Frog and Goat

It’s been quiet around here because the crap pot has been stirred. Let’s start with work. Again, with the impending wonder of will we have funding after June 30th? How much funding will we have? Will we have to cut staff? Will I have to continue to do a manager’s job (she of the purple velour pants) because she’s incompetent? Yes. But, at least I’ve officially been given permission to go ahead and take care of this part of her job. Now I can blaze through the tasks and get them done for the good of the organization or for great justice!

Personal life was also a pile of crap beginning with last weekend. My parents went to see my sister and brother-in-law in Florida. First time they’ve all laid eyes on each other in 4 ½ years. You’d think everyone could freaking behave for 24 hours, but alas. Screaming, tears and drama. A phone call from my sister and her husband that, in retrospect, seems a little less than genuine. My sister and I have worked through that and we’re OK now. Pathetic emails from my mother about how disastrous things have been. I’m sure they were pretty terrible. But, fuck that disastrous shit. Disastrous shit has been going on for 8 years with me because I’ve been excommunicated by my father. All those thoughts and feelings got stirred up by the screaming, tears and drama. I emailed her and said that I was not interested in talking to her about her disastrous stuff because frankly I’m tired of being in this windstorm of family drama and I’m going to support my sister and take care of myself.

It doesn’t help that my mother has basically sided with my father (really, she has to live with him so I get it—what I don’t get follows) and then expects me to listen to her talk about him all the freaking time. Whatever. I try to be polite but it’s hard. It’s hard when I remember that a few years ago I get an email from her saying she’s celebrating Independence Day by being free of the problem with my father and me. In the email, she totally missed the point that I’ve attempted to be nice to him and have invited him to things at our house and still have him stare right at me and not speak. There’s only so much of that one person can take and so he doesn’t get invited to our house. We avoid him and when forced to see him, treat him like that crazy uncle everyone seems to have…smile, be polite, carefully walk backwards so the animal doesn’t attack.

Then last year, I told her she could come to my graduation but he wasn’t invited—mostly because he has never once spoken to me about going back to school and has ignored me for what was then 7 years. I may as well of invited the neighbor four doors down or the wine lady I talked to at Kroger today. She tells me she can’t come without him because she’s already asked him if he would go. Really? Could the rose-colored glasses come off? There is no relationship anymore and she wants him to go to my graduation? It was my freaking day. Is it so terribly hard to remember that? Yes, clearly, still bitter that I’m just expected to take this shit and be OK with it.

Anyway, the screaming, drama and tears brought all of that back from wherever I’ve been storing it and I really don’t want to have to go back to that place again. For crying out loud, I didn’t eat dinner one night this week and I never miss a meal. Last night was the first time all week that I’ve felt better (dinner with friends; celebrating someone’s good fortune). Today has been pretty good. Just need to figure out a way to tell my mother to let some time pass. That I’m sick of it and can’t keep falling back into the years of conversation about who isn’t talking to whom and why and what do you think is going on? I’m tired and really can’t care so deeply anymore.

Right after I got out of college a friend of mine was living in the Church Hill area of Richmond. The duplex he lived in was in the nicer part of that area but some of the other parts were a little rough. A little down on the heels.

He told me about one hot summer day going to the local grocery store and seeing an incredibly large woman in a house dress patrolling the aisles with her children. Suddenly a ham fell out of her dress and as she stood over the ham like she’d just given birth to it, she said, “Who put that ham there?”

I have laughed about that story for over 15 years. I now wonder if it was true. It’s still funny even if the story has been turned into a kicking new song:

I picked Lil Elvis up from pre-school yesterday and she asked me about the dog. I asked her which dog and she said the one with the big collar at my house. Little kids have an odd sense of time because she was asking me about a hunting dog she saw back in early December or November or some long ago time as far as my addled brain was concerned. I remembered the dog had a big 3 painted on his haunch and then Lil Elvis and I talked about that and how big the dog was.

When we got to her house, we played a very quick game of checkers that really ended up in the board being flipped over after I told her I was probably not going to let her win. Because I’m the evil aunt who likes to whip small children in games. She gave me the cartoon blink, blink (you know the move, when you can’t believe someone just said that) and then decided that doing something else was a good idea. So we taught ourselves to juggle flaming chainsaws.

The better-half came over as I was being attacked and beaten into submission. That kid has some wrestling moves. It also helps that she knows I’m not really going to fight back, but that I’m good for making exaggerated dying noises and asking occasional questions about whether the fart bomb was just released on me (I lost count on those).

After my sister got home, the better-half and I went to Carini’s in the East End. We’ve known about it for years but had never been before. It popped into the better-half’s head last night and so off we went. Delicious, family-oriented Sicilian-Italian restaurant. The parking lot smelled good. People were walking out with pizza boxes and the inside smelled even better. My leftovers made for a delicious lunch today. We’ll definitely go back. The analog to that restaurant in our “official” town was maybe that good when I was 15 but they’ve been losing ground ever since. It’s nice to know where to go for affordable, comfort Italian food within 20 minutes of our house.

Last night we had some friends over for dinner. It’s always great seeing them and we all end up staying up too late. I’m not sure which couple has the better deal when it comes to getting to bed. We live about 30 minutes from each other and so depending on the clean up the hosts must do, I wonder who gets tucked in first. We stuffed the dishwasher full and then rinsed everything that wouldn’t fit and ran another load this morning. It’s impressive how many plates, glasses, dishes and pots four people can dirty up.

Last night we made three sauces and two different kinds of pasta. The better-half and I made one of the sauces the night before (simple tomato and white wine with garlic) and my girl friend and I made two sauces while the fellas made the pasta. We put together a chard and sausage sauce and a ham, cream and pea sauce that ended up in the broiler for a little while to melt the cheese. The guys rolled out and cut a wide noodle and spaghetti.

We served Caesar salad with the better-half’s amazing, super-delicious anchovy and garlic dressing. We had crema catalana for dessert (a Mediterranean version of creme brulee).

Somehow Toss Across came up in conversation, so I went into the attic and found the better-half’s game (still in the original box) and we played a couple of rounds. It was more exciting when we were all eight.

This spider showed up early this morning. I think it is a fan of Lissie too:

I got up before 6 this morning like I almost always do on a work day (except Fridays which is my work at home day and the commute is much shorter). I took my shower and secretly hoped the rain I drove home in yesterday had turned to ice or snow. By the time I got downstairs I was really regretting getting up. I woke up in the middle of a dream and that’s never good.

I flipped on the back door light and peered outside. I was happy to see it was snowing. I turned on the TV, saw the footage and the discussion of whether schools should be in session (some opened only to close after the kids were in their seats). I called my supervisor’s voice mail around 6:10 and told her that I’d work from home today–hey, I toted a ton of stuff home in an old Kroger bag. I’m starting a new trend in work accessories.

I sat down at my computer a full half-hour before I usually start. I answered some emails and then fooled around on the web. What? You don’t start your office day with fooling around on the internet? Oh, you hang out in the kitchen drinking coffee? Whatever. Most of us waste time first thing in the morning. I do it at my desk.

I talked to my boss. She reported that it took her an hour to drive 12 miles. We agreed staying home was really the best idea. Then I worked until about 10:15 when an email arrived alerting me the university closed. I whooped it up but then found out that the school actually closed around 9am, but that the alert system via email was delayed.

Our email sucks. It’s been up and down for the past two days and this morning an email I sent internally ended up in an HR person’s mail box. She replied and said what’s this for. I had to apologize and explained the message was supposed to go to someone else…how hard is it to keep an email system up and running accurately?

I walked outside a little while ago to spread some bird seed around. The feeder is actually frozen shut. As soon as I was back in the house, the birds were eating. I think they post a sentry and as soon as seed appears the alert goes out. It works much better than our email system.

My eyes nearly fell out of my head after they rolled completely over–what the hell?

We were supposed to host an early Chinese New Year today but the huge snow storm put a stop to that. Since we had all the ingredients, we decided to practice making dumplings. We have Andrea Nguyen’s new book Asian Dumplings and she offers really practical tips and if you go to that link, she has videos to teach you steps like rolling out dumpling wrappers.

We prepared the pork and napa cabbage dumpling recipe (they are simmered for about 8 minutes) and we made the entire recipe but only put together a quarter of the dumplings. We’ll tackle the rest tomorrow. I predict we’ll eat some and freeze some for later (or we’ll just eat until we burst).

The whole process was surprisingly easy. I need to get better at shaping the dumplings, but that comes with practice.

Here’s an action shot of the better-half dunking a dumpling into sauce before hoovering it down in the time it took me to take the shot and put the camera down:

Because this killed me with the cute on Friday, I’m sharing it with you today: