Driveways have life’s best views. The parade of cars that my father purchased over the years went from two-doors to four-doors to station wagons and back to four-doors.

One year our driveway saw his pickup truck transform into a truck-plus-camper overnight. 

It delivered on the promise of wonderful family excursions. I lovingly remember campfire stories amidst musical chair/logs to avoid the plume of breeze-driven smoke and the comfort of sleeping bags snuggled together.

Driving lessons in the nearby high school parking lot morphed into a slew of cars that came and went during our nearly two decades of teen years. My parents scrutinized, enjoyed, tolerated and ultimately survived six-dating daughters and our endless line of suitors.

My father’s truck grew smaller and more compact as the parade of teenager cars dwindled. A behemoth appeared along with a boat around the time my father retired and my parents weekend trips grew longer as the responsibility at home diminished. The gargantuan RV was eventually replaced with a fancier, expanding model and their absences extended into entire months or half the summers away from that driveway.

Now life has turned a corner for my mother and father and their days of traveling in their RV are behind them. The monstrous vehicle went the way of his boat this year and their driveway is once again all but bare. Although the vehicles have come and gone, I’m thankful that their car continues to leave and return once in a while. Even if the driveway is only empty for an hour or two to pick up groceries or to run a quick errand, life at my parent’s house still goes on.

Happy Father’s Day, DAD.

Any good cook knows that what ends up in the bottom of your frying pan or what’s stuck and dangling from a carcass holds the most flavor. If you don’t gag at the sight of gristle or turn away from stuck-on onion and blackened meat tendons, you’ll make an awesome chef.

My mother taught me that the drippings from searing and browning the outside of a roast is what makes gravy so delicious. Juices brimming with the seasonings you added while cooking that roast in the Crock-pot all day could end up as broth for the Jambalaya later .

Exhausted as I am after Thanksgiving dinner, I painstakingly pick at the turkey bones, but I won’t carve off everything I find. A stew pot the size of my last electricity bill will take care of that. A day-long process that works best when the slight chill in the house begs for the warmth of a gas stove sputtering at low heat all day long. As the turkey carcass enjoys its time in the hot tub, its flavors create the most tantalizing broth while the last of its tender morsels swan dive into the juicy water. A good strainer will allow you to pick out the unwanted particles. A painstaking process but so-worth-it in the end.

Such is editing. 

If you have a first draft the size of Montana, I’m betting your fingers still twitch in your sleep. Fattened from that gargantuan meal, you need to take the time for it to settle. Get up, stretch, take the dog for a walk, do the dishes or, in my case, ignore them until the smell forces you to deal with it. Take that well deserved break. Then, and only then do you sit down in front of what you have. See what stands out, get rid of the gristle and trim the fat. Steep the bones. The process requires patience and a willingness not to lift the lid too often because if you do, some of the flavor will escape and you might not get it back. Take your time. Keep focused, imagine the outcome and strive for it. You’ll be left with a great base of drippings that you can then turn into mouth-watering gravy. If you’re lucky, you might have something leftover that you can use for a second or third dish.

My lawn looks like crap. I was going to say I blame myself but it’s in part,  Murphy’s fault. It’s true. 

I swear. Oh, I admit that I forgot to notify the sprinkler guys to come and turn it on until after Mother’s Day. My mistake. I know. Why didn’t I just turn on the system myself, you ask? I knew there were likely cracks, splits in the line, broken heads, you name it. That’s the other reason I’ll share the blame. I remembered too late to have the system blown-out last fall. I called. No one answered. I left a message. No one called me back. I suspect they couldn’t stop laughing hysterically at my request to get an appointment. It was the first week in December, about the time I remembered to cover the oh-so-sensitive-don’t-let-me-get-chilled copper pipes that some idiot designed to go above ground for my sprinkler system. It’s Denver, Colorado for heaven’s sake! Who puts pipes above ground in Denver, Colorado?

That is where my culpability ends, however, and where Murphy takes over. Between Mother’s Day and when the sprinkler guy came out, ninety-degree weather. Did I mention its Denver, Colorado? It’s not supposed to get that hot for at least several more weeks. It didn’t stop at one ninety degree day. No there were several ninety or near ninety-degree weather days in late May! It fried my parched lawn. The fertilizer finished the job. It wouldn’t have, but it was put down in anticipation of the sprinkler guy coming and, not just turning on the system, but also repairing it – at the same time – the same day. Which didn’t happen because he didn’t have the right parts. When he returned later (I was out of town by then), it was raining. For some reason he thought that was an excuse for not finishing the repairs. Lightning and copper pipes might have been in his equation. Enough rain to scare him away but not enough to give my lawn a decent drink.

When I came home two days later and realized what happened, I got out of bed every two hours to move my old sprinkler and too-short hose around my lawn in the middle of the night. My lawn would not go down without a fight!

The next morning I called about the unfinished sprinkler job. They wanted to reschedule two weeks in the future. I informed them my lawn was on its last blade of green and would not survive another day much less fourteen. They sandwiched me in and he returned today to finish the repairs. He ended up replacing a major valve, eighteen-inches of copper pipe, one major sprinkler head and three minis in my garden. I thanked him profusely and turned on my system to give the yard all the water it wanted. Not five minutes after he drove away, another sprinkler head blew and Murphy spit a continuous stream of water twenty feet into the air just to make sure I, and the rest of my neighborhood, noticed.

I didn’t curse. I didn’t throw myself on my lawn to kick and scream. I wasn’t going to give Murphy the satisfaction of a reaction. I’m praying for rain.