Friday, April 30, 2010

Obsessions

Okay. I am going to self-medicate my desire for organic, self sustaining farming by going to a Farmer’s Market in Columbia, MO!! I’ve heard that they had a Farmer’s market, but I didn’t know much about it.

I go to our local farmer’s market here in Jefferson City. It’s situated in the K-mart parking lot. There are probably a dozen vendors, and of course, the selection is based on season. Right now, the local farmer’s market has baked goods and bedding plants, mostly.

However, it appears that the Columbia Farmer’s market has WAAAAAAYYYY more vendors. Lots of eggs, fresh cut flowers, baked goods (baked with stone ground wheat that they grind themselves!!), herbs, veggies, and meat. We eat a lot of Chicken, so I am going to buy fresh, antibiotic/hormone free chicken! And goat cheese. There are even vendors that sell MUSHROOMS!! M.U.S.H.R.O.O.M.S!! Cultivated, I am sure, but FRESH!! I didn’t even know people GREW mushrooms around here!

Of course, there are honey vendors, berry vendors, ASPARAGUS vendors!! Omg….we love asparagus! I’ve heard it’s a bitch to grow, so we’ve never tried so I always treasure this time of year when it’s less expensive at the grocery store……..but people GROW IT AND SELL IT!

I don’t have a huge budget this month, so I will have to shop wisely, as I am sure fresh, organic, home grown, picked this week stuff is more expensive than the grocery mass market, but I am bound and determined to see what I can get for my dollar! I am so excited, that I for once am anxious for this day/night to be OVER so I can go tomorrow to Columbia!! I love my Friday Nights, so this is surprising!

We are supposed to get a round of severe storms this afternoon/evening. I don’t like storms. Another reason to move on from tonight into TOMORROW!!

I guess I’d better go prepare a menu this week that offers an opportunity for my farmer’s market fare!

Happy Friday! Toodles for now.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Conundrum of Catchphrases and Contradictions

Well, kids, the only way to say it is that the weekend sucked. I want a do-over. It was rainy, cold (well, not COLD, but chilly and damp, which does NOTHING for my hair), and it just was generally sucktastic at every twist and turn.

For TWO CONSECUTIVE evenings, my plans of grilling burgers and hotdogs and adding my own touches to canned baked beans and making cole slaw were THWARTED!! And tonight we have the annual Football Booster spaghetti dinner. So, my plans will be put aside once again. Have y’all ever had school cafeteria spaghetti? It’s not very appetizing. And to purchase the greasy, flavorless heap o’ noodles is a whopping $8! Yes, it’s for the football program, which we support, because our kids play it, but ewwwww. I think I’d rather pay the $8 to the program, and stay home and eat grilled burgers with green onions in them. If son #2 wouldn’t be offended at our lack of appearance, I think I’d do that. Actually, he wouldn’t be OFFENDED, but he seems excited about the event, and I hate to not let that thrive in him……..so greasy noodles it is. I appreciate the thought behind the event, but it seems like GREEK to me that a simple, more FLAVORFUL tomato sauce can’t be created by SOMEONE with little effort and/or cost………I do it at home all the time.

So. Check out this website
Isn’t it COOL? We’ve eaten this very goat cheese at a cool Bistro in Rural Missouri. RURAL Missouri. If people in a town with less than a few people can cook, why can’t the BIG CITY (HAHA) SCHOOL CAFETERIA?

This Bistro we go to is the neatest place to eat. They take reservations only, and they make homemade GOURMET fare. He makes ricotta cheese FROM SCRATCH an makes FROM SCRATCH ravioli served in garlic and olive oil and OMG……O.M.G. They have only a few things on the menu each weekend and you eat what they are offering. They serve those yummy ravioli as an appetizer as well as warm GOAT CHEESE with herbs and toast points.

So, the goat cheese. From a sustained farm. Fresh. Goats. Grass. Fresh Air. Can we say HELL. TO. THE. YEAH.???? I am so enamored by ‘fresh’ and ‘organic’ and ‘self sustaining’ and all these buzz words of the day. Now I want goats to make cheese. And chickens to lay eggs. I really, REALLY want chickens. To lay eggs and to eat. We already get beef from Perfectly’s Dad. No hormones, no antibiotics. Fresh. Grass. Fresh Air.

Here lies the problem. I don’t want to DEAL with the goats, or chickens or the eggs. Or a garden. Or a compost site. I just want to reap the REWARDS of these efforts. Actually, I could see myself taking food scraps to a compost pile or bin. I could see myself feeding chickens, and maybe even checking for eggs. What I cannot see is cleaning a chicken coop, or for SURE not butchering or de-feathering a chicken. No way.

I am such a citified girl…..no blood….no feathers…no scalding water……..nope….not for me. No turning the earth with compost….no weeding (hey…I’m allergic), no goat hearding or milking……..I just WANT the stuff…….and I want it to be MINE--from MY animals and plants (cheaper…and I know it’s for real).

It’s a sad state of affairs. I want to be a hippie. A bohemian type. A true planet saver. A fresh food forager/getter. But that’s HARD y’all! Really Hard. And it takes A LOT of TIME!

I already TRIED the Shark Steam Cleaner to do my part in saving the earth, and it SUCKED! I’m back to bleach and Lysol and Febreze. Ha!! Gotcha! Not really....I just don't clean much!

So, what's a girl to do? I guess, I'll have to hit the farmer's markets and Mennonite stores for a stash of organic, huh?

Toodles for now.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Marijuana is an Herb!

Huh! Who knew!

We planted our herb garden this past weekend. Not marijuana, however, but the gold standards....Mint, basil, chives, parsley, thyme, lavendar and rosemary. Oh and one sneaky catnip found its way into my cart.....just to freak Perfectly's dad's farm cats out! I bought some for home and some for the farm...so we'd all have PLENTY of herbs this summer....and I can puree/chiffonad them and freeze them for winter soups, stews and other stuff I want to put them in.

I want a siamese cat. I don't know much about them, but they are stunning.

That's about all I've got today folks.

Oh, wait....I made a batch of hooch over the weekend, too. Not 'hooch', but limoncello. I just call it hooch....'cause that's more fun and folksy and all. I'll let you know how it turns out after a couple of weeks of the everclear steeping with the zest of 12 lemons. Then simple syrup gets added, and it's frozen. Of course, everclear won't freeze, but it makes this syrupy, cold digestif!

Happy Monday, all! Toodles!

Friday, April 16, 2010

Jump the Shark

So.....I've detailed my housekeeping deficit frequently on this blog. Y'all don't understand. I know that people say "oh, my house is a WRECK" and you find a glass in the sink and a towel neatly draped over the tub. HORRORS!!

I seriously am a loser regarding housekeeping. If 'company' is coming, we make an effort to try to make things presentable, but upon even a cursory inspection, one can see that it's NOT clean and neat.

When I do clean, I want it to be DISINFECTED. I am a firm believer of using bleach and Lysol products to disinfect surfaces. Therefore, I broke down and bought a gadget that I was seriously convinced would aid in my halfhearted housecleaning attempts. One that promised a sanitized and fresh smelling home! One that I researched extensively on frienemy, Google. One that got SHITTY reviews, but there were still those GLOWING reports of how well this gadget did the TOUGHEST of jobs.

I bought a Shark Hand Held Steam Cleaner. One that bursts forth
steam from a small jet to force the 'ick' from the tightest, hardest to reach areas. One with oodles of attachments. One with microfiber pockets to put over the attachments to clean everything from mirrors to pillows!!

Guess what? Huh? Just Guess???......it sucked. Sucked Big Hairy Donkey Balls. I spent over 20 minutes splooshing hot steam into a window sill that hadn't been properly cleaned since we lived here----18 years!! It's been casually wiped, but not deep down, shiny white CLEANED. I just knew this Shark would do the trick. And it didn't. It just blew wet dirt around. It loosened some of the deep in-the-cracks grime, but woo hoo. Bleach and a toothbrush would have done the same thing. My bathroom still faintly smells like stale pee and my windows/mirrors/toilet etc are no cleaner than I could have done it with a Lysol wipe. And the worst part? 86 EFFING DOLLARS!! $86!!! I'll be visiting Target later this afternoon to return it.

I guess I'll have to buy some dollar store brushes and get after the yuck, huh?

I HATE cleaning.

happy Friday!!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Gut-Wrenching

How do you say “I’m Sorry” to people you don’t know? Son #1 lost two friends to a horrific car accident Sunday night. TWO. BOYS. 19 and 20 yrs of age.

This is the phone call in the night that every person imaginable dreads; but parents especially. Parents worry unendingly about this ‘call’.

I don’t know the families of the boys involved, however, I wish I could just find them and hug them. How tragic to lose your child.

I lost twin daughters in 1989. I was 5 and a half months pregnant when I went into premature labor. I was devastated. D.E.V.A.S.T.A.T.E.D. I didn’t know how I’d ever go on. Someone I worked with told me how sorry they were, but that I should be grateful that I didn’t ‘have’ my twins for long. I was furious. How could anyone make such a COLD-HEARTED remark? Did this woman not UNDERSTAND that I’d just lost my BABIES?

Now I understand. 21 years later, I understand. Losing your babies IS devastating, and it changed who I was! But to bear, raise and love a child for 20 years, then lose them? Unimaginable. The dreaded ‘phone call’. It sends fear down my spine.

I may complain about the trials of parenting, and the antics my kids do and the heartache they cause. But they are alive. They are healthy. They are ABLE to be difficult! They are able to BE whatever they want! For this I am grateful.

One of the boys was a close friend of Son #1. I know he is grieving. As much as it pains me to think of using someone else’s tragedy…..I hope if ANYTHING can come of it, that the kids can see what happened, and LEARN from it. Learn to be a safer driver, etc. That the kids can all see how families and friends are suffering right now. Maybe, if nothing else, those kids will learn.

As a stuffy parent, learning her way back into the teenage world 30 years later………I will say…don’t judge. Don’t roll your eyes at the pierced, tattooed, orange haired teen you pass on the street. This is someone’s CHILD. This may be just a person who loves to express himself!! Don’t judge the ‘nerdy’ kids, or the ‘popular’ kids, or the ‘hick’ kids, or the ‘goth’ kids. They are all just kids. Trying to feel their way through life. A teenager may have it right. Express yourself….let your inner talents FLOW….don’t conform…..stay true to yourself and what you believe. We as adults may learn a lesson from those teens that we shy away from…………….the teens that we sometimes fear. They may actually ‘get’ it in a backwards kind of way. Be loyal to your friends……..live life to the fullest. The sad part, is that these same teens that ‘get it’, don’t ‘get’ the fact that there are CONSEQUENCES.

Ah, consequences. Isn’t that why as adults we become stuffy? We know if we pierce or tattoo our bodies and dye our hair wild colors that our co-workers will judge us. We may not get a promotion….our clients may turn away from us. We conform. Because if we don’t …there are consequences.

How we HATE the consequences! We stay in a dead end job, because we HAVE a job…and ‘what if’ we went and did something we were passionate about? Maybe we’d LOSE our jobs! Does a teen care? No way……..it’s a CHALLENGE! Parents of small children(especially) may not go out for an evening or weekend with their friends, because *gasp* they are a PARENT….and couldn’t POSSIBLY leave the baby! What would others THINK if I went and had ‘FUN’ and left my kid! Not a teen…..they’d go on and have fun with their friends, rather than isolate themselves.

Consequences. Somehow we as PEOPLE need to grasp the need for consequences, and the differences in that as opposed to perceived consequences….the standards we hold ourselves and others to because that’s what we THINK is right. So, here’s my challenge. LIVE LIKE A TEEN! LOVE LIKE A TEEN! Bear in mind the serious consequences of things, but let societies restraints go for a while. We’d all be better for it.

Rest in peace, boys. You will be missed greatly by the HUGE group of teens and adults that loved you.

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Drive Shaft on the GROUND....looking like I'm BROKE with a DRIVE SHAFT ON THE GROUND!!!

Seriously Ellen. Call me. Make me Laugh. Have me and Son #2 to your show and all the little teenagers and tweens will think he's ADORABLE. I am still on my mission to meet you and have my adorable son meet you too. He has a serious Ellen crush!

Today, I had an eye Doctor appt. Our weather man promised it to flirt with record breaking high temperatures. The birds were singing, the grass is practically growing before my eyes! I was off work, even if it was for an eye Dr. appt.....how awesome was THIS going to be?

Then PERFECTLY luck kicked into high gear. When I got into the car, I saw the vet had called. They don't randomly call....so I did something I DETEST...and called the vet and said "Hi....this is Perfectly, and I saw you called my cell phone????" Yes...I was one of THEM. Anyway, they informed me that one of my dogs was down the street at a neighbor's house. I was supposed to call the guy...Ross. I'm asking the Vet how Copper got to Ross's....as if she'd know......but instead I just got a phone number. I called Ross and found out that he lived a couple of doors down...I inquired to see if he happened to notice two OTHER dogs, and he didn't. I sped home, made sure that the other two were in the house (they were). I picked up Copper, and took him home. I think the guy may be a police officer. There's a house right there that a cop lives in.....and I think that may be it. So Copper did the right thing when he got lost, and found a policeman.

So, I set off to Hy Vee to pick up ingredients for an awesome veggie sandwich that I'd seen. I was in the liquor aisle (WHAAAATTT??? I was just looking....sheesh), when Son #2 called and said that his truck was broken. I asked HOW was it broken. He said that the Transmission fell out of it. Holy Crap....the TRANSMISSION? I inquired "fell out??"...and was told Yes...FELL OUT.

I crazily tried to reach Mr. P while trying to get to my kid, with a gazillion transmission parts all over some street. Mr. P and Son #2 talked and they determined that it wasn't really the transmission...but the drive train...or drive shaft...or SOMETHING necessary to make the truck GO. Apparently this is bad, but not nearly as bad as a whole transmission.

So, I abandoned the thought of lovely grilled eggplant and red pepper sandwiches with pesto and goat cheese and went to a fast food place (I hadn't eaten since 10 am....what of it??) It was sort of just okay. Oh, and who happened to drive up behind me? My Oldest who was there to buy a soft drink...who graciously hopped out of HIS car and ran up to mine where I was ordering asking me to buy his large drink.

So I came home, and waited the result of the truck. They are out doing boy things like probably looking underneath and trying to diagnosis it (yep.....SOMETHING fell off........nope...it won't START). Then we'll take it somewhere to see if it can be fixed, or if we'll have to put it down.

Now, I know we are LUCKY. We have two working vehicles. But the sheer convenience of having the boys having their own vehicles is because WE DON'T HAVE TO TAKE them EVERYWHERE...Which makes our lives so. much. easier. I should grouse.....we have transportation, we have a home, we have everything we need, but sometimes the Princess in me STILL wants to shout that I am ALREADY STRESSED. I have two teenage boys.....a full time job......a 'secret' that I have to fret about.....my eldest teenage son that I worry NON-STOP about (that friends is fodder for another post), and now a stinking drive SOMETHING or other that is on the ground. Hey....maybe I could get Ellen to let me sing 'Drive Shaft on the Ground' on American Idol and become an overnight success!! I could GET a newer vehicle for me and pass the older one on to the boy!!

So, now the house is hot and humid. Outside is LOVELY, but there's no-one here to sit out there with me...and the dogs aren't the best conversationalists.

So I'm grousing here. Admittedly, I shouldn't. I have so many PERFECT things in my life...I shouldn't let teenagers, a stressful change, or a truck get me down.

But it does....oh, and I have bi-focals. This is not new but they had to 'up' the strength of them, and I'm mildly nauseous from weird glasses and contacts.

C'mon Ellen......don't you FEEL MY PAIN? Oh..I'll twitter you too...or tweet you, or whatever......I'm on a QUEST!!

Happy Summer when it's still early Spring!!