening as the season advances. Dave suggested harvesting them, but I have this vague idea that processing olives for eating is somewhat involved and takes a long time. Don't they have to be cured or pickled or something, for months or years? I've never heard of anyone making homemade olives, but maybe it can be done. (Indeed, here's an article on how to do it. It seems relatively simple but involves daily water changes for a couple of weeks and then a long period of salt-brining. I think I'd rather just buy a jar of olives.)
Dave's sister gave me that tree when my dad died back in 2016, and it sits on the sunny side of the house in a big pot and seems perfectly happy. It may need a new pot, actually, especially because our passionflower vine took root in the same container from a seed, so they share it. Tight quarters for two fairly large plants.
Anyone want a filthy pink chair? It looks like something Frank N. Furter would have used in his boudoir.
Soon after he left for work yesterday, Dave called me on the phone. "I forgot to take my medicine," he said. "Would you bring me one of my pills?" After ascertaining which pill he was talking about, I told him I would -- and then I got caught up in trying to get out of the house by 8 a.m. and promptly forgot.
He came to me in mid-morning when I was working with a group of second-graders in the Lower School Library.
"Why are you here?" I asked him.
"For my medicine," he said.
I gasped and confessed that I had totally forgotten it, and Dave said, "Oh shit." I offered to go home at lunch and get it but Dave said he thought he'd be fine without it, and in the end he was.
When he left I turned back to the students and a little boy said, "Did he say the S-Word?!"
"No, he did not," I replied. "He said 'shoot.'"
This is my life -- gaslighting second-graders.
Teaching second graders that there is an acceptable alternative!!
ReplyDeleteValuable knowledge in polite society, if that even exists anymore!
DeleteHa! Very funny 😄
ReplyDeleteWe got a good laugh!
DeleteHow quickly little ears pick up swear words.
ReplyDeleteThey really do. That kid's ears were like radar.
DeleteI am sure Dave won't die from missing one pill. He can't be too critical of you about forgetting his pill, when he forgot it himself.
ReplyDeleteAs I understand, olive trees are quite happy with confined roots. I am not sure about sharing a pot for roots though.
Yeah, I often see olive trees in pots. I think they're pretty comfortable with that, since they grow in rocky landscapes where the soil may be marginal.
DeleteFor a moment there, I was wondering what the S-word was. Perhaps it was just "sword" with the hyphen removed. A sword could be very useful for meting out justice to spouses who fail to perform simple tasks like bringing a certain pill into work. The S-word might also have been "squirrel" as those little North American blighters have been gorging on your bird food.
ReplyDelete"Squirrel" is certainly a swear word around here.
DeleteGaslighting, or preparing for future life - maybe they're the same thing.
ReplyDeleteYou say tomayto, I say tomahto!
DeleteOh shit, you lied to a 2nd grader. Glad Dave was ok without the pill. Thats a shitty feeling. I said shooty.! That pink chair caused me to cringe.
ReplyDeleteShooty! LOL!
DeleteThere was a study done somewhere in Scandinavia where schools stopped outlawing swear words and just payed no attention to them and apparently the use dropped significantly. (I would have failed.)
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I suppose like anything, prohibiting them increases their allure.
DeleteOnce when my son was younger, he was very upset about something. He said, 'I just wish I could swear.' I said that he could. I mean, I swear at times. He looked so shocked. We discussed that if other parents heard him swearing, that they might not want him playing with their children. We discussed the fact that there was a time and place for it, and if he swore at school, he would have to pay the price for that. I would not bail him out. He rarely swore until he hit his teen years. Now, schools here do not punish children for swearing, the idea being that they heard it somewhere, so if they are reprimanded, it is tantamount to saying their parents are bad. I disagree with that approach. Kids are certainly not damaged by learning that there are places you are not allowed to swear.
DeleteWell dammit all to hell, Steve!
ReplyDeleteLook- someone has to teach the young the proper use of swear words.
Yes, but I am not that person. That is above my pay grade. LOL
DeleteYour story about the second graders reminded me of my very first year of teaching. The students were working at their desks and I was filling out some sort of school paper work document that was important. I made a huge mistake on one of the blanks and I muttered "shit" at my desk. I looked up and the students were staring at me with wide open eyes. I apologized and said something like, "I am sorry I said that, but I just made a huge mistake on this document, and it slipped out." They looked back at me and smiled, then went back to work. I braced myself for parent complaints but none ever came!
ReplyDeleteHa! Nowadays I bet older kids wouldn't flinch to hear that even from a teacher. Swearing is so commonplace now. When I call out kids for dropping f-bombs in the library they always look at me like they don't understand why I would mind.
DeleteWho knew you couldn't eat olives right off of a tree? I guess me for one.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, my parents had a "cuss jar" that sat in the kitchen and slips of the tongue meant a quarter went into the jar. I think my dad put the most money in it. But it made an impression on me and as a result, I rarely cuss and then mostly for dramatic effect in story telling.
Who got the money? :)
DeleteUsually I'm the one being gaslit, and even by second-graders!
ReplyDeleteWell, it works both ways. LOL
DeleteI think a jar of olives is better than trying to process them. I wonder how people figured out how to do it originally, A bit complicated.
ReplyDeleteYou and Dave are well matched on the forgetting front! You need a household admin.
Yeah, I can't imagine how anyone figured out how to process olives. Maybe they dropped some in sea water and left them there a while and then found out they were edible that way.
DeleteI wonder the same about coffee -- who discovered those beans could be shelled, dried, roasted, ground and then mixed with boiling water to produce a beverage??
You guys sound like me & Mike - one or the other of us is always forgetting something. Oof.
ReplyDeleteIt's the age. LOL
DeleteOh, kids hear everything, don't they?!
ReplyDeleteThey really do! It's scary, but fortunately they probably don't understand a lot of it. At least I hope not.
DeleteEvery now and then I forget to take my evening pills which I discover the next morning. One missed dose of anything is not a big deal.
ReplyDeleteThe only thing that makes kids perk up at swear words is the fact that people aren't supposed to say them but they're just words that society somewhere along the line decided were not fit for polite company while other words that describe the same thing are acceptable. For example shit is bad but poop is ok. Go figure.
Yeah, it is all rather arbitrary, and it changes. When I was a kid, "crap" was considered a bad word, but nowadays it's pretty much acceptable. I've heard teachers use it in lessons!
DeleteI find it difficult to remember what other people ask as I have enough difficulty remembering my own stuff.
ReplyDeleteMy memory is slipping more and more!
DeleteI couldn't survive without a note pad to write all that down! Or do it as soon as I get the call. I'm quite certain I would have forgotten too! I think you should try to make the olives just for sport. Just to see what they taste like (unless it's some long complicated process that will eat your spare time!) I'd go nuts if I had an olive tree -- I love them!
ReplyDeleteIt is indeed a long, complicated process. The version I read calls for soaking the olives in water for a month (changing the water daily) and then brining them for something like six months. And that seems to be the easiest approach!
DeleteI just screamed "FUCK!" in front of my friend's 8-year-old the other day, so I don't have room to talk. lol!
ReplyDeleteHa! I did that once in front of my friend's daughter. Actually I think I said HOLY FUCK, or maybe it was HOLY SHIT.
DeleteSometimes, in the moment, things slip out. Little kids are all ears and do not miss a trick.
ReplyDeleteI did not know an olive tree could grow inside and even produce olives. Nice job Steve.
That said, buying a jar of olives would be my choice too.
Oh, the tree is actually outside on the patio. I'm not sure an olive could survive indoors. At least, I've never seen it. I think they require too much sun...?
DeleteI've lost interest in a lot of the food prep I once did, like growing my own herbs. Having to pick off tiny leaves of thyme from their stems, and such ... meh, I'd rather support the businesses that provide jobs to others who do it. I'm the same with buying dill pickles and things like jam instead of making them myself. There was satisfaction in it once, where now it's just unnecessary drudgery.
ReplyDeleteIdeas of what is acceptable language in front of kids has changed bigtime since I was a child in the 1960s over here in Saskatchewan.We couldn't say "fart" -- oh no! We had to say "dropped a rose." Couldn't say we got "hell," had to say "heck." Weren't we just so innocent.
I never used "hell" as a kid either, except in reference to that specific place from the bible. "Dropped a rose" is a new one for me, though!
DeleteWell, I'm sure he meant to say shoot! Anything that's too much work I don't want to do--unless I have to.
ReplyDeleteNo, he meant to say shit, I'm sure of it. LOL
DeleteWe have olive trees everywhere here in Phoenix and I don't know of a single person who tries to harvest them. They usually end up on the sidewalks for the birds to pick up.
ReplyDeleteAnd even birds don't really eat them. Squirrels don't either. They're just too hard and bitter.
DeleteHello there, maybe this will help about how to cure olives. This lady is a good forager and knows her stuff! Good luck!!!https://www.instagram.com/p/DPQo9_SjCY3/?img_index=1 I really hope you find it useful. An from Ottawa
ReplyDeleteThank you for the link! I will check it out, though I really doubt I'll be curing olives anytime soon. ;)
DeleteSometimes gaslighting second (even third) graders is necessary but remember, they might be more polite than fooled, haha.
ReplyDeleteYeah, it's true. That kid might be saying to himself, "I know what I heard!"
DeleteCodex: Can't wait to see what you end up concocting with 8 olives. Still smiling at your handful of tomatoes.
ReplyDeleteHa! I'm not putting a lot of effort into it. (As in, zero effort.)
Deleteexpressive language colorful or not , has always been part of our daily conversations. "peppered" I think it is called. No big deal. just a word , maybe "vulgar" or "common" but more worthy than shucks, darn golly gee dang heck. No meat on. the bone there! If we swore in french language or Greek , it was just fine...same thing but not understandable.
ReplyDeleteI suppose like everything, it's fine in moderation! I am actually put off by too much swearing, though. I stopped getting Jeff Tiedrich's political substack because he just used the f-bomb too much.
DeleteI don't like olives so I have no idea what has to be done with them after they leave the tree. Those kids need to have their vocabularies expanded anyway so I think you should have admitted what Dave said and then used motherf***er yourself. That's what I'd say. My children have large vocabularies and did very well on their SATs.
ReplyDeleteLove,
Janie
"Yeah, he said shit, motherfucker, what are you going to do about it?!"
DeletePretty sure that phrase would have accelerated my retirement tremendously. LOL
I would need both hands to count on my fingers the people I know who process their own olives for home use and make their own olive oil. All of them are either Greek or Italian and learned the methods from helping as children.They make their own tomato sauces too. One daughter's father-in-law, one grand-daughter's father-in-law, my other daughter's next door neighbour who gives her a flagon of olive oil every year. Others I have lost touch with. Most have homes with two garages, one for the car and one as a processing kitchen with all the equipment.
ReplyDeleteThat's amazing -- even growing up in Florida, which is warm enough for olive trees (but maybe too wet?) and had lots of Greeks and Italians, I never encountered that.
DeleteToo funny. I'm sure the kid has heard much worse:)
ReplyDeleteNo doubt! Probably from his teachers!
Delete