Thursday, June 05, 2008
Needless to say I've come down with a raging case of knitting standstillitis. I believe the cure for this evil will be time. Time and perhaps more sangria (I really have been drinking a boatload of that stuff lately, so much that the acidity from the wine and fruit and whatnot has burned a little bit of skin off the roof of my mouth, aren't you glad you asked, but all that vitamin C surely is good for you). I mean the other day I actually did only one other activity while watching TV, and that was to sit on the couch. Hands idle, except when they were required to convey more sangria to the lips, needles nowhere to be seen. It was so wrong yet so right. For our week at the Cape, it was only after everything else was packed away did I think to bring some knitting along, and even then I couldn't decide what, because I didn't know what I wanted to knit, so in desperation I stuffed 6 random cakes of leftover sock yarn into a bag and decided I would make a Chevron Scarf out of them. It's going to look interesting, that scarf. If I ever finish it.
Is this the beginning of the end?
And I have so much inspiration that ought to keep me going too...
1. Two gift certificates to Purl Soho from Kitty, burning a hole on the refrigerator door since September!
2. A whole rainbow of Sundara Sock Yarns, burning a humongous but pretty hole in the drawer since the winter!
3. And of course, Rambling Rose, on the brink of world domination...yet burning a sad, lonely hole in this bag since March.
I did bring it down to Atlanta in April hoping my mother would finish it for me, but with the move and whatnot there was no time. Now it's June and it's supposed to hit 90 degrees this weekend (heaven!). 90 degree weather does not bode well for our little sweatery friend here. Nor for the bottles of rum I will destroy while making more sangria and/or mojitos.
Filed Under: Rambling Rose
Monday, June 02, 2008
Hello. We are back from Provincetown, back to a regular schedule and a regular diet that does not include daily doses of vodka, bacon, and lobster. We spent a week there and ate out only twice for lunch and twice for dinner; the rest of the time we cooked our little tails off. In total we polished off:
- 4 packages of bacon
- 4 dozen eggs
- 5 links of salami
- 4 large blocks of cheese
- 2 boxes of sugar
There was a lot fruit and orange juice too but most of it was put into the five or so batches of sangria we made.
Both Kitty and I brought our knitting. I knit about 5 rows total and she knit 0. We are awesome.
We spotted a filmmaker at a kitchen supply store in P-town. Check him out on his wicker-basketed bike.
It's J0hn Waters! He's so OFFBEAT!
We made eye contact over a pile of cookbooks. My first thought was that it was someone dressed up as JW, since people are always playing dress up here, and because that mustache of his looked like it was crudely drawn in with a Sharpie low on ink. I guess that is on purpose.
I must put some of his movies on netflix now.
And guess who has finally resurfaced from winter hibernation?
Filed Under: Postcards from Dottie | Travel
Thursday, May 29, 2008
Duck and I have been in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod for the past week with our friends. It's our 3rd annual Memorial Day Week getaway to our 3rd seaside town.
We've been mostly drinking and playing Mario Kart and eating bacon. It pretty much doesn't get much better than this. Still not knitting much though. :(
Filed Under: Life | Travel
Friday, May 09, 2008
Putting ribbons to good use however has not.
Filed Under: Cats
Friday, May 02, 2008
This is Bunny and Veeb's favorite Aunt Mouse. My dad got her one weekend when my mother wasn't home to say no, he called me up to tell me about it, described how skinny and wiry she is, so I told him he should name her Mouse.
Ten years later Mouse has gained a couple of gray hairs and more than a couple of pounds. She's got cow udder for a gut. From other angles it looks like a peach. Or a baboon's behind. Or a giant hooha.
Despite the advanced age and weight, Mouse is still the greatest nemesis to mice, gophers, and the two frogs that live in the little koi pond out front. She's being sent to her cousins in DC when my mom moves to China next month - they have a huge yard filled with other playmates so I hope she'll be happy there and not try to walk all the way back home. Although she could use the exercise.
We're definitely a little more worried about this one.
This is Mocha. She's a poodle and she's eleven years old. I call her the World's Saddest Puppy because she spends about 80% of her little dog life waiting for my mother to come home. When she goes out for errands I try to distract Mocha from the window with a rousing game of cards or a belly rub or a dog treat. But she was never a playful dog - tennis balls bounced acrossed the yard unchased - a belly rub from me is about as welcome as a bath, and a dog treat doesn't last 5 seconds long enough for her to forget that there's a window with a view that she has to get back to. I even try talking to her, interjecting her name every three words so she'd look at me. But her focus is 100% on mom.
So now the question is, do they bring the dog with them to China and risk her not making the long and scary travel plus the long and scary month-long quarantine? Or do they leave her with friends and risk her dying of a broken heart?
If I could take you Mocha I would.
Three years is a long time to wait by the window.
I'm doing some research online, but if anyone has some first-hand experience traveling with pets overseas, I'd love to hear it!
Filed Under: Cats
Monday, April 28, 2008
Duck left last week. I'm still in Atlanta, still helping my Mom clean out the house. It's like a giant spider lived here, what with all the cobwebs and detritus of dried bug corpses littered in every unswept corner. Can't wait to go back to mine so I can start my life anew as a minimalist slash obsessive-compulsive neatfreak. I will be a caveman meets MarthaStewart, possessing only a sharp rock, and a couple of votive candles.
I was taking a break at friends' house for dinner last night. We were gossiping about old high school acquaintances - who has kids and how many, who are balding, who are married and who are already divorced - all that juicy stuff, which led to a discussion as to the appropriate age for marriage. Apparently age is pretty much the only deciding factor used to determine wedded longevity, and according to my high school buddy, I married too young. You're just feeling dumb that it took you 10 years to propose to your girlfriend, but look now you've already spawned! I countered. I'm still gettin' it AND sleeping eight hours a night haha! I like how old friends can be relied upon with all the non-sugarcoating. That led to some reminiscing about our wedding in Puerto Rico, and it was only after a full 10 minutes' discussion that I suddenly bolted upright and screamed, WAIT WHAT'S TODAY'S DATE?!?!
Today's Date (as in yesterday) would be our 6th anniversary. I would have mentioned it to Duck during the two phone calls we had earlier in the day. Had I remembered. Had either of us remembered. Heh.
April 27, 2002
Here's to 60 more years of forgetting!
Filed Under: Life
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Nestled somewhere in this jungle field is my parents' house, which they have lived in the past twenty years and for which the mortgage has been all payed off, yay! I lived here too, but for a much shorter period of time, aged 13 to 18. Only five years, but I can distinctly remember junior year of high school, with the scary senior year and the even scarier college and the Big Bad World looming, talking to my friend Michelle in the kitchen and together wondering how long, once we left home, we would be able to last on Taco Bell and Coca-Cola before dying.
Goldfinch picnic in the backyard.
In the backyard is also buried my dog Beau and my cats Pepper and Tammy, may they rest in peace.
But la. We flew the coop and did survive out in the big bad world afterall, and with finer nurishment than that of canned beans or soda thankfully, and it's been a very long time since we've referred to our houses as "my house" or "your house." It's now my parents' house, and I am just a guest.
Right now my parents' house is pretty much empty inside. It is the exact opposite of what it's like outside, with the masses of rose and azalea bushes, wisteria and camellia trees, peonies and irises bursting from every corner. There is a thick row of rose bushes growing and spilling along the brick courtyard in the front of the house that has not even yet bloomed. Once it does, watch out! It will be a bumblebee's favorite playground. My mother sent me a small stump of this same rose variety up North when we bought out first house 6 years ago, I stuck it in the ground, where it remained stunted at 6 inches tall for all that time. What went wrong? Besides the fact that clearly I have inherited both my parents' messiness but not their green thumbs? Life isn't fair, I'm doomed to not pick after myself and kill plants forever.
My mother wails everyday how much she's going to miss her garden and her backyard wildlife. It's been a long while since I've missed this home myself, but I understand how she feels.
Filed Under: Travel | Atlanta | Wednesday is for Where I Live
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
I'm down in Atlanta for a few weeks helping my parents clean out their house in preparation for their move to Beijing. After years and years of my dad threatening to relocate to no less than a dozen different places around the globe (including Taipei, Geneva, somewhere in France, Zambia, Johannesburg, South Africa, and also Birmingham, Alabama) for job-related reasons, my head started spinning and I stopped listening. Just call me when you're about to board that steamship and I'll show up on the boardwalk to wave goodbye, k?
So it has really, finally happened. It was bon voyage to dad on Monday, as he took of for his new life and new job in China. My mom is sticking around for another month or so to tie up loose ends before she joins him for their couple of years there. They've rented their house out to several friends of my high school friend, which I think is hilarious, all of my good furniture and books and piano and other possessions worth keeping were shipped to us in Boston several years ago, other large pieces of furniture have been sold or given away, the cars are sold...So all that's left to do is to throw out, pack up, store away 20 some-odd year's worth of clutter. As well as 20 some-odd year's worth of GRIME. The most aggressive kind of grime known to man. That part is making me cry. I now can blame my parents for me not being a neat freak. They are DIRTY PEOPLE.
Anyway, before my dad left we all took one last roadtrip to New Orleans, which is one of our most favoritist cities, so we could eat our most favorite critter, the crawfish.
Crawfish eaten daintily for breakfast. Yeah that's right! I had crawfish at 8 am!
Eating crawfish is probably as much an acquired taste as it is an acquired technique. They are boiled en masse in a vat of spices, to which some ears of corn and chunk of potatoes are also thrown in. To get to the sweet, spicy meat you break the body in half at the tail, suck out the head innards which has absorbed all the flavorings, and squeeze out the tail. It's not a lot of meat, so you have to go through at least 2 lbs of crawfish per person to be really satisfied.
Once you're had your fill, and if the spicing is done right, the outer rim of your lips will be swollen and chafed from the heat, your finger tips will be shriveled from the salt, your shirt will be splattered yellow with crawfish innards, and you'll be half-drunk from all the ice-cold beer you washed down. The whole process is filthy, disgusting and totally AWESOME.
I acquired my taste for crawfish during the several years we lived in Louisiana when I was around 10. Had I encountered my first crawfish plate at this time of my life, this post would be the topic of my Least Favorite Things. Because it really is just about the most unappetizing thing once you've gone through your however many pounds of crawfish, there are flies buzzing all around, and you're left with a heaping pile of exoskeletoned body parts.
Crawfish eaten not-so-daintily (or, the proper way)
It is utter crawfish carnage. Mmmmmm!!
Filed Under: Tuesday is for Favorite Things
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