Tag Archives: life

My Nephew Is a Powerhouse

31 Aug

Yesterday there was an epic happening on the home front.

My pudgy little monkey of a nephew reached deep within himself and declared dominance over his bottle by grasping it with both hands and never letting go.  He conquered an inanimate object and thereby established himself as a blossoming self-sufficient being.

Blossoming, mind you.  He still poops himself.

Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked.  Think about how long he’s been trying to accomplish this one, simple task.  Think about how many times he’s had to drink at an angle determined by someone else – how many times he’s wanted to take a break but could only stare blankly ahead.  Think about how today has rocked his world.

He must feel so empowered.  I’ll bet tomorrow he starts walking around.

I can’t remember the last time I accomplished something so easily measurable and so deeply gratifying.   I wonder what got him through it.  I wonder if it was stubbornness or frustration or an uplifted prayer to God that please, please could today be the day he tells his mother to stop making assumptions about whether he can or cannot hold his own bottle.

Ask and it shall be given unto you.

I’m a little concerned about my level of excitement regarding his achievement.  If I celebrate over him holding his bottle, how on this earth will I contain myself when he takes his first step? Or when he says “Aunt Jackie you’re so cool” for the first time?

I will send him trophies in the mail, that’s how.  

I’ll plaster my excitement all over a piece of paper and mail it to him;  Heck, I should probably go install a little trophy shelf in his room.  I can just send him little certificates of achievement for the most important things in life like learning to roll over, or saying something that sounds like gibberish instead of just crying and stopping his neck from flopping all over tarnation.

These are all worthy of recognition and praise.

So all hail my nephew, master of the baby bottle – achiever of dreams and determiner of his own destiny.

May inanimate objects everywhere  cower at the mention of his name. ♣ 

Hear him roar.

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The (Not So Lazy) Lady’s Guide to DIY: Hanging Herb Garden

30 Aug

I am so tired. I have been beaten to death – obliterated by the supposed simplicity of a DIY tutorial on window gardens.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday ya’ll.

Now I know some of you are noobs to thejackieblog and while I welcome your smiling, shiny faces, I reckon you might want to take a gander at the top of the page where it tells you what the heck a Lollipop Tuesday is because as of this moment in time, you can’t exactly Wikipedia it.  Which is a shame.  Feel free to draft an article for it.

This week I decided to try sucking at gardening.  Well, I decided to try to suck at fashioning a hanging window garden so that I can try to suck at gardening.  It was courtesy of igardendaily‘s suggestion the “What’s Lollipop Tuesday” page, and boy was it a treat.  

Cut bottom, poke holes in it, reposition it, tape the junk out of it til it stays.

I imagine someone who indeed gardens daily and runs a garden blog would perhaps have the patience for such shenanigans, but I, sir, do not.

In order to start the mess I made of my dining room area, I consulted an online tutorial from persephonemagazine.com on how to turn coffee cans into cute little hanging herbs.   The title was promising: “The Lazy Lady’s Guide to DIY: Hanging Herb Garden”.

Why do online tutorials make everything look so freaking easy?  These little craft and DIY bloggers with their beautiful pictures and their artsy websites and their super awesome things that make me wants to recreate their awesomeness in the comfort of my home.   They emphasize how easy something is and when something’s incredibly hard, they use words that keep you from getting discouraged like “tricky”.  

For future reference, don’t trust “tricky”.   It’s the same as saying “this is a gigantic pain in the arse”.

I trusted this tutorial.  It lured me in with a false sense of security.   When I hear “The Lazy Lady’s Guide to….”, I feel capable.  I feel maximum output for minimal effort.   I feel good.

This is not a tutorial for a lazy gender of any sort.

Perhaps part of my problem was that I didn’t splurge on the coffee cans at first.  You see, the hanging herb garden made from coffee cans requires you to buy coffee cans.  But I’m not a coffee drinker and golly is it expensive.  And since the tutorial called for cans with a plastic lid on one end and tin on the other, I thought I could get away with buying Hershey’s syrup cans.  

Now, chocolate syrup is something I can use.

Flip them over, gingerly transplant (and thereby kill half of) the herbs, throw a coffee filter around them, and tape the junk out of it all again.

Unfortunately when I bought said syrup cans, came home, emptied them all into a big vat, and rinsed them, I found that it was necessary for me to be able to use a can opener to cut off the tin side.  And since Hershey syrup cans are rounded on the bottom ever so slightly, my can opener would not comply.  So I went back to the store to drop a bunch of money on coffee I’ll never use for cans I should have bought 3 hours prior.

Note to self: follow instructions.

With gallons of chocolate milk to fuel me, I carried on.  Through the hole-punching and the taping and the glueing and the messing up and starting over – I stuck with it all.   And I dragged Dave along for the ride.  Because by golly if I’ve gotta make four cans, I was going to have an assistant.

It was actually pretty easy for Dave.  Which made me think that perhaps I just don’t have the DIY gene.  There’s gotta be something in these people that makes them awesome at whipping up things from out of absolutely nothing.   They don’t even look like cheap crafts; they look like genuine groovy things.  It’s baffling.

Anyway, I eventually finished it.  I mean – it was hard.  And I spent a lot of money.  And I’m not even sure I can keep these suckers alive

Cover them in glue and paper. Try not to make it look like a 4-year-old did it. Also, pick all the glue off yourself when you're done and throw out half your belongings, which undoubtedly got dipped in glue along the way.

now that they’re in my window living in fear of what I did to my orchid (which, by the way, is sitting below them growing a very exciting second healthy leaf).   I’m a little concerned that I may have spent more time assembling a hanging herb garden than I will actually be able to keep them alive, but that’s a risk.   Especially when you have cats…

I’m sure that dangling the plants from the ceiling that they already loved on the ground was a sound decision.

But hey! I have an herb garden! And until it dies, it looks pretty darn cool.  I can breathe in the super awesome oxygen-rich air around me and pull from the fruits of my labor for cooking experiments while I toast my achievement with chocolate milk.

I really don’t know what else to make with an entire vat of chocolate syrup.   

In the amount of time it took me to write this post, Dave used the leftover paper from the project to fashion a lamp for the dining area to match our new herb garden.

These natural DIY-ers just slay me. ♣

Treasure it, friends. They won't be alive long.

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An Appeal to Foodmakers Everywhere

29 Aug

I’ve recently made a disturbing observation about myself: every morning the only reason I get out of bed is Golden Grahams.

Yeah, I eat Golden Grahams.

Listen:it’s a delicious cereal.  They’re not at all nutritious, I know.  But when I’m comfortable and warm and sucking the luscious nectar of sleep each morning, the force that pulls me from my sheets is not the promise of a paycheck, the throbbing annoyance of an alarm clock, or the urge to be productive.

It’s those beautiful, sugar-coated honey-flavored cardboard squares.

I can’t help it; it appears my entire life is driven by food.  In the morning, I wake up for cereal.  At work, I fantasize about what I’ll eat for lunch.  At the end of the day, I think about how awesome dinner is going to be.   Last night after a 12-hour shoot, I got super excited about a pepperoni roll that I got at a farmer’s market on Friday and intentionally wrapped in foil and put in the freezer in order to prepare for such an occasion. 

I’ve only just recently recognized this trend and so I have only just recently realized how this is probably not the best way to live my life.  Food is my only motivator.  Food is literally the reason I get out of bed in the morning.  I fixate on it, I daydream about it, and I am only really in ecstasy when I’m in the process of chewing. 

Think about that.  

It’s a wonder I’m not a thousand pounds.  One thousand.  You know, I saw a lady the other day who had to turn sideways to fit into the door of an establishment.  

It was a food establishment.

When I realized that my entire life is spent looking forward to the next time I can eat something incredibly delicious, I thought of this woman and her door dilemma.  Every day she has to deal with the fact that she can’t fit through a door, go on an airplane, fit in a theater seat…heck, she probably has to turn sideways to scoot down small grocery store aisles.  But it’s okay because in between those inconveniences, she’s chewing in ecstasy. And listen – I want to make it clear that I’m not making fun of her.  I’m not.  Because I understand how delicious food is and no matter how times I get into my skinny jeans, a burger will bring me right back to square one every time.  And there’s no guarantee that I won’t eventually be as large as the woman I recall, who struggles to complete routine tasks.

It’s clear that I can’t just stop eating good food.  That never works.  I’ve abstained from deliciousness for exactly three weeks but no longer.  And a mere three days of delicious indulgence can counteract three weeks of healthy eating.  Sad, but true.  

I am Sisyphus, and a fatness is my rock.

So this is my appeal to foodmakers everywhere:  

Please stop making food so delectable.  I know I like it and I beg for it all the time, but you’ve gotta believe me: I want to be able to still fit through doors when I grow up.  Like, regular doors.  Not supersized American doors that will no doubt have to be considered in new architecture plans  because we’re all super fatty fats. So please make healthy food.  Let’s just get rid of all the bad stuff.  If I have no delicious options, I will eventually have no option but to eat boring, healthy food – which will eventually result in my skinniness. 

And don’t pretend that delicious food that is also healthy exists.  It’s not true.  It’s not.

So let’s just do a mass exodus of all yumminess so that next summer I can finally go swimming.  I missed out again this year because it appears that the only swimwear that covers my problem areas is a scuba suit and it’s really just too tight to be flattering.

Okay, so thanks for the consideration.  I really appreciate it.

Puppies and Sprinkles,

Soon-to-be-skinny Jackie ♣

 

 

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The Art of Bar Luring

28 Aug

I think I’ve found my calling.

I say this a lot.  My life is really just a series of daydreams regarding million dollar ideas and true callings. I’m searching for the key that will unlock my rich financial future and free me from the grimy chains of corporate America.  

My most recent life calling is being a bar lure.

This is a novel concept that was created last night as I was out at one of Dave’s gigs.   I was seated at the end of the bar, right in front of the stage where he was playing his set.  As part of my new ‘don’t talk to me’ initiative, I brought along my laptop to try to whip out a blog post.  

That’s right: I’ve bypassed the journal idea entirely and gone right to full laptop mode.  I figure I can’t get any more dismissive than having a complete computer set up with the dull, blue glow on my face to highlight my apathy.

But as it turned out, my drink choices garnered some unwanted attention.  The first was a bright blue cup of fun.   It was basically glorified jungle juice but the folks at the bar were  attracted to its neon blue glow and inquired with the bartender to copy my order.   After I established my position as a trendsetter, I asked the bartender for something chocolatey.  It manifested itself as a glass of Bailey’s on ice, garnished with a whopping pile of spiraled whipped cream, chocolate syrup, and a cherry on top.  

It was an adult milkshake and it caused quite a stir.

And therein I found my life’s calling.  It occurred to me that I could work out something with the bartender where I could go in once a week on his busiest night, ordered absolutely ridiculous, eye-catching drinks, and get folks excited about doing the same based on the look of elation on my face as I suck them down.

He could rake in thousands, I could take a cut, and I could pay my bills by writing my blog and having a drink.  It’s brilliant!

Maybe I could even do cool tricks. Breathing fire is pretty darn attention-getting.

In fact, I could even attempt to be sociable and look like I’m having a good time.  Maybe that would prompt other patrons to do the same and really set the mood for the joint.

I made an attempt at this last night.  Two gentlemen came in off the street looking to rest their feet and grab a beer and we struck up a decent conversation wherein they seemed they might order extra drinks as a result of finding a friendly face.  But as it turns out, they were more interested in me being a friendly female face than just a friendly face.  And within a matter of minutes, the conversation had turned sour and they made their ways to the door.

I couldn’t help it: one of them called me sweetheart.

I’m sorry, but I don’t care what you look like, what you do for a living, or how good of conversationalist you are.  If you call me sweetheart, I don’t want anything to do with you.  And it isn’t even because I’m offended (which I am).  It’s more so the fact that I don’t want anything to do with someone who calls a girl they’ve only talked to for 5 minutes “sweetheart” casually. 

It’s not even a pick up line.  It’s just lazy.   And it assumes things of me.

I wasn’t even rude about it.  They called me sweetheart and I said please don’t call me sweetheart.  I wasn’t a jerkface, I didn’t go off on a big don’t-call-me-toots monologue– I just said please don’t call me sweetheart.   It wasn’t anything to go verbally breaking down and running away over.

 But they did.

And so the customers I gained, I immediately lost and proved to the bartender that perhaps a customer at the end of the bar ordering interesting-looking drinks would be good for business if she didn’t have such a snarky mouth attached to her that drives away as many people as it attracts.  I guess I broke even on the life calling thing and it’s back to the drawing board.

It shouldn’t take me long to whip up another; I’ll keep you posted.  And one day, I shall prevail. ♣

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The Great Pie War

27 Aug

Dave’s playing dirty.

If you follow my Lollipop Tuesday series, are a daily reader, or even if you just go click this right here, you’ll recall a story of a girl who, not too long ago, attempted recreate David’s grandmother’s homemade apple pie from only the loins of the earth for the blogosphere’s general amusement.

In a word, I failed.

The end product, though it looked like a pie, left much to be desired.  Like good taste, for example.  Or an apple filling that didn’t also have the apple skins.  Or a dough that was smooth, ever so gently crisp, and smooth with beautiful little slits in the center.

Mine had none of those things.  But it had a lot of heart.  It’s unfortunate that heart only counts in college sports, inspirational movies, and Captain Planet.

So Dave took one tiny little bite of my lackluster pie and decided it was so awful that he wasn’t going to eat any more.  Well, he didn’t put it exactly that way.  He’s much too wonderful to just come right out with it. Rather, I asked him if I left it out would he eat it, he said no, probably not, and I filled in the gaps.

I threw it in the trash and decided that I would blog and admit defeat, blame it on a generational misunderstanding of the concept of ‘recipes’, and I resolved to make a better pie someday.  Just one, so I could make one if I had to.

Sometimes people need pies.

But I need not bother.  For today, I walked into my home after work to the slightly spiced, warm air of apple pie wafting through hall.  My stomach jumped to my throat as I realized what was happening.  I looked to Dave to find a half smirk revealing his underhandedness.  I ran to the oven, threw open the door, and revealed THIS:

Look at it. Just LOOK at it.

That golden crust that isn’t overfloured and hasn’t been pinched together in desperation.  If you crack that sucker open you’ll find an apple filling so soft and sweet it makes you feel soft and sweet.   It’s well done, it’s delicious.

And a blatant declaration of war.

At first I was pretty upset.  Who watches someone try something new and then a mere 3 days later does it perfectly themselves to display their superiority?  Warmongers, that’s who.  But just as I was gearing up for an epic pie war, it occurred to me that there is another way to look at this situation.  Think about it:  if my overwhelming suck at something prompts Dave to do it and do it better, then I can start failing at all sorts of things!   Why do I need to learn how to make a pie if he can make a lovely one?   Our skill set is unified in nature – I do things he’s not good at, and he does things I’m not good at.  It’s a pretty awesome system and since he so willingly added “making pie” to his list, I can call on him for the pastry in a variety of pie-requiring events.  Family reunions, support for those in mourning, selling a house, and holidays of all varieties.  

Apple pie is incredibly versatile in its application.

I’m trying to think of other things I’d like Dave to do for us.  Now that I know his process, all I have to do is indicate a  few areas of weakness and he can pick up the slack! I can suck at lots of things: cleaning the oven, roasting a turkey, doing the laundry, wiping windows, cleaning out the car, scrubbing the tub – golly, there are loads of things I’m about to not do well.

Perhaps it’s war after all. ♣

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Why I Stay Indoors, Reasons 130 and 131: Dogs at Bars and Touchers

26 Aug
Apparently, I’ve begun an infrequent series on my blog called “Why I Stay Indoors”.    The first in the series was about movie theaters, and though it was the first of its kind, I decided to label it Reason #129.  And so we’ll pick up here today with #130.  Because what’s a blog about a hermit without a reminder as to why she’s a hermit once in a while?

 

Last night someone put their arm around me while I was out.

I really hate it when people touch me.  I try to send as many please-don’t-touch-me-ever signals as I can, but sometimes when I’m not focusing hard enough, someone gets through.  I must have just really sucked at it yesterday because I got a hug, a close-talker, and an arm-putter-arounder.

People touching me is big deterrent to my experiencing the world outside the walls of my apartment.  But alas, last night I was forced out into the open and ended up right in the arms of an arm-putter-arounder.

Since Dave’ a musician and all, I tend to find myself in all sorts of strange places.  I usually just take my little pocket journal and try to think really, really hard until a blog post comes out.   Unfortunately, it doesn’t always end in a post.  But it rarely fails to keep people away from me and that’s really the underlying goal.

But last night at this bar, I was filing into the place and waited with Dave until he got a beer before snuggling into the masses.  And while I stood there, unenthused by my surroundings, I noticed a small poodle on the bar stool beside me.   It was well-groomed, uneasy, and wondering why it was in a bar, sitting on a stool.  A gentleman came up beside me, put his arm around me (cringe), and drunkenly stated that it was his dog.  He also said that it was “a princess” and that I “shouldn’t tell the dog he’s a boy because he thinks he’s a girl”.

I suspect that had a lot less to do with what the dog thought of itself and a lot more to do with what the gentleman thought of it.  It was, after all, a dog.  On a bar stool.  Against its own will.

The woman beside him excused herself to go to the restroom and after 60 complete seconds, he asked me where his girlfriend went.  I told him she went to the bathroom and he said she wasn’t really his girlfriend at all.  She was just a friend and he was actually gay.

I told him I figured that.

It was here that it seems I offended him.  He said: “what made you think that?! I’m not that drunk, am I?”

I would argue that if one must check with someone else for a confirmation on their level of drunkenness, they are indeed drunk.  I would also argue that how drunk one is has nothing to do with how gay one is, which is a link that this gentleman apparently just attempted to make.

But he was really in no state for me to point out to him that he had a dog that fit in his man purse and that he exclaimed so to the bar.  Or that the woman he was with didn’t seem at all interested in him and so I assumed they were not together.  Or that he openly stated that his dog is “a princess” when his dog is a boy and really, just an unhappy dog in a seedy bar that can meet none of its dog-like needs.

It can, however, meet its princess-like need to socialize in trendy venues.

Knee-deep in social discomfort, I decided it was time to pinch Dave in the side until he got the memo that I needed an out.  I’ve tried subtle things like ear tugs, winks, hair playing, and hand signs, but when I’m in the throes of close-talkers, arm-putter-arounders and superdrunks, those are a little too subtle for Dave to notice, all things considered.  So now I just cause him physical pain until he relieves me of mine.  I think it’s a pretty good arrangement.

Dave promptly put his arm around me, grabbed his beer, and escorted me to a table where I could write while we listened to the band.  I began to scribble down a few notes about dogs in bars before the lights were all turned off in favor of one lone spotlight on the lead band member and I was left to mull over my distaste for people and public places.

But hey – that will teach me. Going outside one’s home can lead them to unhappy dogs on bar stools, drunk arguments with a very loud gay man, and uncomfortable touching of all kinds.

Stay inside, Jackie.  Just stay inside.  It’s safe there.♣

Super creepy. Super.

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My Doppelganger Dwells in California

25 Aug

I’ve been getting some unwanted emails lately.

As it turns out, out there in the world somewhere – Northern California to be exact – is another Jackie with an email address just one minuscule adjustment away from mine.  So minor, in fact, that the marketers, promoters, and event planners that are trying to send her materials she signed up for don’t notice the minor different and instead email me.

I know this because I once received an email that contained her correct email address in the body and the incorrect address (mine) in the recipient line.

It started out as just one or two emails here and there.  Lately, however, it’s been much more frequent.  It appears that the nice weather brought an onslaught of interest in California Jackie to go to sales, enter promotional contests, and run marathons.

Yes, that’s right: run marathons.

Apparently, California Jackie is a lean, mean, running machine.  She also happens to be an actress – or at least an aspiring one.   I know

this because in addition to her marathon registration confirmation emails, she also receives audition confirmation emails.

I find this interesting because my parents used to live in California.  In fact, they moved back to Pennsylvania right before they had me because they wanted to be closer to family.  My brothers both got to taste the West Coast air, but I was born and bred – and always will be – a country bumpkin.  

California Email Jackie is like a glimpse of what I could have been.  She’s an actress and a runner and involved in community events.  She’s probably got long, beautiful, California hair and a carefree attitude.  She’s probably city-chic and easy-breezy in conversation.  The emails that I get that are meant for her are like mockeries.   Big, fat, tongue-sticking-out mockeries – reminders of what I need to be better at.  A glimpse of what I could have been.

I tried to be a jolly goodfairy and forward her the emails and letting her know that I understand how important it is she receive the information or I wouldn’t attempt to directly email her.  I noted the reason for the mix-up on our email addresses and asked her to emphasize the difference when handing out her email.

I didn’t hear anything back.  Nothing! Just a never-ending slew of emails about races I could be running, trails I could be biking, and auditions I could be getting called back for.  No big deal – just some nagging reminders of where I’m failing in life.   Pudding-like country bumpkin Jackie is unamused by fit, California-chic Jackie.

A glimpse of what could have been. But alas, I can barely swim.

Naturally, I’ve been trying to devise ways to play with this ungrateful doppelganger, but I don’t want to spam her – I just want to find out what she’s falling short of in life and email her related items so she can begin to understand my pain and work harder to distinguish the difference between her email address and mine.   Maybe I can hire a private investigator.  Yeah: that’s the key.  I’ll hire a PI to document her fears, failures, and general shortcomings and then I’ll search the web for the genres that make her feel all desolate inside and slowly but surely get inside her brain. 

Then maybe she’ll see things from my East Coast perspective and send me an email saying she’s sorry and that she’ll change her email address altogether to avoid confusion.  

…Or maybe I should just go run a marathon so I don’t have to feel guilty anymore.

Nah.  The PI plan is far more practical. ♣

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Tips for College Success, Lesson 1: Crosswalks

24 Aug

Figure One.

Yesterday  when I was out on my lunch break, Dave and I almost ran over a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, college student because instead of choosing to not cross in front of an oncoming car, she proceeded to slowly cross in front of the car, wincing while she walked.

Because wincing, as we all know, is the all-encompassing shield of protection.

Morons.  Walk when the walk sign is up.  That’s why it’s there.  You see, we should be intelligent enough to know when to cross the street but since we as a human collective fail at this, the government decided to guide us with an enormous, lit sign with a picture of someone walking to indicate when we’re supposed to walk.  It’s very straightforward.  Push button, see light, walk.

Otherwise, I’m allowed to hit you.  I’m allowed to.  Legally.

Actually I’m making that up, but it’s the argument I’m prepared to use in the event of a trial for vehicular manslaughter. Your walking around, staring at your cell phone and listening to your iPod while I’m trying to avoid you and your friends like a sick video game is giving me ulcers.

I wondered how anyone could be so mindless and then it hit me: it was move-in day for the college students.

There are seven universities in the immediate city area alone.  Move-in day is always a chaotic, hot mess. Meters are blocked off, carts are sloppily rolling up and down the sidewalks, parents are spinning in and out of the bookstores clinging to what scraps are left of their wallets while harboring a single, lone tear in the corners of their eyes.  Tables and booths and street vendors and temporary tents pop up overnight.   

Darn.  I was just starting to get excited about the whiff of autumn in the air but soon, I shall be confined to the walls of a prison cell for running over one of these poor, young lads or lasses. 

Come to think of it, I hope that if there’s some terrible accident, blogs aren’t admissible in court.  That would be an awful shame.

Listen: I have an important message.  If you are the parent of a college student, please take the time to teach them how to cross the street all over again.  I know you reviewed it once or twice in the early years, but once out of your grasp, children completely evacuate from their heads everything you’ve told them.  Please use flash cards if necessary.

If you happen to be one of these college students: you are in grave danger.  Every time you walk outside your dorm, apartment, or cardboard box (whichever your parents allowed you based on how terrible you were to them in high school), you are taking a terrible risk.  Please do not leave your place of residence until you call your parents and have them review with you the chapter titled “Standard Road Crossing Procedures” from your childhood.

And if you  happen to be neither of these and are instead find yourself swerving, wiping sweat from your brow, and nursing ulcers instigated by near-fatal experiences, please do everything you can to get this message out. 

Also, I’ll be forming a support group.  Details forthcoming.  ♣

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A Recipe for Lackluster Pie

23 Aug

I think one of the most disappointing discoveries of my adult life is that pie-making is not a soothing experience.  If you do everything from scratch using merely the loins of the earth, it’s a little daunting for your average pie virgin.  And what makes it much, much more difficult is when you’re following a copy of a copy of a cryptic recipe that’s in a woman’s head almost 300 miles away.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, girls and boys.

I’ve been getting pretty intense with my Lollipop Adventures as of late with all the pinball competing and the Battle of Manassas reenacting and the rapping in public.  So this week, I was more than happy to take Pezcita’s suggestion on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?“ page and take it easy, throw on my apron, and make a hot mess of my kitchen.    In order to be true to the wholesome, innocent, comforting nature of the patriotic pastry, I thought it only right that I use David’s grandmother’s recipe for apple pie.   David’s grandmother’s apple pie is so lusciously wonderful, in fact, that my tastebuds had abandoned an affection for pie altogether until I tasted hers and it restored their faith.

Indeed it is a fantastic pie.  …when she makes it.

I don’t know what it is about grandmothers that makes them think recipes are just ingredient lists and not step-by-step instructions for how to accomplish something, but I would kill for a grandmother who can take the time to write down their navigation of a process instead of carrying around all that precious knowledge in their heads like hoarders.   Not wanting to bother his grandmother at such a late hour last evening, I decided instead to call David’s mother for any suggestions she might have to add to what was nothing more than a list of ingredients, a temperature, and a time I got off an index card that was passed on to David – a cryptic family food jewel.

Call me stupid, but I can’t bake a pie with a list of ingredients for the crust followed by a list of ingredients for the filling.   

His mother was a wealth of information.  There were all sorts of lovely bits inside her brain that I needed to suck out, which she gleaned from her mother back in the good old days when kids used to cook in the kitchen with their mothers instead of playing iPad games where they cook in the kitchen with a cartoon chef.  She was hoarding information on what kind of apples, how thinly they should be sliced, what order things were done in, and that – get this – I should throw milk on the sucker before I threw it in the oven to keep the crust from burning.  

How on God’s green earth would I have figured that out on my own?  Because I’ll tell ya – throwing milk on a pie just doesn’t occur to me. Not in the slightest. 

I started out pretty hopeful.  After all, people make pies every day.  Surely I am smarter than your average bear and

Goodbye, paycheck.

surely merely average bears have conquered pies and so surely I could conquer a pie. 

I think the first indication of a problem was that I had absolutely none of the tools required for the job: no pie pan, no rolling pin, no pastry brush, and no kitchen timer.  Well, to be fair, I have a kitchen timer – but it keeps ticking past the “0” mark, thus negating its purpose.  It only has one job and it sucks terribly at it.

So after a costly trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, I dumped out the newly bought implements of destruction onto the counter and hoped for the best.  I made a wild, mad mess of the kitchen and tried my hand at a homemade pie crust.  And failed.   And tried again – and made something that looked like crust and so I deemed it as such and laid it in the pan.   It took me almost half an hour just to get that far and then I realized I had to do it all over again for the top of the pie.  

My underwhelming second attempt. Apparently, I decided that everything could be fixed with flour. ...It can't.

It was here that I began to get discouraged.  

I remembered Dave’s mother’s words about how pies are hard and I should try not to get discouraged because everyone sucks horribly at them.  But I hate to suck horribly at anything that I’m genuinely attempting and so I was overcome with grumpiness.

A grumpy woman making a pie is a terrible thing.

It was in my sourpuss state that it became clear to me that pie-making is just meeting of the two kitchen skills I completely lack: rolling dough and cutting apples.   My apples were all shapes and sizes and my dough left, well, a lot to be desired.  Thick at one end, thin on the other, with pinched together, stuck-on pieces in between to patch up the holes along the way.   But when I let go of my visi0n of pie as a perfectly smooth and beautiful pastry with carefully-pinched edges and a light apple-scented steam venting from the symmetrical slits on the top and though of it more as a doughy bowl with apples in it, I started to expect far less of myself and lightened up.

Absolutely no idea if I'm doing this right. None.

In fact, once it was all baked I was pretty excited to eat it.  Of course, I wasn’t really sure when it was done because the “recipe” said “350 for about an hour”, which didn’t do much for my necessity of black and white in life.  So I just decided to pull the plug at 50 minutes, which is “about an hour” in my book.  

The end result wasn’t too terrible, though pulling up a piece of it revealed quite a bit of liquid hanging out on the bottom of the pan.  

Well, that and once I bit into a piece I realized I probably should have peeled the apples first.

Turns out apple skins don’t bake all that well.  The rest of the apple turns to mushy yumminess and the skin turns into this slightly less mushy alien-like strings, dragging behind your fork.

Hey: how was I supposed to know? Had the instruction “Peel apples” appeared anywhere, I would’ve been sure to make it happen for myself.  But like the milk, it just doesn’t occur to me to do these things.  Which is, you know, the entire point of a recipe.

End result?  A very sleepy Jackie with a smaller bank balance, a few shiny new kitchen utensils, a lackluster pie, and a serious hankering for a grandmother with a knack for detail. ♣

Mmm...lackluster pie.

 

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Christmas in Excel

22 Aug

It begins.

Yesterday I officially started my Christmas list.

Not my Christmas list, but my Christmas list for others.   You see, as the Type A portion of my brain grows into an insatiable monster and begins to eat away at the only bits of Type B that remain in my brain squiggles, it has begun to pour over into every single area of my life.   I don’t really know when it all started.  I remember one time being incredibly Type B.  My room was constantly a mess, I never showered, I was always doing things last-minute and pulling all-nighters to complete tasks, and couldn’t ever find anything I needed.

And then somehow, one day, I began to change.  I got a dry-erase board and mapped out my months.  I started working up a loose idea of a budget every few weeks.  I started keeping little to-do lists on post-its.  And I began to track my Christmas gift ideas in an Excel spreadsheet.

No joke – straight up Excelin’ it like a nerdy nerd.

Last year, I made a table for each member of my family in Excel and color coded each.  I had a column for gift ideas, a column for ones I had secured already, and a running total of how much was spent out of how much I was willing to allot.    And while it was lovely and organized, and almost too-devised, apparently my Type A brain monster is growing this year and isn’t satisfied to simply have an Excel sheet, but wants me to start the game 5 months in advance.  5 months in advance! 

It seems to be a familial trait. My grandmother shops for Christmas gifts 11 months in advance and my mother has begun to do the same. Or maybe it’s just an old person trait.   Perhaps this is just another example of my rapidly advancing age.   

I’m a little frightened to know what the Type A monster will be like in even just five years.  If I graduated from Christmas Excel spreadsheets to buying 5 months in advance in only a year, it’s just a matter of time before I’m making my bed, regularly doing my laundry, and making something more than a bowl of Frosted Flakes for dinner. Maybe…I’m actually becoming an adult?

Gross. ♣

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