Potassium bitartrate is “a white crystalline powder,” of which my mother has six containers. I discovered the overabundance of the stuff, commonly called Cream of Tartar, when I was looking through her spice cabinet.
why do you have six cream of tartar, you ask her, to which she replies that she doesn’t know. you remember over the past five years her asking you to get her yet another cream of tartar at the supermarket. and so you would do that. you never asked her why she needed so much of the stuff, and now you’ll never know because she doesn’t remember.
Actually, cream of tartar has lots of uses, mostly culinary. And you can also make a paste of it with white vinegar to clean black marks off stainless steel pots an stove burner inserts. I think that’s what she used to use it for. But now we’ll never know.
And so now there’s two lifetimes’ supply of cream of tartar — most of it unopened — sitting in her cupboard.
I absolutely believe that, when it comes to one’s brain, you either use it or lose it. I’m discovering that there were parts I hadn’t used much before, and so I always assumed that I wasn’t good at certain things — like spatial relations and putting puzzle-type pieces together.
But, here I am, putting together my fourth piece of “assembly required” units, and I get better each time. I even went out and bought myself a mini power screw driver. At this very moment, I am sitting at an “assembly required” computer desk with a pull-out keyboard shelf and a drawer that I bought at Rite Aide for twenty bucks. Some of the directions were wrong, and I was missing two screws, but I figured it out. All by myself.
They say “too soon old; too late smart.” I’m on a campaign to prove whoever “they” are, are wrong.
If someone finds six containers of cream of tartar in my cupboard when I’m 89, I’m sure as hell going to know what I use them for.

Munching on my bagel this morning, I watched the tiny wren trying to dig out some food from the bottom of the bird feeder, which was hanging on empty. He sat on that perch for almost a half-hour, futilely pecking and looking around and watching for someone to come out and fill the feeder. He had faith that someone would. And so we did.
Last night, I watched a totally unknown movie, The Edges of the Lord — a film that never made it into the theaters. I didn’t know what it was about, but I picked it up to watch with my mother, since it’s set in Poland, 1942 and has kids in it. She likes movies with kids.
It’s an amazing movie about faith — or rather how it does not sustain us, not really, in times of terror. And it’s a lot more than that — it’s about all the shades of gray in which faith gets waylaid. Except for the two known actors (Haley Joel Osment and Willem DaFoe), all the others performers are unknowns with definitely accurate accents and appropriate last names.
The priest (DaFoe) at one point says something like “some are blessed, but the edges aren’t blessed,” explaining to Osment the process of cutting out and preparing holy communion wafers. And Osment says something like “how do we know if we’re blessed or we’re the edges.”
The DVD box calls it a “coming of age” movie. What an understatement!!
Go rent it!