Saturday, September 30, 2006

Yesterday was Salsa Day

Yesterday was Salsa day. No not national Salsa day. Or even Salsa Day in the lunchroom. Jodie and I did our fall Salsa making. We had two and half bushels of Tomatoes. Onions, peppers, hot peppers and assorted other goodies. Not to mention all the jars, canners and items needed to make all this goodness.

You begin by blanching the tomatoes. This takes a few hours with all those tomatoes. Pan after pan. You peel them, core them, squash them and move onto the next dozen cooling in cold water.

It breaks down this way. In two large stock pots we add in each...

forty cups of tomatoes
fifteen cups of onions
fifteen cups of green peppers.
garlic
cider vinegar
two cups of hot peppers
sugar
salt

And then you stir till you can't stir anymore. Then you begin the canning part.

It took about ten hours. We ended up with 28 jars each of salsa. Then with the extra tomatoes we did whole tomatoes. Four or five jars each of those.

Now in a month and a half, we do another ten hours of cookie making. Man, that one is just so long.

Years ago I had a bumper crop of tomatoes and ended up with 80 quarts of salsa. I gave it away to everyone I knew.

Dr Who, and Paula Deen

Tonight was the first episode of season two. I liked it. I wasn't sure if I would like the new Doctor, but I did. I've seen him on something else on the BBC though. A movie I think.

Tonight was always the first show of the NEW Paula Deen show. She now has an audience, still cooking but with interaction from her audience. I hope it gets better, because I wasn't blown away. I love her other show, and was expecting a lot more from this one.
I guess I didn't like MY Paula as sexual as she was. She's not supposed to be hitting on guys in her audience. For shame Paula, for shame.
Just something wrong with hints about hard horns, and how to stick things up them to get them hard. Ok, I wasn't buying it. I want my Paula innocent and goofy.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Almost a YaYa.

I have a married daughter who is 24 and who desperately wants, needs, desires a baby.
Every month she gets her hopes up, just to be crushed when she isn't pregnant...Again.

For the last few weeks I've been dreaming that 'I' was pregnant. Well, that aint gonna happen. But, in the dreams I was most definitely having a baby. A few days ago I had a vivid, heart tugging dream. There was a baby boy. Tubes running in and out of him. He was blond and cute as a bug. In the dream, I just knew that he was dying, and we were just waiting for him to go. I finally told him it was alright for him to go. It would be alright and he would be fine.
The memory of that dream has come back to me know and then over the past few days but I just put it down to a strange dream.

My daughter did find out yesterday that she was eight weeks pregnant. She was over the moon. But by the time she arrived home, she was bleeding. And lost the baby. She didn't even have the chance to tell her husband.
She called me this morning to tell me. And I remembered the dream once again. Had he come to me to ask permission to leave? I think he did.

At least we know she CAN get pregnant. The doctors told her to wait 8 weeks and to try again. I think it is better to loose it at eight weeks instead of seven months. The doctors told her that if she lost it this easily, she would never have gone full term anyways.

I'm hoping he will give it another try. At least I know he is on a psychic level. He came to me in a dream. So, I'm very much looking forward to getting to know him.

Monday, September 25, 2006

Good day...Except...

I slept like a log last night. Something that doesn't happen often. I woke up this morning before the kids went off to school, and then I ran into the dog with my little toe.
He just looked at me as if to say..."That was rude. Why did you do THAT?" I swear he didn't budge. And now I can't put weight on my toe. I can move it, somewhat. But the longer I walked on it today at work, the more it ached. I left an hour early, they can BITE me if they don't like it. And now I'm afraid to take my shoe off. LOL.
Gonna go and get tape to wrap it for tomorrow.
And did I mention that he's not a little dog either. He's a black lab. Probably close to 80 pounds. Almost as tall as the kitchen table. How I didn't see him, I have no idea.

This is the type of thing I'm famous for. The last time I broke something. I was fell on black ice heading for a hot tub in November. I hit the ice and did the windmill thing with my arms. I broke my foot in two places. Half my toes on the broke foot went in two different directions. This way and that. Jodie asked if that's how they normally looked? smartass. No they usually all face the same way. Geesh.

So, here's hoping this toe is just bruised.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Dark Shadows

Hanuman mentioned Dark Shadows on his blog the other day.
http://www.chaiandsympathy.blogspot.com/

and it got me to thinking. Yes, I do that sometimes. And all by myself too. Aren't you impressed? You should be.
Well, anyhow, I loved Dark Shadows. I too would run home from school to watch it with my mom. The vampires, witches, ghosts. Man it was sorta like a family reunion. lol. I loved them all. Angelique was the early version of Alexis on dynasty. Loved her. She was always stirring up trouble.

I've always been a little obsessed with Vampires. I never missed Creature Features. There was always the chance that there was a classic on. But in the sixties that was pretty much all we had. Bella, Vincent, Lon, loved them all. They were the masters.
They switched off playing monsters. Monsters, vampires, werewolves, invisible men.

And no outright blood and gore. Sure we knew it was there, but they didn't have to beat us over the head with it. We had our IMAGINATION to use. And boy did we ever. Slept with the lights on plenty after staying up late to watch some scary movie.

There was just something so sexual I think about 'THE LOOK' before the vampire bite into the neck. Sure they were gonna die, but there was always the chance they would not kill them, but make them into the living dead too. Some stories relied on the three times to make a vampire thing. Until the third bite, they were under the Vampires spell. He could call them to come to him at any time. The bitten were in between the worlds of the living and dead. But, at any time if they pissed off the master, he could just drain them and that was all she wrote. Wow, what control.
Hey, maybe that's where my Bdsm fantasies come from. Ya think? ok, too much information...

But, back to Dark Shadows. Barnabas wasn't handsome, not even cute. But there was something that made him sexy and you were drawn to him. Homely as sin, but man could he mesmerize you. lol. Vampires, go figure.

Friday, September 15, 2006

WE HAVE BABIES

The cat finally had her kittens. I didn't think she was ever gonna have them. Been waiting for weeks it seemed. So, evidently she didn't get pregnant when I thought she did.

She is black and white. She has four little babies. All with white socks like her. Two are white and a light gray. One is white and a little darker gray. And one is black with the white feet. All so cute.

Our other cat who is just about six months old is so confused. lol. He goes over and peaks over the box and watches her with them. And when they make noise he gets this really weird look on his face, like he is trying to figure out what in the world they could be.

Too bad they weren't born last night I could have named them after the Supernova top four. Magni, Toby, Delana and Lukas.

AND LUKAS WON BY THE WAY. YEAH LUKAS!

Work

I was working last night. The last hour I was promoted. Ok, not really, but sorta. They had put me in shoes. I know nothing about stocking shoes. The person in charge came around, looked around and sent me to the office to help out.
For the last hour I sat at a desk and folded and stuffed envelopes.

I am either really good at doing office things, or really bad at stocking shoes.
It might have had something to do with me walking around dragging the same box for ten minutes trying to find out where they went.

Not complaining. Like stuffing envelopes.

The Cars

Ok, I just heard on the radio that the eighties band THE CARS will now be fronted by Todd Rungren. Now, I have nothing against Todd. In fact I used to really like him. But, THE CARS? There is just something very wrong with that.

Monday, September 11, 2006

...Movie quotes for five hundred Alex!

"Live with me!"

"I wouldn't live with you if you had the only tree house and the world was flooded with piss!"

"What.. Is my favorite line from a movie, Alex"

I just LOVE that line. It is from the movie PARENTHOOD. Martha Plimpton says it to Keanu Reeves when he is chasing her across the lawn trying to get her to marry him.
For some reason that line has stuck with me all these years. It might not be exact but it is damn close. lol.

Ok, you guys are slave drivers. I found the exact quote, but I still like my version better.

"I wouldn't live with you if the world were flooded with piss and you lived in a tree!"


So, what are some of your favorites?

Mr Floor wax guy.

There is this guy who waxes the new floors at work. He has one of those zamboni type floor waxers, you know the ones, they are about as big as an old Buick? Well, he seems to always come by for a sweep with his big handy dandy tool when there are a ton of boxes, empty and stock full. We have moved them out of his way several times, all the while giving him dirty looks. He's not catching on. He just keeps coming around while we are trying to stock, fighting to keep up with the pallets or just trying to figure out those floor plans which must have been designed at some high tech facility some place, which by the way must only speak Italian and draw in cyber geek.
He will just stand there with his machine running, spitting wax this way and that while we ignore him. We finally just kick stuff out of the way and he moves on. Content in the fact that we have given in to his far superior intelligence and cunning.

Tina and I have already discussed if a human body can fit in the carboard compactor.

I'll keep you updated.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

9-11 coverage

I'm not sure how I feel about this.

Seems CNN will be showing in live time all the coverage they have of that morning, as it happened and they broadcast it.

I understand, we should never forget. I won't. But, I don't think I can stand to watch it all again. Hell, I can't even say the pledge without still tearing up.
It grabs my heart and squeezes it. Any little clip of the footage and I'm one big mess of emotions.

Five years. It doesn't seem like it could possibly be that long ago already.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Old friend, New direction

Isn't it funny how time changes things, and people too it seems.

I have had a very good, best friend for twenty four years. In the past two years she has disappeared from our lives, almost completely. She resurfaces now and again when she has the time for us, which used to hurt and make us furious. She had time for her looser boyfriends and their drug habits, but not the people who have had her back all these years.

She made it out to dinner with us Saturday night for my birthday. Jodie didn't find it unsettling, but I felt she was different, a bit combative especially with the waitress. lol. But, the thing that was pissing me off the most was everything that Jodie and I mentioned on the menu that we'd had that we thought was good, she poo pooed. "I don't like Alfredo sauce, I don't like this...I don't want that." I wanted to reach over and smack her.

I've thought about this for the last two days, trying to figure out what made me mad about Saturday night. I just guess I feel like she's not the same person she always has been, but this isn't a new thought, she has changed over the last two years. Pulled away, and threw our friendships in our faces until she needs someone to talk to. Then were good enough again.
But this time I finally and concretely decided I've had enough. I'm done. I don't need to do dinner or lunch anymore, I don't need none of it anymore. It makes me sad that it has come to this point, but it has and I have.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Dinner first?

I just went to let the old dog, he's 13 or 14 not sure because we found him a bunch of years ago, or rather he found us. Just showed up one day out in our field. Then came up to me in the yard and never left. That was 11 years ago.

Well, today I opened the door, he went to wobble out and peed all over my feet.

Now, I know it's been a really long time since I was out on a date... But isn't he supposed to buy me dinner... Or... Something first?