crucible of ennui

We were latchkey kids. On the weekends Andie and I were left mostly alone - to do chores, homework and keep out of trouble until either Mom or Dad got home.

Saturday mornings rocked. Scooby-Do, Robotech, Looney-Tunes, Thundercats - OMG. I loved cartoons. But after cartoons, my favorite show came on.

Kung Fu Theater.

Every Saturday from 11 to 1 the best and cheesiest Kung Fu movies were shown. The 10 Tigers of Shaolin, Drunken Master, Dragon Lord, Dirty Ho, Night Orchid, and my personal favorite, Master of the Flying Guillotine.

I love that movie. Every so often it’s shown somewhere late at night and I HAVE to watch. I love the sound effects and bad english dubbing.

The last Kung Fu movie I really enjoyed was Kung Fu Hustle. Hysterical. And at the beginning of this summer we saw Kung Fu Panda - also a winner. Even Catherine and Glenn enjoyed it. I also saw that Jet Li/Jackie Chan flick The Forbidden Kingdom. FUN!

I guess what I’m really trying to say is give me a Kung Fu action movie any day of the week and I’m happy.

I love the sun. If there’s a patch of sun, I want to be in it. I love the warmth and that wonderful drowsy feeling you get right before a heat stroke. Nowadays I limit my sun exposure to 1-2 weekends a year. As I get older, I’m getting paranoid about wrinkles and sunspots. It’s not really about vanity - it’s more about preservation. If I were vain, would my ass be this big? I think not.

This last weekend I went to Laurie’s to hang poolside with Catherine. It was an extra cool weekend since my Aunt AJ and cousin Kira were there. It was neat to see the sister dynamic between AJ and Laurie. And Kira totally rocks.  Figuratively and literally. I think my favorite part of the weekend was Laurie on the piano and Kira on the guitar playing Turtle Blues.

Back to the sunburn. So like, 15-20 years ago I used to tan all the time. I’d even go to the tanning salon to get a base tan so I wouldn’t be fish belly white those first few weeks at the beach. Unfortunately all that sun and tanning caused a mole… heck, let’s call it a beauty mark… on my face. It actually is located in a very flattering position, it’s not hairy or weird looking, it hasn’t grown bigger over the last decade… so I leave it mostly alone. (yes, doctors have looked at it). So the mole freaked me out and changed my sun worshiping ways - now I wear sunscreen everyday and stay out of the sun. Mostly. But not this last weekend.

Saturday we hit the pool around noon and I took the time to get Catherine all greased up, but I completely neglected to apply any to me. When we headed inside, I was pretty burnt. One of those burns where the heat from my shoulders could cook bacon. Wearing a bra has been hell. My nose is peeling and I look like a Sleestak. But what did I do Sunday?!? That’s right - POOLSIDE BABY! Sunday I used a 35 spf spray, but it wore off quickly in the water. We left at 2:00, but by then the damage was done.

BUT I have a totally kick ass tan now!!!

I’ve been kinda relaxin’ on my already relaxed look since the incident. Needless to say - I’ve been lookin’ kinda homeless.

Check out the streaks of white at my hairline. Bride of Frankenstein goes suburban. So I went to see Laura at the salon this last week and got a cut and color. The color is great. Although there’s still this little patch of white at the temple that seems to want to throw off the color and just stay a streak of white. More power to ya, locks o’ determination.

Then I went to the MAC counter at the mall. All the ladies were busy and the next available counter person was a gorgeous female impersonator. YAY!!! Truly - it was my lucky day. Unfortunately my make-up coach had some bad news, although delivered sympathetically.

DQ <leaning in>: So! Did you know that after a certain age a little bit of concealer does wonders for dark circles under the eyes.

Me: <gasp>

It was true. Once he did his demonstration, I was sold. So now my bag is nicely rounded out. I even found a REALLY cool eye compact that has all my favorite eye colors swirled together. It looks great. I think I may need to get a few more color sets…

I’m not the best driver. But to my credit I only hit stationary and inanimate objects. So you’re completely in luck if you’re a person or animal. Not so lucky if you’re a parked car or mailbox.

Two weeks ago I accidently hit an air duct while backing into a parking space in an underground parking garage. It was really dark and the duct cut 3 feet off the parking space. Obviously I didn’t see it and the result of my carelessness is a nice sized dent on the back of my car (which we just finished paying off last month).

The worst thing was telling Glenn. And even worse is that this isn’t the first time I’ve had to tell him I’ve had an accident. And even worse than that was when I plowed into his next door neighbor’s car while he was watching.

It was early in the relationship and I just bought a new car and was driving over to show it to him. It was autumn and a really bright day with all the leaves falling from the trees and swirling around in the wind. I had just turned down his street and half a block from his house a huge leaf blew in front of my car and I mistook it for an adorable little kitten. Not wanting to get fresh kitten blood on my brand new car (thus opening the door for demonic posession after being annointed with the blood of innocents) I swerved dramatically to the right and smashed into the back quarter panel of Glenn’s neighbor’s truck (which was also new).

Glenn was either looking out the window or standing on the porch and saw the whole thing. To this day, it’s one of his favorite moments of my lameness.

Catherine is finally at that magical age where the most socially inappropriate things come out of her mouth. Most of the time she is very considerate of other people and refrains from calling people ugly or silly-looking (unlike her mother).

This self-censoring ceases to exist while in the presence of little people.

At the grocery store where we usually shop, there is a midget bagger. He’s really nice and always offers to help us take our food loot to the car. This Saturday he was wearing a sparkly green bow tie and a leprechaun hat as he ran around restocking stuff and helping people. As soon as Cat saw him, she was beside herself and yelled out - “MOMMY!!!! HE LOOKS LIKE AN OOMPA LOOMPA!!!”

If it wasn’t my child, I would have been ROLLING in the aisle with tears streaming down my face. As it was I did my best to distract her with a box of cereal I bounced off her head.

But then each time he’d run by, she’d twist around to keep him in her eyesight while yelling, “MOM!!! LOOK AT HIM RUN!!!!”

I am sweetie, I am.

“Who knows. It may work out. She likes flowers and he’s a pansy.”

I love gossip.

Mmm… holiday weekends! I love me some 3-day weekends. I took the opportunity on Sunday to really work on the house and cook. I think the best day for cooking was Sunday.

I started with French Toast. And not the wimpy kind made with sliced sandwich bread… I used that thick cut texas toast. I remembered reading in a cookbook a recipe that used orange juice as part of the liquid for the french toast batter. I didn’t want an overpowering orange-y taste, so I grabbed an orange off the tree out back and grated 1/2 the zest into the egg batter dippy stuff. It worked - as the zest clung onto the surface of the bread and the taste wasn’t “ORANGE!”, but “ooo - do I detect a hint of orange?”

Then for lunch we made tuna fish. Oh - not some boring tuna fish. Glenn makes really yummy tuna salad - mayo, mustard and aleppo pepper. Then he took a few pieces of the texas toast (we didn’t use for breakfast) and brushed garlic butter onto 1 side, then pressed it into parmesean cheese. Then he threw that onto the griddle and made tuna melt sammiches!!!! OMG - they were totally delicious. All melty on cheese-y garlic-y toast. <insert yummy sound here>

For dinner we were totally healthy, but didn’t skimp on any flavor. And it was one of those dinners that’s really too easy to prepare. I bought some salmon fillets and Glenn threw those into a little glass dish with butter and then into the oven to bake at 350. I asked him to not season the salmon with anything since I was going to attempt a fruit salsa to put on top. Here’s the salsa!

In a bowl combine:
1 shallot - minced
1 jalepeno - seeded & diced (if you like the heat, leave the seeds)
2 tsp cider vinegar
2 tsp honey
2 tbsp olive oil
stir and let it sit for 15 minutes while you prep the fruit

dice
2 peaches
2 plums

take 1/2 a cup of the peach/plum and mash it in with the bowl of other stuff. Then fold in the rest of the fruit. Maybe throw some fresh chopped basil in with everything too - like 2 tsps.

Done. keep it out at room temp. Use before 4 hours are up or else the fruit gets mushy and icky.

Most are familiar with Male Refrigerator Blindness (”MRB”) - the inability of the male to visually identify items within a refrigerator.

Unfortunately few are aware that MRB is sometimes a precursor to Selective Male Blindness (”SMB”). Scientists have discovered that MRB can progress from a general failure to locate milk, eggs, ketchup and cheese to more extreme forms of the disease, characterized by sarcastic disbelief and a tendency towards conspiracy theories in addition to visual impairment.

Over time, SMB can and will develop into a crippling affliction that renders a male unable to find such basic items as baseball hats, keys, magazines and most importantly, the remote control.

Ongoing studies have shown that SMB affects 100% of the male population at various stages of development. Although SMB has been recorded in males as young as 5 to the extreme elderly, studies have shown most cases occur within the adolescent and married male age groups.

Recently, the contagious effect of SMB has been studied to address cases of females unable to locate items while in close proximity of a male suffering from SMB. To date no definitive conclusions have been made. Thankfully scientists discovered that removing the SMB-Male will dramatically increase the chances of the female’s natural resistance to the effects of SMB.

As scientists race towards a cure for MRB and SMB, we can only hope help comes soon.

Once upon a time, a proud, old king asked his daughters, “How much do you love me?”

“I love you more than gold and silver” one daughter replied.

“I love you more than diamonds and rubies and pearls,” her sister said.

“I love you more than salt,” answered the third daughter.

The king grew angry when he heard this last answer. “How dare you compare me to something as poor and common as salt?” he raged, and he banished the unfortunate girl from the kingdom.

The details of each story differ, but the end is the same in all. The foolish father is served a meal without a single speck of salt in it. The food is so dull and tasteless he cannot eat it.

Which brings me to my new challenge of low-sodium cooking. A lot of the foods items you can buy to make week-nite dinners easy is pretty much off the menu. Do you have any idea how much sodium is in a serving of flavored rice? It’s out the freakin’ window.

The worst was the turkey bacon. Or as Glenn so aptly put it, Facon. We thought we’d give it a try, I mean, how bad could it really be? It was in the range of acceptable sodium amount per serving (although 1 serving was 1 piece of turkey bacon. Do you know anyone who eats only 1 piece of bacon?). So… it’s texture was kinda weird - like crispy tissue paper. And the flavor - I put a piece directly onto my tongue and my tastbuds did not registered anything there. Seriously. I could not taste it. So that was kinda disappointing.

But I didn’t make some peanut butter cookies with no-salt added peanut butter. They were okay so I brought the rest into work today and they’re already gone.

I wonder if Indian food has a lot of sodium in it….

Okay. I admit it - I’m exhausted. The drama of this week finally caught up with me today while I was eating my salad. Cause salad is diet food, right? And the doctor said I needed to lose weight, right? So I forgo a trip to The Stand or some other burger joint and get a salad from the deli upstairs. Lettuce, cucumbers, turkey and swiss. Except it was pointed out to me the turkey and swiss are SUPER HIGH in sodium. So that in effect cancelled out the good I was doing by having a salad. I may as well have had that gooey chicken sandwich with homemade kettle chips. I wish I could call a “do over” and get something truly healthy for me. I think what’s freaking me out is the fact that not only do I have to change my lifestyle eating habits, but I also need to factor in the need for a low sodium diet as well. I’ve done the diet thing before (oh so many times), but never have been in the position of needing to consider salt intake. And with all the day to day stuff going on, I’m just feeling overwhelmed today.

Pity Party, table for 1. I’m at a loss (other than the hair loss).

Speaking of hair loss, I think I’m going to draw a smily face in the little bald patch on for tall people to look at if they happen to notice the top of my head.