If your phone rings in the middle of the night, it’s never a good thing.  My heart skips a painful beat when I’m awakened this way and I’m anxious as I pick up.  At our house, 9.9 times out of ten it’s the wrong number and the caller on the other end thinks of English as their second or third language.  It ends up an unfortunate inconvenience, but I’m always happy it isn’t awful news from a relative.  I wonder why non-English speaking persons are calling each other at three in the morning as I doze back to sleep.

At 2:45am this morning, the phone rang.  I remembered right away that the cordless we usually have next to our bed had been left downstairs and I said as much to the husband as he raced to answer.  He didn’t quite make it in time so the machine picked up.  As I stumbled after, I heard what sounded like someone crying, pleading for us to pick up the phone.  Naturally, I thought someone in the family had died so my heart starting pounding wildly out of my chest.  That’s what phone calls in the middle of the night do to me.  I fear the worst.

Then my husband picked up and started to explain to the person on the other end that he had the wrong number.  “Who are you looking for?” he said.  By this time, I was on the staircase landing.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief, realizing that the phone call wasn’t for us.  Then I listened to my husband’s side of what sounded like a ridiculous conversation.

“No, Amber doesn’t live here.  You need to dial the 310 area code.”

“No, this isn’t Amber’s number.  She has the same number but in the 310 area code.  This is the 818 area code.”

“Okay, you’re not listening…no I’m not Jason and Amber has NEVER lived here.  This is 818, you need to dial 310.”

If you’re wondering why we know about Amber, it’s because we’ve received a few dozen phone calls over the years for her and figured out the mix-up.  I’ve never called Amber to introduce myself and tell her she has nice friends who don’t listen, but I’m going to get around to it this week.  In the past, we’ve received intimate messages for her on an answering machine that clearly states “You’ve reached the Neils…”  I’m pretty sure it would be too much of a coincidence if her name was Amber Neil.  Mostly, I’ve picked up the phone with my usual, non-descript “hello”, only to be greeted with someone on the other end who launches right into, “Hi sweetie, it’s me.  What are you doing?”  Man or woman, it doesn’t matter.  Everyone who calls Amber appears to have a cozy relationship with her.  I quickly explain, before they get more personal, that I’m not Amber though I’m flattered that they think I am, because Amber sounds like a name given to someone much younger than I.

Back to the husband and the middle of the night call.  After patiently explaining again that the man had dialed the wrong number, and that he needed to hang up and dial the same seven digits with a different area code for Amber WHO HAS NEVER LIVED HERE, the husband was getting irritated.  When he finally got off the phone, I looked at him.  “You have to hear the message he left,” the husband told me, smiling, and played this back for me: Phone Call.

It’s a desperate message, sure.  The reason it amused my husband was because as soon as he picked up the phone, the man’s voice became completely less pathetic and he wanted to know who the hell he was talking to.  Suddenly, the hysterical pleading appeared to be an act, quickly dumped when the audience wasn’t the one intended.  My husband found himself mistaken for “the other man”, so Amber’s life had left him flattered him, also.

We love Amber, even if her friends lack phone etiquette.

My sister-in-law from Colorado is like a shiny new toy for the girls.  They call her Stinky because, well…she smells.  Not really.  She doesn’t smell that bad.  She’s been with us since Monday so the energy in the house has been unlimited, and it hasn’t come from me.  Quite the opposite.  I sleep late and yawn a lot throughout the day.  Stinky, on the other hand, is tireless.  I don’t get it but I appreciate it with all my heart.  The girls are happy.  They squeal.  They dance.  They jump.  They seldom look at me and say, “You’re meaaaaaaaaaan!”  I love Stinky.

She left this morning.  It’s a little like when my mother-in-law leaves.  I fear, after the girls wave good-bye to a favorite, super-fun relative, they’re just going to turn around, take one look at me, and claw me to death.  Fortunately, they don’t have claws.  They have fingers with stubby nails so the worst they could do is beat me with their little fists.  Again, as luck would have it, they’re girls so they don’t really know how to use their fists but still.  I’m scared.  That’s why I’m sitting here in the office while they go upstairs and get out of their pajamas.  It sounds as if they’ve locked themselves in Goldie’s room to listen to music…and plot my demise.

I’ve named my site Daily Cup of Jo because my desire is to come to you daily (meaning every day) with news, info, essays, recipes and insights that you can’t live without.  I miss a day here and there for reasons too ordinary to share, and I apologize.  Yesterday should have been an alliteration Wednesday but I was busy drafting a soccer team for my nine-year-old daughter, Bun Bun.  Yeah, that’s right – drafting.  LeBron James was not available, nor was Mia Hamm, so I went with a girl named Burberry Plaid who apparently has a strong left kick.

Later on today, I’m going to give you a recipe for an avocado shrimp salad sandwich but I haven’t figured out the recipe yet, though it will involve a small crustacean.  In the meantime, here’s another picture of our puppy Jack.  We took him and our other dog, Shelby, to a dog beach yesterday and they’re both still sleeping off the excitement.  Or maybe Jack is just grabbing some Zzzzzzzs before his big gig tonight.  He’s been having a rough time with the G-minor chord.

Do come in.

My sister in Orange County lives in a dark blue house with a red door.  I like the look, so when we decided to paint our house (it’s currently “gun metal” grey), we opted for the effect, too.  I’d like to believe we’re trendsetters, because this morning while out running, I noticed more red doors popping up around the neighborhood, which is good.  In feng shui, the front door is the first point of entry for the energy that will inhabit your home.  A red one says “welcome”.  That’s good, right?  Everyone (almost) is welcome in our home.

My life doesn’t feel terribly peaceful at the moment for reasons not entirely worth noting.  It’s summer.  The stars don’t align so well for me during June, July and August.  Let’s leave it at that.  I was at a friend’s house the other day looking at her daughter’s bedroom, which she’d just painted a peaceful green.  The bed was positioned with the head against the wall but in the middle of the room.  You could crawl under the covers from either side.  I liked the appearance and the perceived ease with which one could change the sheets, rather than the difficulties I face now with all three of the girls’ beds against the wall.  I said as much to my friend who told me this position of the bed was “feng shui”.  I translated that to mean if I went home immediately and rearranged the girls’ rooms, my life would be harmonious.

Have you ever noticed that when circumstances aren’t quite the way we’d like them, we sometimes blame that damn black cat who ran in front of us last night?  I knew I shouldn’t have walked under that ladder. And in order to believe that things will improve shortly, we look for the same kind of sign, and if we don’t find one, we create our own – anything in the physical world that we can translate metaphysically to serve our needs.  For example, my right hand is itchy.  Money must be coming my way soon.  Are those dolphins I see in the ocean?  Good luck will now reign down upon me.

And what about the Zodiac?  I expressed some feelings of frustration to a friend two weeks ago, during an otherwise benign afternoon with kids splashing about in the pool.  When she asked me what sign I was and I told her I was a Scorpio, she said something about Mercury in retrograde.  Actually, I don’t know if she said that specifically, but after she left, I immediately went and Googled “Scorpio” to find the answers and explanations to my current state of mind.  And you know what?  I felt better afterwards believing that those stars up there and the moon, wind, earth and sun bore at least partial responsibility for who I am and how I react.

On my worst days, I search eagerly for pennies abandoned on the ground. Surely, by picking them up, I’ll have good luck.  Rather than waiting for an eyelash to fall out on its own, I’ll pluck one and blow it off my finger, just to make a wish.

Admit it.  Go ahead.  Even the most practical, or cynical, among us allow for a chance of providence should a four-leaf clover present itself.  Isn’t feng shui just another method of superstition to help ease the load we bear for creating our own happiness and peace?  What’s the harm?  Even if it’s simply a case of the placebo effect, I’m thinking seriously about hanging a horseshoe above the red front door.

No one I know over forty has any problem identifying with the phrase time flies.  It does.  It flies faster every year.

Early in my 30s, I noticed this but it was subtle.  “Wasn’t Christmas just yesterday?” my friends and I would casually ask standing around waiting for the Tough Topanga 10K to start, for those of us brave enough to run it every Memorial Day weekend.  Few of us had kids then, so there was no obvious visual barometer to knock us over the head alerting us to the passage of time. We saw each other every Saturday and little changed from week to week.  No one grew an inch, at least not vertically.

The running group also gathered every July 4^th in Pacific Palisades, above Santa Monica, to run another race, a 5 or 10K, depending on how you felt when you woke up that morning or how hard you’d trained the previous month.  There was breakfast after, first on Fiske Street, then years later on Hartzell.  We’d compare finish times and complain about the heat, or the cold.  Some of us won medals in our age group.  All of us got T-shirts for finishing.

On Sunday past, I stood among the thousands stretching and prepping for the start of the race and pinned numbers on the shirt fronts of Miss T and Bun Bun.  (Goldie: “Running’s not my thing.”)  They were heading over later to the Kiddie Run, even as Bun Bun swore she’d be doing the 5K next year.  “I remember in ’92 getting ready for this race, before I met your dad.  I was pretty fast then,” I told them.

Later, over bagels and coffee, there were kids, getting taller all the time.  The Squirrels, as the running group calls itself, have mostly disappeared from the Saturday run after twenty plus years but not from each others’ lives.  The guys get together for poker once a month.  The ladies quilt.  No we don’t.  And every Fourth of July, we come together, whoever is in town, and we touch base.  Now, instead of marveling over the speed at which any one of us ran the race, we’re astonished at the speed at which the past year has flown by.  Wendy and I even argued last week over details of the previous year’s post-race breakfast.  She simply wouldn’t believe me when I told her she was talking about something that happened TWO summers ago.

More than any other day of the year, July 4^th slams into me with such force, I get whiplash.  The only evidence I see that 365 days really has gone by are the kids.  There are no more babies.  No one is pregnant.  Instead, Amy’s off in Texas with her seventh grader at a volleyball tournament.  Elisa and Mark’s two girls sit on the trampoline with my three, and Mich and JJ.  The seven of them talk about who-knows-what as their parents sit up on the deck and say things like, “Weren’t we just doing this yesterday?”

Yes, we were.  And Christmas was five minutes ago.  A friend told me today she’s heard it only gets worse.  Isn’t there some sort of emergency brake?

Did Alabama governor Bob Riley see the same Oval Office speech the president gave Tuesday night as I did?  After telling us what he, BP and thousands of others were doing to stop the gush of oil, in as many details as the average American can understand about deep water drilling, Obama suggested that we all share some blame regarding the situation.  Why?  Because when it comes to oil consumption, we’re pigs.  P-I-G-S.

“If my house is on fire, I don’t need the fire chief telling me I should not have built the house out of wood.  I need somebody to put the fire out,” is what Governor Riley said.  Well, Bob, here in Southern California, the fire crews ARE going to put out the wildfires come September AS FAST AS THEY CAN but while they’re doing that, again we will be scolded and warned about brush removal and building homes too close to acres of drought affected chaparral.  We’ll be comforted and assisted first.  Wagging fingers come next.  “Getting in trouble” has led to housing developments with stringent rules on building materials, brush clearance removal and much higher fire insurance premiums to make prospective home owners think twice before buying.  The “I told you so” approach has led to change that works.

I was in Target on Monday and, like always, Goldie and Bun Bun walked too close to the shopping cart and occasionally hoisted themselves up on it for a quick ride.  I continued to warn them and asked them to stop, until I inadvertently ran over Goldie’s foot.  She started crying and so I consoled her and said I was sorry.  Then I told her the injury to her foot was exactly the reason I asked them to “back away from the shopping cart”.  She didn’t want to be disciplined, but she and her sister stayed a comfortable distance away from those hard black plastic wheels for the rest of our visit.

Bob Riley and Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell missed the president’s point, or were so busy forming their obligatory obstinate opinions on anything Obama said (good alliteration, huh?) that they simply weren’t listening.  McConnell was spinning his talking-points-of-doom web and stirring his you-will-be-taxed-to-death rhetoric soup that he failed to grasp the implicit responsibility we ALL must assume in the BP debacle.

America consumes more oil per day than any other country in the world; a lot more.  We’re swine.

Didn’t see Obama’s speech?  Watch it.  It’s about seventeen minutes long.  It’s not one of his best performances.  Initially, it’s pretty dull.  Thousands cleaning up tar balls.  Booms to stop and absorb the spill.  90% capture in the next few weeks.  New well completed in July sometime for full containment.  BP to compensate.  Orders given to quickly erect plan on long term relief for the Gulf.  The president assuring us that he’s in charge, but simultaneously admitting that perfection in dealing with the crisis will not be achieved.  And then…

Pundits from the right AND left (but mostly from the right, everyone from Fox News) criticized Obama for using the catastrophe as an opportunity for political gain, for mentioning his agenda in regard to the energy bill now stalled in the Senate.

Mitch McConnell: “…and yet day after day, as the oil continues to flow, what we hear about from the administration is how tough they plan to be with BP and now, apparently, how important it is that we institute a new tax…for every single American but which will do nothing to plug the leak…”

He’s absolutely right.  The clean energy bill will not stop that gusher in the Gulf.  And he’s absolutely wrong when he suggests THAT is Obama’s plan.  Instead, let me offer what I firmly believe to be the case Obama is putting forward – a bastardization of the Talmud quote – If not me, who?  If not now, when?

This whole “cap and trade” thing is hardly the be-all and end-all of our energy problems, likely the reason Obama didn’t mention it.  And McConnell wasn’t lying when he said the current energy bill before the Senate would tax American households.  The EPA, in conducting their economic analysis of the legislation, released this week, estimated that individuals and families would incur $79 to $146 per year in new taxes.  That’s infuriating, right?   But a cost analysis conducted by the non-partisan Institute for Policy Integrity believes the bill will generate $750 billion to $1 trillion in benefits between 2012 and 2050 – the years when our children will become fully fledged adults.

In 2004, Jon Stewart gave the commencement address at his alma mater, William and Mary.  “Let’s talk about the real world for a moment,” he said to the young graduates.  “…I don’t really know how to put this, so I’ll be blunt.  We broke it.”

He was correct then.  He’d be correct now.  We did.  We broke it.  We thought housing prices would always go up.  We thought and still think oil is an infinite resource and we will always be able to fill up our cars for less than three dollars a gallon.  Okay, four dollars a gallon.  If BP needs to drill in waters too deep to fully understand the technology and its dangers, so be it, just keep a gallon under five dollars, max.  Seriously, that’s as high as we’ll go.  And yes, we know we broke the world and we’re sorry but we’ve got places to go and people to see and tanks to fill.  We like long, hot showers and heated swimming pools and, in the wintertime, houses that are toasty warm and we don’t know anything about windmills and solar panels so please forgive us.  We would like all of our food and clothing to be cheap, cheap, cheap, even if that means it comes by plane, ship and truck from the furthest corner of the world.  What am I supposed to say to my child when she looks at me with those big, adorable eyes and asks for seedless green grapes?  “No honey.  It’s not the right time.  Not when we have to buy them from Argentina.”  I don’t think so.

What Obama did on Tuesday night was suggest a call to arms, a plea for genius and innovation in new ways to fuel our cars and light out homes.  We may be porcine but we are also the country that put a man on the moon when many believed we could not.  America’s accomplishments are goose-bump inducing, cue the inspirational music.  And like President Kennedy, who inspired NASA to achieve our space exploration, Obama knows little of technology – of how a wind turbine works, of how energy is captured and made available for use – but he’s learning.  We should all be learning, if not how to plug an oil well, then how to use less oil.  First, we conserve.  We carpool.  We reduce, reuse and recycle.  And then we dream.  We imagine.  We support efforts in the public and private sector to invent methods of energy that don’t require dangerous drilling or mining, that instruct us on how best to use renewable resources.

I don’t know how to plug the leak in the Gulf, nor do I have any interest in putting on a wetsuit and going down there to try.  But I’m open to knowledge of ways to ensure it doesn’t happen again.  I feel somehow responsible and so I’ll shoulder some blame.  But I won’t stand alone.  Obama was right.  We’re all to blame and if we’re not going to address the problem now, when are we?  If we’re not going to fix it, who is?

Don’t worry.  Thursdays in the kitchen with Jo will be coming sometime today.  Carolina Pulled Pork Sandwiches.