I Could Have Danced All Night

At the wedding reception last night, I danced. No really, I did―I grabbed my brother and pulled him out to the dance floor and discovered that I love dancing. I always thought I would like it but I’ve never really had the chance to try. My sister had already asked my grandpa to dance and my great aunt and uncle were swing dancing―they were really good and I never knew they could dance like that! Before long, we had my first cousins (ages 9 & 13) in on the act and were doing what I’d call demi-swing because we knew a few things and then made up the rest. :-) (Unfortunately, only one song out of three was worth dancing to―that’s the way it goes these days―and not many songs were exactly the swing type. :-/) It was great…especially because the boys soon figured out how much fun it is (and they were really good) and kept asking my sister and I (and my grandma and aunt) to dance. You haven’t lived until you’ve seen my brother demi-swing dancing with my great aunt! (Check out the introverted, un-socialized home-educated kids! :-D) We also did line dancing and waltzing. Towards the end, I was waltzing with my nine-year-old cousin (so fun!) and then, I nearly fell over in a heap. Why? Because my parents were on the dance floor and, get this, they had never danced before last night. Never. My dad hates it so much that they didn’t even have dancing at their wedding. It was truly a miracle. As we were leaving, Thriller came on and we all started groaning because we didn’t get to dance to it…even the boys were sad. :-)

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Skate Laces

My new ice-skates finally came! (The UPS man was very late today…why is it that when you really want something, he’s several hours behind schedule?) Though I’m not sure why I’m happy about it…. I still have to take them somewhere to be sharpened and attempt to find skate-guards since the stores don’t seem to be carrying them and then find a place to skate…. *sigh* Anyway, I was trying to lace them and I have to say, one of my least favorite things to do is put new laces in footwear. I don’t do it often enough and forget how they go and then they don’t look right to me and I have to rip them out. Poor Mom was trying to talk to me as I sat on the floor with four pounds of ice-skates on my lap and I think all she got out of me was, “I’m…very hot…how does this work…they’re not right! *rip* ...hate lacing…diagram would be helpful…they look funny! *rip* ...don’t talk to me right now….” :-) (Granted I was very hot because it’s been freezing cold in the house for days and I’ve been so cold lately that today I wore a turtleneck and thick sweater…and then it was 42 outside and the house heated up. Now (4:45pm) I’m cold again.) I wasn’t very happy…and they still aren’t laced to my satisfaction. *groan/sigh* In the meantime, I think I’ll try to track down some orange skate guards.

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Starting a Panic

As I was typing in my room, Mom called “dryer,” from downstairs because I washed my sheets today and was drying them. “What did she say?” asked my brother from the next room. “Dryer,” I said. “Oh, I thought she said ‘fire’.” When I went downstairs, I told Mom that she could have started a panic. Dad once told me that it’s illegal to yell “fire!” because it might start a panic and someone could get squashed. After Dad said this, my brother said, “Then we should yell “No fire!” :-D

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Take a Sad Song and Make It Better

Last night we were on the way home from dinner (just me, my mom, and my brother…my sister had to work and my dad had a meeting―on my birthday! Miscreants! :-D) and were listening to my new Beatles CD. No, I didn’t get the re-mastered mono box set *sob* *sob* but I did get #1 which has all of their number one hits. (Can you believe that Twist and Shout, I am the Walrus, and Sergeant Pepper weren’t #1 hits?) Anyway, Hey Jude came on and Mom, who had been singing along with nearly every song (I never knew that she knows the lyrics to so many Beatles songs!) told us how her swing choir danced to Hey Jude at the junior high to recruit the kids who would be moving up to high school. Apparently, they had to go out into the audience of 6th, 7th and 8th graders and try to get them to dance too. My brother and I thought this was extremely funny…I mean, Hey Jude is one of my favourite Beatles songs but it’s not the first one I’d pick to dance to…. We had trouble breathing when Mom said, “But they didn’t really want to dance and so it was like being in a Brady Bunch episode where nobody else had the script.” (That really does sound like a Brady Bunch episode from the later seasons…. :-D) By that point, I was laughing hysterically but managed to say, “Is that your memory of Hey Jude?” “Yes, I guess it is.” Mom laughed. “That’s really sad.” My brother said. “Take a sad song and make it better,” Mom said, which only made us laugh harder. “And, it’s kind of a slow song so you can only do a few moves to it…” Then, while driving, she demonstrated the dance…kind of grooving her shoulders and then clapping her hands together… which made my brother and I laugh so hard that we didn’t even care that her hands weren’t on the steering wheel. Though…I did have a vague feeling that we were driving on the wrong side of the road…. :-D (Just kidding…we weren’t.) Ah, Beatles music. It brings out the best (I hope) in all of us. :-)

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Strange Tastes

I’m in the middle of finals work (talk about nightmares for final exams you have taken!) and thus, my creative ability has been significantly diminished of late. I have a phone interview with the college that I really want to go to tomorrow night. I’m sure it’ll be fine…. *gulp* (Pray for me…please.) Anyway, as I drove home from Ick today and was trying not to think about finals, I remembered something I did back in the day which amuses me now. When I was three or four, Mom had a small Christmas tree on a card table (I think to keep the presents off the floor and away from little fingers) and I think there was a tablecloth over the table too. In any case, I remember taking a fresh package of cream cheese out of the fridge, getting a knife, and crawling under the card table to eat it. I know I got the foil package open and ate some of it with the knife…but I don’t remember how much I managed to eat before Mom looked under the table and found me. :-D As if that isn’t all… I used to eat frozen raw bacon from the butcher shop too. (I guess it is cured or smoked…but still….) My sister and I actually got away with that a few times before Mom caught us. My brother is also known to have tried to eat a stick of butter in a similar way to my cream cheese episode…. My poor mother… :-) (Don’t worry we weren’t habitually rotten. :-D) Ah, childhood. It’s a wonder anyone survives it.

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Dinner in the Hills

Last spring, we took a family trip and to do so, we passed though a heavily wooded and mountainous state. (which shall be nameless) At Olive Garden the first night, we had to wait at least 15-20 minutes for a table and when we finally got to one, my Dad says, “Where do all these people come from? I haven’t seen any houses.” “They come out of the hills after dark.” I said and then Dad said, “You'd better not say that too loud...these people probably have guns...big, big guns.” We were joking of course...but thankfully, I didn’t see any guns.

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Plink!

On Wednesday night, (the 25th) I had gone with Mom to the jeweler to have her rings appraised. Once there, I remembered that I’d been meaning to bring in a loose cut stone that I’ve had for years so I can ask the jeweler to examine it. It looks like a white opal and I’ve always wondered if it’s real. I found the opal in a bag of old jewelry that my great aunt gave me—she used to run an antique shop and gave me whatever didn’t sell. Anyway, I decide to hunt around online and see if there is a way to determine if an opal is real. One site informed me that if an opal is fake, then a hot needle will be able to penetrate it and if it’s real, the needle can’t go through the stone. That sounds easy enough, so I get the stone from my jewelry box and go to the kitchen to find a lighter. Now, my sister is cooking dinner and I prefer not to be asked what I’m doing, so I go into the bathroom with the lighter and shut the door. (Can you tell what’s about to happen?) I heat the needle and pull the opal out of my pocket and.... The next thing I know, I’ve dropped the opal and it’s spinning around the sink like a penny in one of those plastic circles at the zoo. I try to grab it but then, clink, clatter, plink! It’s fallen down the drain. When something like this happens, you tend to stare at the drain for a few moments, with sort of a sick feeling in your stomach, before you even begin to react. And thinking, “Why didn’t I shut the drain?” is perfectly useless at this point. (Besides, the drain cover for that sink doesn’t work.) Once I manage to move, I know I can’t leave the opal in the pipe...I’ve had it for too long (sentimental value) and it could be real (monetary value). So, I open the lower cupboard and examine the pipe; it’s thick and will require a large wrench to remove the catch. I summon Mom—who groans and tells me to find a wrench—so I go to the basement and look in Dad’s wrench drawer. Unfortunately, Dad doesn’t really have a large plumber’s wrench—like the one in the Clue game—and I take another kind upstairs. Mom and I try that one for a while and it doesn’t work―it won’t lock to the right size―and I have to go back down and bring up another one. That one doesn’t work either and I go back down to find a third...my nerves are getting pretty strung out by now but I find one that locks and take it upstairs. This one works... finally. The catch slowly unscrews, we take it off, and the opal (real or not) appears as soon as we dump the water from the catch into a pan. So now I’ve got it back but we have to put the piping, back together…we screw the catch back on as tight as it will go and run the water. It leaks…but only a little. We don’t have any of the putty that plumbers put on pipes to make a watertight seal so we placed a little dish underneath to catch the drips. The plumber is coming in a week or two (he was already coming for something else) so we’ll have him putty it when he comes. I think it’s a racket that they can’t make the plumbing plumber free but oh well… at least I got my opal back. And after it went through all that, I tried to stick a hot needle in it―I was well away from any sinks this time. It wouldn’t go in...which means that it is likely a real opal. So, I’m really glad that we rescued it. :-)

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The Magically Evolving Sauce

I spent most of today doing homework―that’s what comes from spending two days at your grandma’s house…but it was a fun two days so that makes up for the homework. Anyway, rather than work on my research paper anymore, I think I will tell the tale of my Eggs Benedict experiment. Now, Eggs Benedict is basically an Egg McMuffin (the McDonalds breakfast sandwich) with hollandaise sauce poured over it. I’ve always wanted to try Eggs Benedict so; I gathered the ingredients for making the sandwich (English muffins, Canadian bacon, American cheese, and eggs.) Now, the first day I decided to attempt this experiment was a Saturday and my Dad decided that since I’d acquired all the ingredients for Egg McMuffins that he had to have one. I was a little annoyed since I had to make it for him and this delayed my breakfast. (I can become rather cranky if I don’t eat…and/or I get all shaky and weird from low blood sugar.) He did help though and the next thing I know, he’s taken the American cheese from the refrigerator and said, “Looks like this is the last piece.” Now, these sandwiches are worthless without cheese and I know it. So, I’m frying the egg for his sandwich, biting my tongue, and wanting to say a few choice words about putting American cheese on the shopping list…but I don’t. After all, it’s not Dad’s fault and I know that―it’s just a very irritating circumstance. And, at least I hadn’t made the hollandaise yet. So Dad gets his sandwich and I go upstairs and vent in private.
Attempt #2…. A few days later, with American cheese in the fridge, I decided to try again. In a double boiler, I mix butter, egg yolks, hot water, pepper, and lemon juice. (I had to run down to my grandma’s to find the lemon juice and thankfully, she had some.) Once it’s mixed, I taste the sauce and make a face. Don’t let anyone fool you; hollandaise sauce is one of the nastiest concoctions on earth. I made it correctly and it was smooth and just as it was supposed to be but ugh! It tasted like melted butter, with egg yolks, and lemon juice. No, there is no magic in the recipe―it tastes just like its ingredients. Double yuck, yuck. There I am, with half a recipe of hollandaise sauce and I hate it. Enter Mom. “You know, it’s basically a custard with the egg yolks and butter…why don’t you add sugar and make it into lemon custard?” Okay, that sounds reasonable. I pull out the old cookbook and find custard recipes―it is very similar―and mix in the right amount of sugar. It’s palatable as custard and except for the few grains of pepper; you’d never know it used to be hollandaise sauce. I tasted it and probably could have eaten it if I hadn’t made it and smelled it when it was in its prior state. My brother ate it and said it was good. I still had egg whites left over and under the custard recipes; I see a recipe for “Floating Island” which is mentioned in the Betsy-Tacy books and is basically soft custard with meringue topping. Aha! Something to do with the egg whites! So I whisk up the meringue and now I have Floating Island. When my sister got home from work I said, “I made floating island, you know like in Betsy-Tacy.” What I didn’t tell her was that the Floating Island was once hollandaise sauce… at least, not until um...now. :-D


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The Door

Our back door has been acting up. We installed it three years ago and the hinges are basically useless. I mean, when they work, they work but they don’t, they don’t. And right now, they don’t. Basically, the door is not hanging right and gets stuck. We can barely open or close it right now. Mom made me use the front door when I got home from Ick yesterday. This can be quite a feat, since the front door is old and you have to pull it towards you while un-locking...and if you’re holding thirty pounds in books and swatting away Asian beetles... you deserve a medal for reaching the interior. I thought the key was going to break off in the lock...I really did. Anyway, the miscreant back door is from a well-known company with the bonus of terrible customer service. Mom called and it’ll take 2 weeks for them to even consider doing anything about it. (And it’s under warranty too.) I wonder if the darn thing were to fall off and smash someone if they’d even care.
Oh, and on top of all that, our e-mail’s been acting up and sending duplicate e-mails at weird times. It’s kind of embarrassing. Oh well... all these things make good material for writing and they can be rather funny if put in the proper prospective. That’s why I started this blog... because "It takes time to be funny. It takes time to extract joy from life." - Hollie Baylor, Elizabethtown, 2005. And it really does.

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Conversation with Mom

“I set up a blog today...you know about random tidbits.”

“Hmm.” (Looking through the fridge)

“Guess what I called it?”

“Umm…little pieces of crap?”

“No!!!” (gasping between spasms of laughter)

Mom can be startlingly wacky.

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