Smokey the Magnificent

First driving lesson tomorrow. I got my licence in the mail, resplendent with a photo that makes me look like a cynical old-maid librarian who swigs from bottles of embalming fluid behind the stacks. My father-in-law will be instructing me. He’s quite good, calm and factual, but with a tendency to start snapping “Brake. Brake! BRAKE!” at apparently random intervals. As I recall, during our abortive lessons in the Uni car park last year, I can get up to third gear and avoid lamp posts like nobody’s business, but I cannot reverse. Also I dislike indicating and checking the rearview mirrors, mostly because it didn’t seem strictly necessary in an empty car park and I was having too much lovely fun with the steering. Not terribly promising, is it?

Also, practically my only sister Betty Scandretti has become affianced. Three cheers for Betty. Top work. We knew you could do it with a little application and persistence. Let us all learn from the example of Betty.

I made pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cashew cookies today. Who knew such a thing existed? I was mooping around the blogosphere in that contrary mood where no recipe seems to fit - it has ingredients you do not possess, or has to sit overnight before cutting, or needs those little cookie cutters the snortlepig scattered around the floor and Helpdesk Man trod on so the heart, your favourite shape, will never be the same again. And then suddenly, pow. Or zap. Bakerella, whose website is causing you to sniff snobbishly because of her lavish use of Betty Crocker boxed mixes, comes out with a for-scratch recipe for pumpkin chocolate chip pecan cookies. And your wilting spirits perk up like the ears on a cartoon rabbit, and away you scurry. The cashews weren’t canon, I just ran out of pecans. And the biscuits were nommy, and it made enough to give to my father-in-law tomorrow to say thank you for the driving lesson, assuming he exits said lesson still able to eat; and for Bible study on Thursday. So ha.

Well, anyway. It is 11:30 in the blessed PM and I must go publish an article about the best times of year to go to Disneyland; a subject on which I am troublingly knowledgeable, considering I have never been.

1. I found a pit in my allegedly pitted olive.

2. I schlped up a fly with the vacuum cleaner. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but have been hindered by both the wiliness of flies and my tendency to not vacuum. But today I got sick of seeing bits of dry rice stuck between the floor boards, so I got out the vacuum and there it was, chillin’ on the lampshade. So I crept up behind it, and - schlp! It was this big. Do you think it died, or flew out again?

3. Speaking of flies, the snortlepig totally wigged out after seeing the corpus of a fly on the living room floor. She responds to seeing dead cockroaches on the ground in town with a gleeful “NASTY crocus!”, so I’m not sure why the tiny mortal coil of a mere blowfly filled her with such terror and sorrow. I had to give it a decent burial with the dustpan and brush before she’d calm down.

4. I made white chocolate ice cream with dark chocolate straciatella.

5. I bought two cheap bottles of wine at the supermarket, one white and one red, for experimental cooking purposes. Tonight was fish, which we had with an Italian tomatoey, white wine and olive sauce. It wasn’t the best fish I’ve ever had, but it was sophisticated as hell. Must have been a whole, what? 75 cents’ worth of wine in there? Earth has not anything to show more fair.

Actually more than five exciting things happened to me today, at least judging by the standards of the above. I cleaned the leather couch. This shouldn’t have been exciting, except that we a) eat dinner on the couch every night and b) have a one-year-old. Apparently the makers of the leather cleaner did not expect the couch to attain this level of filth. “Do not rub”, indeed. HOW ELSE ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO GET THE SWEETCORN OFF?

More excitingly yet, I discovered this blog: Sleep Talkin’ Man. It is simply a record of a man’s nightly unconscious ramblings, recorded dutifully by his ever-loving wife. Some of the things he says are not entirely decent, so I shall reproduce a few of the tamer ones here for those too moral to click:

“You’ve got to save the curtains! Save the curtains… They hold so many secrets.”

“I know it’s a shame that when I walk out of a room it gets just a little bit darker and gray. It’s a burden I carry.”

“Tea bags, see? Better be careful with the tea bags. They’re delicate creatures. Handle them with care.”

“Imagine waking up next to you every day… One chunder-bucket moment after another.”

“Legs time! Everybody get your legs!”

And my personal favourite:
“You know, it’s a human race. And you lost.”

So I suppose the seventh most exciting thing that happened to me today was discovering at least one person in this world is wittier than me in his sleep.

I just learned that Einstein never learned to drive a car. To which I say: Is it.

I am now an official scholar of the automobilial arts. I have a dodgy-looking temporary licence and everything. And while we’re on the subject, is it license or licence? I can never figure that one out, BA notwithstanding.

This weekend will be full of glamour and sparkle due to the annual Summer Festival, which is currently sitting soggily in the public gardens getting rained on. Assuming the lightning storm clears by tomorrow, Helpdesk Man and I will be moseying down at 9PM to watch Broadway on the Boardwalk, a collection of show tunes sung by the local operatics society. Then on Saturday the piggie and I will trot to a pantomime of Beauty and the Beast and a Food, Wine and Jazz festival - I’m not into wine and have no particular opinion on jazz, but the thought that there might be little bits of cheese to sample on toothpicks justifies the $20 entrance fee in my mind. On Sunday the main event will occur, the Sunset Symphony at which my own dear Helpdesk Man is performing along with his marvy young vocal collective. There will be fireworks, which I like muchly.

Add to that the zoo trip tomorrow, and I have four events for which I need to cook exciting snacks. Plus I have to finish a baby’s bonnet for a friend’s new baby today and go grocery shopping. It is an exciting time to be a Smokey.

I cleaned the fridge today. I can very rarely say that. Interestingly, I was expecting to find all manner of unseemly smeg lurking under mould, but I didn’t. There was a small ramekin half-full of chocolate moisse I don’t remember making, but it only looked elderly, not grotesque. One could say it had acquired a certain gravitas - think Patrick Stuart, as opposed to post-earring Harrison Ford. And there was a jar of REALLY old hummus that I only threw out on principle - smelled fine, looked fine, but could conceivably have been in league with the Commies back in the day and the last thing my fridge needs is to be overrun by the Red Menace, innit. So it’s a mystery. Either Helpdesk Man has been being cleanly behind my back or I need to give the fridge a raise.

Anyhoo. Practically my only sister Betty Scandretti has tagged me for a weedy meme, Happy 101, or Ten Things That Make You Put the Gun Down Once More, For Now. I’m then supposed to tag a number of friends, that being the sort of thing that makes memes happy, but a) meh and b) hello, Aspie, “friends”?

Here I go.

1. Having a clean fridge. It just makes me want to curl up inside it and - hold on, we’re out of cheese. When did that happen? I distinctly remember not moving cheese when I cleaned the shelves. We had cheese. What the blazes is my fridge up to?

2. The last page of The Grapes of Wrath. Everybody I’ve spoken to on the matter finds it creepy as heck, but I don’t.

3. Olives. Ha!

4. Playing poker with Helpdesk Man. More so if I’m winning, or at least not bleeding chips to the point where he shoots me a withering glare and asks me to recite the rule about pot odds.

5. The snortlepig saying “Kees eyes, kees chin, kees nose, kees ears, kees chin, okay!”

6. Sewing, on the rare occasions that the needle isn’t coming unthreaded and the bobbin hasn’t run out unnoticed halfway through a long seam and the pattern doens’t require a degree in hyperspatial engineering to figure out and the pig isn’t drawing on the sewing machine with a pink felt tip pen and the fabric is still pleasing one several days after having purchased it, making one go “ooo” instead of “hrmm”, and everything is snortly.

7. Helpdesk Man comparing my cooking favourably to purchased foodstuffs, whether from a restaurant or particular supermarket brand.

8. Rediscovering an old interest after getting into a rut. I don’t mean like Willow and Xander. I mean like cooking. In theory, I love to cook, no? Ask people to describe a Smokey, and once they’ve gotten words like “crepuscular” out of the way and mentioned my unnervingly mobile upper lip, they’ll say “she cooks”. And I do. But sometimes I find myself making the same eight meals over and over again, feeling moop about the entire process. And then, aha! I get a book out of the libe about pasta-making, and the spark is rekindled. I had practically my only small sister Ruth over the other night and we made tomato fettucine in a cream and basil sauce, and it was delicious. So there.

9. Not being dairy-free. I do not mean to exhibit smugness in front of any Gentle Readers who come over in suppurating pustules when schmeared with cream cheese. But it is the truth. It makes me happy. Sometimes I’m eating a bowl of ice cream and I think “Gosh, I’m glad I’m not dairy-free”, and then I grate some cheese on top of the ice cream and slather it in custard. Or at least, I could. Unlike some.

10. I saw an inchworm one time. It made me happy.

Committed a near faux pas tonight. I was sitting at the computer typing an impassioned diatribe about the Catholic position on birth control (long story) when an elderly couple from our church walked in, Bibles in hands. I had a moment of panic that they’d heard we’d taken up poker and had come to stage an intervention: but fortunately, before I could ask them to what I owed the pleasure of their company, they were followed by another elderly gentleman from our church with a Bible in his hand, and I remembered: this was our turn to host prayer meeting.

By what can only be described, given the circumstances, as Divine providence I had cleaned the bathroom this afternoon on a whim, and had a cake tin full of triple chocolate cookies. More fortunately still, I had not yet gotten around to hennaing my roots. I’m not entirely sure I pulled off the impromptu gracious hostess act as it is, but it would have been far more difficult with a plastic bag on my head and green eyebrows.

The panna cotta… I’m not quite convinced about the panna cotta. I think it was a little too firm: one expected to find a goldfish or similar preserved within for making specimens of. And I think milk chocolate might be more promising than white. Still, the panna cottas blooped out of their molds pleasingly like little volcanoes, and I spooned caramel sauce over them, and calories were ingested, and all was well. For my next project, I am going to learn how to make bagel crisps. I like ‘em. And they’re nearly five dollars a packet, which is more than my sorry life is worth.

What did the snortlepig do tonight? Counted to eight. I was confused by this, as I’ve never counted with her past five for toe-related reasons; but I think she probably picked it up from a vocal exercise we do at singing group. We count up the octave and back down. The snortlepig tends to leave out number 5, but I am impressed with her nonetheless. We should do a vocal exercise based on Roman numerals next, or the dates of kings.

Of the three candied bacon ice cream eaters, one was enthusiastic, one mildly so and one not. So there you have it. I’m not sure I’ll make it again, partly because it was rather labour-intensive; but I might make candied bacon next time I go on a hike, ie. in about ten years.

My article about FAM is done and handed in. Woot.

Today I just fulfilled a long-put-off vague desire and made panna cotta. White chocolate panna cotta. I’m not sure about it. I like custard and milky things and white chocolate, but on the other hand the simplicity of the recipe makes ot starkly apparent that it is basically solidified milk. We will see.

More excitingly, I am trying my hand as a conductress this afternoon. Well, a semi-conductress. Like silicon. Or silicone, I suppose, being the feminine variant. Never mind. Anyway. My mother has started up a homeschool choir, and I will be doing vocal exercises at its inaugural meeting today at church. The choice of location was fraught with politics, as Mother did not wish the choir to be exclusively for Christians; but there are too many kidlings to have it at someone’s home and our church has a very decent piano. The decor isn’t that oppressive - no gold eagles or stained glass or anything - but we will see.

What’s more of an issue is the songs. In case you have never interacted with homeschooling parents en masse, they tend to be - how shall I put this? - intense. “Live and let live” isn’t necessarily their motto. “This isn’t a hill I want to die on” is not something they say a lot. “Meh” is not in their vocabulary. Confronted with an innocent peanut butter sandwich, the average homeschooling parent will immediately wrestle five moral/ethical/ecological issues out of it, ranging from disadvantaging peanut-allergic children to objecting to the non-organic nature of the bread*, and will probably call for its immediate ritual incineration. On a good week, letters to the local paper will accompany the process.

The upshot of all this is that finding neutral and inoffensive songs for the 5-16 age range is a very, very difficult task. Mother has stated at the outset that Christmas carols will be part of the programme, but otherwise she wishes to avoid religious songs (otherwise what will happen? The Catholic mothers will want their little angels to sing Ave Maria, that’s what’ll happen. In the chapel of a Reformed Baptist Church. And we don’t even want to think about that.) Which leaves… what?

Do Re Mi, pretty much. Double Trouble from the Harry Potter films? Vetoed due to witchcraft. Blackbird by the Beatles? Vetoed due to drugs and immoral living. Anything from the Disney canon? Vetoed because, well, it’s the Disney canon. Puff, the Magic Dragon? Vetoed because, obviously, it’s a metaphor for getting high. Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Mother, nervously: “I’m not sure… it does have witches in it…”

To put this in perspective, Mother knows a homeschooling lady who pulled her children out of a children’s choir because one of the songs was entitled “We Love Chocolate”. Can you spot the issue? Here it is: We do not love chocolate. We love Jesus.

This promises to be an interesting afternoon.

*Plus, the owner of the store at which the bread was purchased has dubious political views. And we shouldn’t be eating non-Essene bread anyway; or, perhaps, we shouldn’t be eating grains at all, because humans were designed to forage for raw fruits and nuts only, but not in an evolutionary way.

The candied bacon ice cream was delicious. The snortlepig and I both thought so, polishing off every tender morsel stuck to the dasher and freezing bowl in no time flat. (”Some?” asked the snortlepig plaintively every time her spoon was empty. “Some?” She is a sweetcheeks. You know what she did this morning? Counted to five. “One two three four five”, like that, while trying to buckle her own carseat. Prodigy Pig, we call her.)

So when Helpdesk Man returned home from singing at a wedding with his marvy young vocal collective (oooo), I accosted him with great delight and force-fed him a large spoonful to prove its deliciousness. He squealed like a girlie, demonstrated tremors of the head and declared it was Weird and He Didn’t Like It. I can’t prove it, but I think he cried a little.

Hmph.

Fortunately there are three other tasters who have yet to vote on the matter. I will let you know.

Poker seems to have gone to Helpdesk Man’s head. Yesterday he came home proudly bearing a brand-new poker set, and taught two of my little sisters to play when they came over to be babysat. (He won, but it was neck-and-neck with the eleven-year-old for a bit. I went bust early and gracefully retired to the kitchen to cook. Beat him three times yesterday though.) Then he was up until 1AM watching the poker World Series on YouTube. Should I be worried. do you think?

In other news, today is Bacon Ice Cream Day. I made a butterscotch ice cream base and have candied the bacon by cooking it on foil with brown sugar sprinkled over it (yummy!). I’m a little nervous about adulterating the lovely butterscotch ice cream with bacon, but these things build character. I also made a French vanilla ice cream with crumbled gingerbread cookies in it, which is ridiculously yummy… and now I have twelve egg whites waiting to be pavlovified. It’s, like, the circle of life.

Tonight Helpdesk Man took it upon himself as the spiritual head of the family to teach me poker. I’d only played once before, a game of Texas Hold’em  during a rather disastrous dinner party, at which I was so distracted with a screaming four-month=old snortlepig that I tried to win a hand with three pair. Tonight was somewhat more successful. We played for beans - literally. Kidney beans. We didn’t have any chips and playing for cash seemed a tad redundant given that we share an account. I won several hands, but no games. The pig sampled our olives, played very professionally with the Jokers and kept hiding our beans in her mouth. Anyway, I liked it. I like the faintly Freemason-slash-Star Trek vibe it has, with the jargon and the rapping on the table and the hats and all. Makes me feel classy. What with this and the olives, I have come a long way from the bumpkin of yore, no?