Good humor makes all things possible.
-Charles Schultz-

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.
-Shakespeare-The Merchant of Venice-

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Don't bet the farm


Today my prom date, and his sweet wife, took me out to a post-prom lunch.  Thirty-eight years later.



Anybody who likes to rhapsodize about the good old days, be my guest, they're all yours.  
But if you want an advertisement for the wonders of modern medicine, look no further.

I suppose I'm a realist; I don't believe in miracles or foreordination.  


Better than brothers: J & J
But I know for sure that every day is a gift.  

Every single day.



Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Bring it on home

Achoo


Ahh, Spring!  Daylight saving time.  We've had the windows open during the day here.   I sneeze a little; soon I will sneeze a lot.  I apologize to everyone who lives where there is still ice and snow, really I do.  I don't make the weather.  



Here is an accurate diagram of Lillian's car, Pearl.  Pearl is old.  Pearl was my mother's car while Mom still drove, but she never went anywhere and thus Pearl doesn't have too many miles, which is probably the only reason why she hasn't completely fallen apart.  She has had some of her major organs replaced and needs new tires (the old ones have mostly disintegrated, as anyone who has tried to get too many summers out of a favorite swimsuit will attest). 

So my point here is that last Saturday I dragged Lillie out for a walk around the neighborhood and we made it about one block when we had to stop and dig through a box on the curb marked "Free!"  We scored a hand-crank ice cream maker, a framed needlepoint picture which matches my room, and a set of VHS tapes of the original three Star Wars movies.  We turned around and took those home.  I made her go back out, though, as two blocks round trip does not equal a walk.  

We made it two more blocks this time, and came upon some people piling junk in their driveway.  While this is not unusual around here, we took a chance and asked if a crap yard sale was in the offing.   The senior junk-piler said he had just cleaned out a storage unit and would probably have a sale pretty soon.  Both Lillie and I had spied a likely looking desk and offered $20 on the spot.  He agreed and we sprinted home to get Pearl, who is petite but has a large hatchback and can carry things like furniture.

Pearl is a helpy helper 

Lillie was so excited about the desk, and so tickled to have found it, that when she tried to hand the guy the twenty he waved her hand away.  He told two shirtless dudes who were hanging around to take the drawers out and wedge it into Pearl's behind, and we slowly drove the two blocks home.


Secretarial skillz, I has those

The funny thing is this one is the runty twin of a big old desk that has been in my mother's house since before I was born.  One top drawer folds out into a secretary's return (I'm sorry if you are too young to know what that is; ask your mother.)  The other side has slanted dividers (for typing paper, of course.)  One bottom drawer is extra deep for file folders.  

I bet your parents have one of these

It is solid wood, dove-tailed and sturdy.  It has some surface damage like water rings and minor scratches, but essentially it's great.  Especially at Free-Ninety-Nine!  Lillie has already started to sand it; the plan is Minwax Poly-Shades to darken it just a bit and make a nice hard finish. As soon as it's done, we'll show you how it looks!  If you look beyond the desk you can see the little mid-century tiered end table Lillie picked up at a crap driveway sale last weekend--it should look sly with a new finish.  Five dollah!

Pillows, I has them

Meanwhile, back inside the house, I made these pillows out of some cotton twill I found on deep discount at JoAnn (which is moving across town and clearing everything out.)  I put zippers in but didn't make liners--just stuffed them with polyfill from three ugly old  pillows (I don't why I have so many icky pillows.)  They came out really soft and bouncy!  Lillie took the two plum velveteen ones, which match her duvet.  Win/win.  These have just a hint of zebra, if zebras came in watermelon flavor.  

There are some changes coming around here.  Bit by bit.

I'll hold this down for you because I am a helpful helper
Close-up to avoid the junk piled on the floor


Thursday, March 7, 2013

Monsanto for dessert

Snore

I've been eating a spartan low-carbohydrate diet for about seven hundred weeks and let me tell you, I MISS REGULAR FOOD.    Except for Trader Joe's soy protein powder (which I add to my morning smoothie) which is by definition a highly processed product, I eat mostly single food items, like eggs.  Or meat.  Or yogurt.  No recipes.  Few ingredients.  One thousand calories.  I'm not starving, but not particularly excited by anything I eat.  I'm not sure how long I can keep this up as the weight loss is S...O...   D...A...R...N...   S...L...O...W...  Four pounds, that's it.  Ten more  to go.  This will take FOREVER.  First world problems, right?


Eggs for dinner.  Again.

So anyway, when Lillie decided that she wanted to take homemade cookies to her boyfriend's granny's for dinner, (that's where we get those lovely eggs), I was overjoyed to finally bake something.  Whee!  We only had an hour so we turned on the oven to preheat and started getting down the flour and sugar and all the things I haven't seen in weeks and weeks.  I got a quick whiff of something acrid, but remembered I had recently cleaned up some burned seitan (vegan-meat-substitute-concoction) Lillie had baked for her boyfriend.  I used baking soda and vinegar because I'm all green like that, so we had to be smelling the vegan mess treat remnants.  Suddenly we both started to choke and cough--I opened the oven to see WHAT THE HELL and there lay a smoking purple coil of MELTING TOOTHBRUSH which I must have forgotten to grab when I finished scrubbing the burned oven floor.  Billows of vicious chemical smoke filled the kitchen as we ran to open all the windows.  With watering eyes and long tongs, I fished out the liquefying toothbrush--it sagged like hot taffy--and dropped it in the trash.  I scraped up the last bit of purple drool with an old spatula and let the hot oven burn off the leftover film.

In a few minutes, though,  the nasty smoke had cleared and we had the first pan of cookies ready to slide into the oven.  Would poison toothbrush molecules be seared into our innocent and wholesome cookies?  How would we know?  They looked and smelled fine and to be honest, they tasted divine.


Chase just likes to be on the safe side.

So I ate six. (They were small, but yes, six.)   I had to make sure Lillie wouldn't poison the granny.  Because where else would I get all those happy backyard chicken eggs?


Does this look deadly to you?

***POST GAME:  After dinner at Granny's, everybody gobbled up the cookies within two minutes and by the time Lillie left, all were alive.  If I get investigated for trying to poison them, I guess this post will convict me.  And now you know about it too so we'll all be in prison together.***


Will you have to wear those prison stripes?