Frog and Goat

The MIL moved into an assisted living facility on Wednesday. Yesterday at noon one of the staff members called saying it hadn’t been a good morning. I picked up the message and relayed it to the better-half. I was concerned but filled with eye-rolling.

Yesterday afternoon we met for dinner at her place as there was a special meal planned to celebrate the end of building renovations–the delay in her entering this facility was due to renovations. Dinner was nice and the place is fantastic. When I’m an old fart I wouldn’t mind living there (excuse me, older fart). It seemed more resort than health care facility. I suppose it helps the community is a mix of senior apartments (with people enjoying cocktails on their balconies!), assisted living and nursing care. I couldn’t stay overly long because I had class last night. Dinner was shrimp salad, tenderloin steak, carrots and polenta. I had tiramisu for dessert. Beverages were a choice of coffee, tea, water, soda, wine or beer…see what I mean about choosing to live there?

When I got home, the better-half wasn’t here and he was quite late in getting back. It was because the nursing staff wanted to talk to him about his mother’s medication and her lifestyle. They have other Parkinson’s patients and say they haven’t seen anyone acting the way she does. They think that some of her problems can be alleviated…others are just the way it goes. So they sat down and went over all her medications and the nursing staff are going to be in charge of medication instead of letting his mother be in charge of it. They are also going to get her on a regular sleeping pattern. Know what? It’s already working. In one day.

Maybe she can get some of her life back.

Resolution to the magazine problem; however, I smell a rat. A big smelly rat.

Here’s my email to Hallmark magazine:
Original Message Follows: ————————
I have received two copies of Hallmark Magazine and do not wish to receive any more issues. I’m not even sure how you obtained my address but I am not interested in the magazine. I have thrown both copies directly into the recycle bin.

Here are the codes from the labels:XYZPDQ (changed to protect the innocent)

Their response:

Our records indicate that your subscription was placed through VALUEMAGSDOTCOM, an independent sales agency.

This subscription was for making a qualifying online purchase. Further details regarding this order are available by contacting the agency. If you would like to contact VALUEMAGSDOTCOM directly, please call 800-123-4567 (not really their number) or visit their website at whatever their crapsite is.

As requested, we have canceled the delivery of your issues.

If you should need further assistance, please be sure to include all previous e-mail correspondence.

Thank you for subscribing to Hallmark Magazine.

Sincerely,

Woman’s name (changed to protect the innocent)

I can say with a great deal of confidence and honesty that I have never heard of that sales agency and I have NEVER opted in for a magazine offer from anyone, EVER. It is a personal policy of mine NEVER to do something like that. So someone is lying and it isn’t me.

I just walked over to a co-worker’s office and told him to mark the calendar because I was completely uninterested in lunch. He said he felt the same way. I’m sure when our co-workers get back from vacation days they’ll look at us and wonder what in the hell happened to us while they were gone. I can offer several explanations for our behavior:

• We ate like pigs yesterday–hoovering down lunch from Moe’s
• We both had dinner out last night–the better-half and I went to Zed Cafe and it was fabulous
• Another co-worker called in to tell me she was taking a mental health day after finding dead animals in her MIL’s house–that story put me off food
• I’ve been working on a class project that is all about food (I’m designing a cooking class)

I did decide I needed to eat something so I wouldn’t become a cranky pants. In an effort to continue the clean living program I’ve enacted recently, I bought a Dr. Pepper and a small bag of Snyder’s Hulless Puff’nCorn. Oh my those are good.

I have received two copies of Hallmark Magazine. Can you imagine anything more horrifying than getting a magazine that’s published by a greeting card company? I don’t even know how I got on their list or if this is someone’s idea of a gift…too bad I don’t know who to blame.

I just fired off an email to their customer service account telling them to fuck off…although it came out in email as much nicer, yet firm.

Speaking of crap I don’t like but still have to put up with…a woman pulled into the driveway today. She got out of her van and was wearing a pink blazer. WTF? You know I promptly sat my butt back down and continued working on my school project. She couldn’t seem to find the doorbell (which is, oddly enough, right next to the door) and so she knocked. Then she knocked some more. Then she finally took her little notebook and pink blazer and got the heck off my property. She was probably attempting to sell me makeup or a subscription to Hallmark magazine. When, oh when, will the word get out that we are the people you don’t want to engage and to just keep driving?

I just located Safety Dance. I’m sure we have it somewhere on a CD but I snagged the song and am now cranking it–as much as the computer’s speakers can crank.

Every time I hear this song I think back to 1983 or so when I was at 4-H camp one weekend learning how to be a volunteer counselor. I was hanging out with some boys from I don’t even remember where and a red-headed boy from Powhatan. The boy from Powhatan was smitten with me–seriously, he tried so hard to date me. He offered me his high school ring once and I told him he should hold on to it. Yep, always the one with an easy letdown, that’s me. I kept his macramé offering, oddly enough. ANYWAY, the four of us were sitting around in the dining hall talking about music.

I remember one of the other boys had on a Led Zep t-shirt. He was cute and a bad ass. I don’t know if he and his friend were actual bad asses or not but kids my age, in my town, didn’t wear Led Zeppelin t-shirts, at least not any that I knew. We started talking about Safety Dance and my red-headed friend hadn’t heard it. The three of us, who had, went on and on about how much we liked that song. It didn’t seem strange that Led Zeppelin and Men Without Hats could both be considered cool.

In a related memory, every time I hear a Rush song I think about a girl I met at a UVA Young Writers Workshop. I ended up having her father once for a class at MWC. He was an English professor who rode his bike to class–his comb-over flapping in the wind.

Last night in the middle of class my lip started swelling. This swelling of my lip happened late last summer and I assumed it was a bug bite. I have no idea what caused the problem last night and when I woke up this morning I looked like Marlon Brando on one side of my face (not the handsome Marlon from Streetcar but the jowly Marlon from The Godfather). I took a benedryl and went to work. I think the swelling is finally going away.

I had to take a major detour this morning because of a fatal car accident on a little stretch of road that crosses the Chickahominy. Both lanes of traffic were blocked so I had to go around the long way. I figured since I was already going to be late that I’d stop and buy some cupcakes to celebrate Good Friday. I also bought a bag of coffee. I started making coffee as soon as I walked into my office and damn if the basket didn’t slip out of my hand. I dumped the grounds all over the floor and the phrase “oh for fuck’s sake” came out before I could stop it. I’m frequently reminded how good it is that I am one of the first people to arrive in the morning. I avoid total embarrassment so often. I couldn’t find a broom or vacuum and in the search process found out how few doors my keys unlock. I scraped up as much of the coffee grounds as I could off the rug and then put a box in front of it. When I move out of this office years from now, my clumsiness will be discovered. Until that time, my office will smell good.

My afternoon kind of sucked today at work and now I hear that Arthur C. Clarke has died. Bummer.

*To finish the paragraph:

look carefully at its right-hand edge and let your eye travel upward along the curve of the disk. Round about two o’clock you will notice a small, dark oval: anyone with normal eyesight can find it quite easily. It is the great walled plain, one of the finest on the Moon, known as the Mare Crisium-the Sea of Crises. Three hundred miles in diameter, and almost completely surrounded by a ring of magnificent mountains, it had never been explored until we entered it in the late summer of 1996.

From The Sentinel, written in 1948.

The artichokes were tasty and not nearly as intimidating to make as I remembered.

The cobia was sweet and I would definitely seek out this fish in the future. We sprinkled it with salt and pepper and then rubbed the fillet with Spanish olive oil. The better-half grilled it and then we squeezed fresh lemon juice over the fish and the artichokes. I also drizzled some of the olive oil over both before serving.

The rice was a last minute addition to our plate (as last minute as 20 minutes of cooking can be) and I added a dollop of sambal oelek. The parsley was to pretty up the plate.

I took Thursday and Friday off and I have to say they were both brilliant weather days. We decided to go ahead with the lime, fertilizer and milky spore treatment to the yard since rain is in the forecast. Thursday morning we got up and then measured the yard. It turns out we have approximately 48,000 square feet of grass/flower beds. Yep, that’s a lot. A fuckload, actually. We bought bags of all of the above supplies and then I started walking behind the spreader. Let me tell you, that’s a lot of yard especially since each bag was about 40lbs. So, when you say that you walked around the yard and people are all like so what, just remind them you were pushing a minimum of 40lbs around and they will back right off the whimp calling.

The better-half got a summons to his mother’s on Friday morning so I ended up pushing the spreader around for hours by myself on Friday and I’ve decided that his mother isn’t pathetic–she’s just his cover. You know, when there’s something he’d rather not do, he gets his mother (or her minions) to call up and drag him over to her house. Then when I’m finished with the laborious task, he comes home*.

Last night we went over to my sister’s to celebrate The Niece’s sixth birthday. I think she really enjoyed the goings on. I hope she had a good day today with all her friends. I’m sure my sister and brother-in-law are tired this afternoon since I think there were 10 friends coming to her party today. I decided when I had to pry myself out of bed this morning that walking around and around the yard yesterday wasn’t so bad, but spending several hours picking up kids last night combined with strenuous yard work wasn’t such a good idea. Thank goodness for Motrin.

We’re having cobia tonight and I’m going to attempt to redeem myself by making stuffed artichokes. I made artichokes years ago and failed miserably. I don’t even remember eating any of them. I think I screwed them up and we pitched them. Here’s the recipe for stuffed artichokes.

*This is so very not true.

I know I’ve mentioned before how perfect I think a pint glass feels in the hand. Here’s an interesting article on pint glasses from Serious Eats.

We have a few American pint glasses and now I’m thinking we need to add some European models to our collection. I didn’t realize the European model holds a bit more. I like the idea that someone thought about how much head a beer needs when poured properly and designed the glass to accommodate that breathing room. I suppose I’m used to hearing about “here’s a tool, design your process around it”. I love the idea of “here’s the proper process, design a tool around it”. So refreshing.