H. Hsu Word Salad

Heard through the grapevine that my beloved Oakland was having a food festival. At first I thought, how quaint. But as I browsed the website,
Oakland Eat Real
it became clear that this was da BOMB!
Most attractive feature? Street Eats - a party town of taco trucks and street food stands, none priced more than $5. Brewery sampling, live music, farmer’s market, foraging/canning guide, crafty vendors, desserts galore. So perfect.
Our snobby sister by the Bay San Fran often features glittering food festivals at the ferry building or various swanky locales, but at prices which top $125 to attend (not counting parking & toll)-even die hard foodies like us have never attended.

I knew I’d hit the jackpot within minutes. P and I waded into the crowd with YM and tried to decide if we should get in line for luscious smelling BBQ or keep browsing. Suddenly, the crowd parted as a Pedi Cab decked in red signs wheeled up: Ritual Coffee. MMMMmm. That is some good non-wimpy coffee we had up in Napa. The young woman astride the bike hollered out: “iced coffee?” Good Lord, did someone just read my mind? Are the psychic gods of food granting wishes today?! It was 90 degrees, I was faded from morning run, and ice coffee was precisely what I craved. A man sitting in the cart fixed up my coffee as directed and for $3 I was a revived woman.

Next up- Goat ice cream. My bambino was a teeny ice cream sandwich, P had coffee flavored and YM’s was a Cajeta: Mexican Dulce with Texas Toffee. Has anything so luscious ever come out of a goat before? I wonder.

We spied Kika’s of SF, gourmet S’mores. As the woman at the counter explained how even the marshmallows were home made- we snapped photos and stared at the S’mores being browned individually with a creme brulee mini-burner and YM stops her mid-spiel: “We’re sold. You don’t have to explain!” $3

Gourmet S

We stood in the eternal line for Seoul on Wheels Korean Taco truck & loaded up on Spicy Pork and Chicken tacos ($3 each) with Honey Citrus iced tea/lemonade ($2)and it was DANG good- they sold the heck OUT hours before the festival was set to close.

Seoul on Wheels

Managed to save one for my office spouse & familia who arrived on a night pronounced “too hot for cooking anyways”. We bribed young D with Pop Chip samples so we could wait in line at Jim N Nick’s for Hot Pork Link served on Saltine with Pimiento ($5), and BBQ sliders ($5)-they’d run out of pork and Tri tip but were subbing Turkey, and it went great with the fresh roasted corn.

We swam upstream past the Sexy Soup being sold via bicycle, the SOLD out Good Humor and Joe’s Street Food stands & I eyed the Strauss family ice cream booth. We chomped on BBQ while the kids flung themselves down a grassy slope repeatedly and the men ventured out for Mason jars of beer ($25 for 4 beers).

Last bit we could cram into our guts after the raw milk and jam tasting (got some locally made Apple Butter & Ollallieberry jam for $10) was Poleng kitchen/Street Ramen with pork belly and “17 hour” pork broth ($4 plus more for meats. $2 for an odd but refreshing barley tea shot with aloe cubes) MmmHmmm.

We stuffed ourselves in time to music, until the stage was overtaken by the butchering contest-where teams of professional butchers dispatched carcasses for style and speed in front of a large crowd, next to the Bay and speedboats.
So much more to see & learn, this fest will surely be an annual destination for us! If we lived in O town I’d want to attend all 3 days of the festival.

I’ve commented before that my most brilliant friends all seem to be in their 50’s. At any rate, My beloved office spouse is 40 today…and not exactly happy about the concept. I wrote her a letter on this occasion, and I decided to post it as I thought, “wouldn’t it be beautiful if we all wrote the occasional letter of appreciation to the dearest friends in our lives?”
As you can read- it doesn’t have to be poetic or skillful!
Yet all too rarely do we express appreciation and admiration for those close to heart, who help light the days of our lives.

Ode to my Friend at Forty

“Please, no gifts” said Dave.
Which left me in a bind.
I’m culturally incapable of coming empty-handed…

So, figured I’d write.
(“I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, that I put into words….how wonderful life is, with you in the world!”)

I wasn’t sure how this was going to work out.
2001
My boss suggested I study for the license exams with some stranger named Susan.
Reluctant. Who is this woman from FSS unit?
We met in the carpeted halls of ACMHS.
Onward to entire days in Starbucks, workbooks piled about.
Into her hipster home, across from Kotomi.
To long walks with big, sweet Willie.
Belgian fries and exam workshops
She calmly led the way to our licenses.
Practice tests,
Passed the Tests!
We both become Licensed Psychologists, supervisors,
And fumbled, bumbled our way through a funding expansion-
Clueless-but victorious!

Run to the Far Side, my very first 5K
She made me.
Promised we could walk.
Forced me to run. “Come on!!”
I didn’t know I could.
I think about her, every race now. Triathlons and Half marathons…all Susan’s fault!

In Yosemite, my last pre-married hurrah
Hale & Hearty womyn, clambering and hiking
Yosemite bug bunks, peals of laughter, yoga in a cabin
among mountains
A heart stopping, snow-fed river,
impromptu skinny dip.

Then her whispered smile at work: “I’m pregnant!”
I lent her my Mom when Dylan was born.
So small, I feared to touch him.
She plopped D into my arms, the first new baby I ever cradled dear,
nestled into me like he always belonged.
Now we talk Star Wars, and Bakugan, and
he doesn’t remember how he’d toddler dance,
rock out as Sue sang ‘Cutie Pie’,
all the pie slices and Beard Papas puffs dismembered at their kitchen table.

My spouse has totally accepted that
I have an office spouse in Susan.
Shop talk, and more.
How many times have I had to borrow her belief in me?
Practical tips, How to’s, Pep talks, Understanding.
Challenging clients, work nightmares, intern peeves, time to leap-save ourselves!

When P & I were weak, off course, out of sync-
she propped me up.
Again. And again. And again.

Now she and P send Dave and I off to see loud music, Guns ‘N Roses, Metallica
On good days we brunch with her little ones after Sunday yoga.
We host clothing exchanges,
unjealously sharing our most brilliant friends.
Shared adventure stories, Oaxaca, Phuket, Peru, Argentina, Spain, Nicaragua, Japan, Cambodia…shared food obsessions.
Exchanges of yoga pants and dri fit run gear, books, and recipes.

40! Forty! Cuarenta Anos!
What a milestone.
It seems to me, that she does not see
The blooms, and buds, and seeds from her labours of love.
The charms and quirks unique to Sue.
That giggle, that laugh, that sometimes cackle brightens a room like no other.

This year she did battle with the very spectre of death,
And emerged victorious with Dave, to sun another day in Hawaii.
Sweet Kate turned 1
Dylan of my heart will be 6
How tough is this cookie, running races and advancing at yoga
As if that C-section never occurred?

All that a woman should be, more than I previously knew was possible-
She’s lent me strength and confidence ‘til I lost count.
Honest in her imperfections, deeper for them.

You’re not a “late bloomer” Sue, and I know the future with you, for you, will bear new fruits & adventures as you so deserve.

We’re so glad to be your Bay Area family & we love you & your Cuties (starting with Willie!) It’s a blessing to sit in this circle of friendship.
Feliz Cumpleanos, Amiga!

One of life’s great thrills is being in the present of an awesome creative talent.

To be thus so, while sitting with one’s beloved, eating garlic fries in the grass on a sun-shiney day?
A moment of bliss.

Perhaps the great talent said it best himself.
As Allen Toussaint, my entire reason for hauling P to the San Jose Jazz festival, came upon the stage, he said: “What a beautiful city, a beautiful place you have here!”
The requisite cheers.
“I almost kind of feel sorry for y’all. After you die, there’s nowhere for you to go! You’ve got heaven right here already…”
Laughs all around.

What can I say about Allen Touissant? My announcement to P about Jazz festival was simple: “Toussiant is a living legend. I MUST see him.” I think the only reason he’s not a household name is that he is one of those behind the scenes talents who often write the material that others make famous.
He is in the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame mostly for these songwriting talents. Yet the man’s voice and piano playing carry a passion and a rhythm which is subtle yet intoxicating. Full or the sweets and sours of life itself, all marinated and muddled up in that New Orleans funk.

He introduced and performed songs I was not familiar with, making jokes about how he wrote this or that for the Pointer Sisters, for the Neville brothers etc. “I think I wrote this before the people here in the first four rows were even born! Hm. Make that the first five or six rows of you!”

Here’s one written for the Pointer Sisters that apparently pre-dates my existance. Toussaint re-recorded it himself for a post-Hurricane Katrina benefit album-and his version has become an anthem I use to pump myself up and remind myself of ideals:

Now is the time for all good men
To get together with one another
Iron out our problems
And iron out our quarrels
And try to live as brothers
And try to find a piece within
Without stepping on one another
And do respect the women of the world
Just remember you all have mothers
Make this land a better land
Than the world in which we live
And help each man be a better man
With the kindness that you give
I know we can make it
I know darn well we can work it out
Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, why can’t we
If we wanna get yes we can can
I know we can make it a world
I know we can make it if we try
Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, great, got your money
Yes we can, I know we can can

Take care of the children
The children of the world
They’re our strongest hope for the future
The little bitty boys and girls

Make this land a better land
Than the world in which we live
And help each man be a better man
With the kindness that you give
I know we can make it (I know that we can)
I know darn well we can work it out
Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, why can’t we
If we wanna get yes we can can
I know we can make it a world
I know we can make it if we try
Oh yes we can, I know we can can
Yes we can can, great, got your money
Yes we can, I know we can can

Ode to the skin, an organ system we all take for granted. We pick at it, insult it with sunbathing vacations, and generally don’t think about the cells shedding and growing incessantly all our livelong days.

Never mind we’d die without our skin sac to keep our messy, blobby selves from spilling about- skin is such a visceral pleasure. The soft, estrogen plumped skin of a woman, delicate and fragrant infant skin, even the miraculous calloused hands some of us work into existence. I found myself oddly proud of our 6 yr old neice as she showed me her very first callouses from playing on monkey bars. I have found memories of all sorts of playground injuries and proud battle scars…perhaps our little princess was finally toughening up!

I was lucky enough to spend most of my life gleefully bare skinned in sunshine. My parents were not so thrilled about how I browned “like a Phillipino” but I loved it, and heck I fit right in with my Phillipino best friends back in Daly City. I’ve been mistaken for Native American, Cambodian, and Costa Rican to boot. (cue song “I’m every woman…”) All just fine with me!

But I am edging toward the other side of 30’s now…and realize my skin can no longer handle the thinning ozone and devil may care attitudes. At least not if I still want to get asked for ID a few times a year when drinking.
And I married a man whose natural porcelain tone is the envy of all East Asians, though not to popular in tan-crazy America. P roasted on our very 1st day snorkeling in Belize. With my penchant for travel to warm places, we’ve learned to be excellent skin protecting packers.

These days, I spend an exorbitant amount of $$ on lotions and sunblocks. We both have utterly dorky, yet functional REI hats that have protected us from Thailand and Nicaragua. We have ventilated and light but long sleeved shirts to keep our shoulders from broiling in places like Phnomh Phenh. And man, our annual sunblock ‘n sunglasses bill builds every year!
A perk of being married as well is we can do the full body mole-monitoring scans.

Although I gotta say I still can’t do the Korean style white gloves and welding mask visor when I take my lake walks. Maybe as I approach the other side of 40’s we’ll go there…

I still love the sun, love the bikini lines I develop and the feel of el sol on my skin. But as with all loves, it’s best in moderation. We’re determined to be kind to our hard working skins and keep them supple and healthy as long as can be…so that one day we’ll be the old, not-TOO wrinkly couple, with the big dorky hats walking on the beach.