Dear World:

I will be 55 years old next March, and I. AM. DONE. I will never again be nice to anyone who has not earned the courtesy.

And you can go ahead and carve that on my tombstone.

Real life to resume after Wednesday ;)

Black Friday Gold

I struck absolute gold this year on Black Friday.

The Setup:

Let's say you're at home on the Friday after Thanksgiving and, even though you spent the previous day running around town, enduring enjoying quality time with kith and kin, you have cabin fever.

You need to get out, even though your survival instinct is screaming at you to stay at home, on the couch, with a book a toddy and the cat - where it's safe.

The other instinct - the bad one that constantly nags at you to buy a Ducati...get a tattoo...fly to Rome for a gelato...tells you to breach your damn safe zone and join the rabid retail hordes storming Walmart.

There is a happy medium, an equilibrium, and I found it last week.

Go out on Black Friday. Go to a store, even, and spend money - but go grocery shopping.

On Friday I found myself in need of dog food, cat litter, a pipe plunger and eggs. There are no substitutes for two of those items...and then there are the eggs.

With fear in my heart and a screaming Lizard Brain, I braved ridiculous traffic, made it to the market, stepped hesitantly through creaking, automatic doors and found...peace. And quiet. Quiet and peace, save for Mariah Carey screeching about her Christmas list.

No one, and I mean not a single sentient being, was grocery shopping on Black Friday.
It. Was. Awesome.

Then I got brave. I thought, "What other chore can I accomplish that runs counter to Black Friday Lemming Fever?"

So I got my vehicle serviced. Drove right up to a bay without waiting - unlike a Saturday trip to the Jiffy Lube where by 7 a.m. you're the tenth car in line.

Granted, the market and mechanic's shop don't hold quite the same cache as Neiman Marcus and Macy's on The Biggest Shopping Day of the Year, but that trip got me out of the house - and back again, safely.

I believe 2010 is Year One of a new holiday tradition around Chez City!

Next year? Dry cleaning and shoe repair! I wonder if my dentist will be working....

A timely recipe...

We made this Monday for the first time...I have no idea why you'd make chicken and dressing three days before Thanksgiving but we did.

And oh y'all...when I dipped into the pot? It was like spooning a souffle...fluffy and moist and amazing. So, if you don't already have a plan? Here. Have at it, and Happy Thanksgiving ;)

MzLisa's Crockpot Chicken and Dressing

1 8" pan cornbread
8 slices day-old bread
4 eggs, beaten
1 medium onion
1 clove garlic, minced
1 teaspoon thyme
2 tablespoons sage
1 teaspoon salt
Celery (1/4-3/4 cup)
Black pepper
2 cans cream of chicken soup
24 ozs chicken broth (2 cans or 3 cups if you cook the chicken)
2 tablespoons butter
Chicken

Crumble bread and mix all ingredients except butter.

If you cook a whole chicken (I did, so that the dark/light meat factions would be equally pleased) de-skin/bone and chop the meat. Or you could just chop a couple of chicken breasts.

Mix it all together, pour into the crockpot and dot with the butter.

Cook on low for four hours, or high for two hours. Truly amazing ;)


Editorial Note: The image, I know, has nothing to do with the post topic, but I thought it was adorable! Click here for the pattern. - CG2

Fini!

(I wish I knew the name of this tune....)

Duuun
DUNN
DA-DUUUUUMMMMM

BOOM, BOOM
BOOM, BOOM
BOOM, BOOM
BOOM, BOOM

(Those would be tympani drums, I believe)

Is it the Theme from 2001 Space Odyssey?

Anyhoodle - This anthem played in my mind last night as I hit the "Purchase" button on Amazon.com, thereby COMPLETING my Christmas shopping.

Honest to God, what did we do before The Interwebz?

Did I really pack myself into a mall - along with everyone else who didn't have Internet access because, well, it didn't exist?

Yes, I did. As a matter of fact, the most memorable anxiety attack of my life happened 25 years ago at Woodfield Mall in the days leading up to Christmas. :: shudder ::

ANYWAY - Woot! Done. Fini.

I feel like I should do something to celebrate.

Ah, but wait. There's still wrapping to be done. And wrapping, to someone with OCD tendencies, is like a person with a severe gluten allergy trying bake 10 dozen cookies. It ain't pretty.

I'm not in love with that analogy, but there you have it.

:: sigh ::

Friday Potter Funny

It isn't often you find Harry Potter R-rated humor.
Not that I'm looking.

Click to enlarge.
:: snicker ::

Here we go again....

If you were here a couple of years ago, you remember my introduction to the public school system after an extended absence. The Nice Kid had been there a couple of weeks when I got a letter, explaining to me that I had not been sending written excuses for my child's absences.

Well, DUH. I'm the one who DIDN'T write them. No need for you to point it out.

So I threw it away. Threw the next one, and possibly a third, away, too. I AM THE PARENT. I don't have to tell you where my child is...what is this? Big Brother? Unless she's in trouble or offending you or breaking some rules, your only concern is her education. Don't be sending The Mama letters!

Then, they sent...something. I think it was a summons to a parenting court, for me to explain where my child had been. BACK TO MY ORIGINAL POINT: I KNOW where my child has been. I. AM. THE. PARENT. When I consider it necessary for YOU to know? I'll let you in on the secret but in the meantime...don't be stalking my child.

Anyway, threw THAT in the trash, too. I mean, they couldn't be talking to ME. No one had called, and they sure as hell had no problem calling when they needed nine cakes, or a vegetable tray, or someone to drive to an out-of-town school event. And besides...this is ME. The child of educators...teacher, assistant principal, librarian, superintendent, school board president. ME. The kid who has witnessed everything there is to be seen...firsthand.

Then came a summons to Parenting Class. For a fee, payable by me, I was to show up on the other side of town on Monday nights for a couple of weeks for parenting classes.

PARENTING CLASSES? I've been raising kids for THIRTY YEARS next Monday, haven't killed one yet and accidentally ended up doing it for a career and you want me to do WHAT?????

I called the District Attorney, a fellow school parent and a frequent guest at our family parties. I called the family court judge, who grew up with The Big Boy, playing Little League and Boy Scouts. Who was one of my dad's students, and who had married one of my mom's students.

Neither one did anything for two days, which is how long it took for them to stop rolling around on the floor laughing. Then, the juvenile court guy called and apologized. He explained some things. He laughed at my letter, and then laughed at my indignation and my predicament. He explained that there were even less-appropriate parents in my position. I probably offered to make him a strawberry cake, or might have invited him to my 19th Annual Gingerbread House Party. Or to a Blood Drive in my yard, or a yard sale I was hosting for a family who had lost everything in a fire. You know...all the things Menaces to Society such as myself do.

It ended well. Never heard from them again. Kept being the person who never volunteers for anything, who everyone calls at the last minute. The parent with "sucker" written across her forehead.

TNK left middle school last year. Started high school this fall.

Guess what I got in the mail this week?

An aside here...no...a possible ending. For years, while my dad was chairman of the county board of education, he wrote a newsletter. Primarily reporting the board's agenda, rulings and business. Spiked with his own opinions, which weren't necessarily those of the mainstream. The mainstream did EVERYTHING it could to stop that newsletter; one of the greatest quotes of all time was an assistant superintendent pointing out that the board could have gone to Las Vegas for a convention, except my dad would put it in the newsletter and people would know. He was even hauled into court once, for using a school copier to print the newsletter, even though he paid the school enough to print its tests and worksheets. He bought a copier and kept writing.

He retired a couple of years ago. Really has nothing to do. Been looking for a cause.

Life would be REALLY interesting if someone showed him what "blogging" is. As opposed to mailouts.

Just IMAGINE the possibilities!!

NaBloPoMo Avoidance

After the false start last year - we failed on Day One - CG1 and I did not even attempt NaBloPoMo this year. Did not even discuss attempting it.

We consider ourselves successful if we post several times a week - there's no way in Dante's Detroit we were ever going to be able to pull off posting every day during November.

But do you know who *is* posting every day?
Who IS successfully executing NBPM this year, as he is successful every year?

That's right - It's Mr. Fabulous.

If you are not already a fan of Fab Boy Fab, aka Fat Boy Fat, aka Make Lard History, you need you do yourself a favor and pay him a visit.

You will not regret - as you regret buying those orange tie-dye yoga pants (what were you thinking?) - spending time poring over his blog.

You will not hesitate - as you hesitated, for a nanosecond, before inhaling that third Krispy Kreme this morning - to leave a comment.

You will laugh, you will think, you will thank me afterward.

Go. Shoo. Click the Link.

Hacked

For the last three-ish years I've been meaning to get rid of my old Hotmail account.

It's a bit embarrassing to work in technology and be associated with a so-far-out-of-fashion-it-might-as-well-come-with-spats email provider. Not that Hotmail marks you as a person of the Geezer persuasion like an AOL account does ::cough,CG1,cough::

Like a lot of people, I have two accounts - one for online purchases, newsletters, and other Spam-generating endeavours and one for legitimate correspondence - the legit account is a Gmail account.

The Hotmail account, at last check, included a reminder from Clarins that I'm not getting any younger and need to order moisturizer, coupons from Petco, tips on preparing the perfect Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving meal from Epicurious and a dozen offers from Nigerian princes wishing dearly to enter into highly profitable enterprises with a greatly-respected businessperson such as yours truly.

So for 36 months I've been contemplating moving my email, updating all my online shopping accounts, editing the profiles of all the networking sites I subscribe to, redirecting newsletters, et cetera ad nauseam.

And every time I think about it, my eyes lose focus, my ears begin to ring and I have to lie down.

Until this past Halloween.

On Halloween a very helpful miscreant in the UK (not Birmingham) hacked my Facebook account. While there, s/he changed my status to indicate that I am married to a woman named Jawan Olive (who is lovely, but unavailable), I was born in 1906, I am on Facebook looking for romance with men and women (you can imagine the porn Spam that sparked) and posted a new personal credo in the Quotations field that read something like this:

Something Something the N-Word
Something Something Jews
Something Something Something
I hate all of you.

While Hacker was in Facebook he lifted my Hotmail address which, stupid me, used the same password.

And a blizzard of Nigerian business offers ensued. Viagra and Estonian brides can't be far behind.

But this is a good thing - email-wise. I now have two Gmail accounts, I've moved over the Important Junk Mail - like the moisturizer reminder and the dog food coupons - and I'm letting all the crap I really didn't want to look at anymore, but was too lazy to unsubscribe from, collect at Hotmail.

So, thank you, Hacker. If you'll forward your email address to me, I'll send you a nice virus for Christmas.

I am tethered to the couch...

...in order to keep myself from exploding. Like, just blowing up in a panic. Every now and then something happens to remind me how...sheltered...my life is. And when it does, I have to tether myself to a solid object and hide in a tent until the panic goes away. As of right now, it's still here.

The Big Kid started waiting tables just before her 16th birthday. Turned out to be a good thing because if you get your driver's license on a Monday, and your first speeding ticket that Friday? The Mama be pissed. And you have to pay for your own car insurance.

Waiting tables is a good thing for kids to do...the best and the worst of the planet come through a restaurant and it's a great learning experience. It also, if you are good at what you do, pays exceptionally well for a student.

Later on, she got into bartending and that is...extremely lucrative. As in, nothing else she could do straight out of college touched being the only female bartender (and blonde to boot ;) in the hottest spot downtown in a high-tech town. But things happen...age in this case...and people move on.

But. Before she moved on (to an MBA in two more weeks! *beaming mom* ;) there was a problem. A manager within the organization was...volatile. Pushy. It started off low-key but the guy got...more bizarre. TBK complained. He was reprimanded. He started getting physical...grabbing her in a anger, pushing her in frustration. It wasn't her job performance...she has always been a model employee...it was because she was the only girl there and he COULD.

(IF you turn the following part of this into a race issue? We will block you. This is NOT about race.)

TBK started to get scared. She was told to "document" the issues. The guy got more violent and more off-the-wall. TBK complained again and was informed about the "difficulties" in firing the manager. Tony.

He was ex-military, and he was black. He was the only black person in management within the organization. To fire him? He had to REALLY screw up.

He did. More and more and more until finally...we discussed getting a restraining order...I'm not sure if she did or not. One of the bartender/bouncers started following her home...because Tony was doing the same thing.

The man had three chldren by three women, never married any of them. He was in a panic about his child support and his $1000 suits and his girlfriend.

Finally, they got rid of him. Demoted him to another level of the restaurant, then fired him from there. He blamed TBK, and never took responsibility for anything that happened.

She left that job and took a break, studying fulltime for her MBA and working off and on here and there when she wanted to. She has a job lined up for when she graduates in two weeks; one that's in her field. Acquisitions and contract negotiations. ;)

Last night, Tony walked into the restaurant 15 minutes after closing time, pulled a gun and when one of the locksmiths who was there recognized him, shot the locksmith. The other locksmith grappled with him, and in the ensuing fight, shot Tony.

He's dead.

The wounded locksmith is okay, in the hospital with a hole in his shoulder which is what guns DO.

My kid, by the grace of God, wasn't there but...she could have been. And she TOLD them. Over and over and over. And nothing happened for over a year, because that's not the way things work these days. Which is wrong...just really wrong.

Thank God that son of a bitch is dead. Saved the taxpayers a hell of a lot of money.

I think I'll go be sick now.

Again.

Belated Friday Funny

Blame it on Daylight Savings Time....

One of my relatives...

....woke up Wednesday morning, rolled over in his recliner in his dee-lux doublewide with the Dream Home Package, saw this headline and went..."Oh. Shit. That was YESTERDAY?"

Rogersville Alcohol Bid Loses By Single Vote

Now THAT'S a Friday Funny ;)

Things that get you divorced...

I clean house once every five years. No lie...and if it bothers you, feel free to head down to my sister's where, even without prior notice, you can eat off the floor. (WHY?)

It has always been my position...house cleaning is not in my job description. My total lack of such is 99% of the reason The Big Boy married me...his mother is a neat/control/management freak and growing up in that house scarred those kids for LIFE. The standing joke in their family is that he spent 30 years looking for his mother's exact opposite and then...married her.

There's a lot to be said for spontaneous ;)

For real...I throw parties where dirt, sticks and crawly things are the primary theme. A friend of mine wrote a book wherein I got mentioned...concerning a major transition period in his life where he realized that the trunk of HIS car has an emergency kit and a spare tire, and the trunk of MY car has...a party. I have a picnic basket, a small grill, chairs and a blanket. I can pull over and entertain in a ditch ;) You wouldn't want to do it for a living but it breaks up the monotony sometimes.

ANYWAY. I am in the midst of a periodic housecleaning spree. It took me THREE DAYS to clean the kitchen, and the floor involved a brillo pad, a bee-keeping tool, a Hoover floor cleaner and a gallon of Clorox. I didn't get the cabinets re-organized, but by george the germs have vacated for the time being.

Day before yesterday, I started on the long-abandoned Big Den (not to be confused with the Little Den, which is where we had all migrated to, out of necessity.) I'm on my second jug of Home Defense bug killer, which is necessary to fight off the waves of spiders who realized about three months ago that we were running an assisted living facility for arachnids in there. I swept and brushed and hauled and moved and vacuumed and wiped and cleaned and piled. I filled one large trash bag with TNK's clothes, another with TNNK's clothes, one with shoes, one (and a dog food bag) with trash and one bag with mine and TBB's clothes. (PILFERED, I might add, from our closets by TNK, putting together outfits.)

Flipped cushions and vacuumed furniture and scraped old gum and repainted a tabletop and peeled all the candle wax off the tabletops. All this and I got about...halfway done. I still have the dining room to finish, but it's small and all that's there is a table covered with half-empty wine bottles and seldom used appliances that don't have a customary home. In the grand scheme of things, those will all go onto shelves in the garage. When I get the garage cleaned out.

Long about six o'clock, I gave out. Catch in my hip and crick in my neck and I was TIRED. So I poured a drink, opened some cans of beans and potatoes for dinner and parked my weary ass on the couch. Felt the love ooze all through me. Almost done...bourbon on ice and an almost clean house. Life is good.

The door opened. The Big Boy walked in. Put his bag on a chair, stepped into the Big Den and commented, "Oh! You moved the couch," and moved on to the kitchen.

Uh, yeah. I did. Thanks for noticing. When I bash his brains in? I may BURY him in that couch. It's clean and the spiders aren't there any more.

The Aftermath

I expected the Republicans to take the House.
No surprise there.

I expected Nancy Pelosi to be de-throwned.
It's about damn time, frankly.

I expected there to be much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth on November third.
And I've not been disappointed - Walmart is fresh out of sack cloth and ashes this morning.

What I did NOT expect was that San Francisco would beat Texas** in the World Series.

(I KNOW the World Series is a misnomer, since we don't play anyone outside the US - it should be called the American Series, but there's nothing I can do about that).

This isn't about Barak Obama or George W. Bush...although I did imagine Bush choking on a whole handful of pretzels when SF clinched it.

This is about San Francisco - known widely as the gay-friendliest city in America beating Texas, where everything is bigger, badder and where sodomy was still illegal in the first years of the 21st Century.

This is about Chardonnay beating Budweiser (I drink both).
Sushi beating barbeque (I eat both).
Priuses (Prii?) beating F350s (I drive neither).

Tolerance beating intolerance.

So take the House. Hell, take the Senate while you're at it - will it really matter for the next two years?

THIS is the win that's inspiring.


** The great city of Austin (where I've eaten some of the best sushi of my life) and Travis County are excluded from this gross and admittedly less-than-fair generalization.