Say That Again Five Times

Well, I'm feeling pretty proud of myself since dinner almost made itself, pork loin from the slow cooker and those little cubes of butternut squash from Costco. I splashed some water and barbecue sauce on the pork loin this morning and when I got home, I roasted the squash in butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg. And my guys loved this food as if I'd worked hard on it.

It's the season for butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg.

I also made mushroom soup yesterday, but I finished the last of it today so you can't even imagine having any. It was yummy, warm, and full of umami. Say that word slowly five times on a crowded plane and I will promise you'll have all the room you like. Umami, umami, umami, umami, uuumaaamiiii. See what I mean? Magic. I didn't actually believe it was a real word the first three times someone used it on me.

I read in a book by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, The End of Dieting, that we should eat mushrooms almost every day. There's a lot of umami in that. Umami, umami. I'm starting to want to move away from myself in the room. Ah, right. The book. So, I also liked that Dr. Fuhrman didn't think people should diet any more, hence the title, but then he proceeded to promote a diet so different than my own that it would indeed be a diet. Well, crap. He suggested that I eat primarily greens, beans, raw onions, cooked mushrooms, berries, and seeds. No, that's not a diet. Not at all. I should put a sarcastic emoji here. There's another word that would be good repeated in a crowd. I guess I'm tired. You know how words start to sound funny when you repeat them. Emoji, emoji, emoji. Some words don't even take all that many repetitions to start being funny and making you sound crazy when you say them out loud.

Sorry? Right. Dr. Fuhrman, I got distracted for a minute. After reading his whole book I only remember the greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds and that if I add much else, I'm going to be a victim of cancer, a heart attack, or stroke. Lovely. What does that do to the pork, the barbecue sauce, and the butter of my dinner? Crap! I just poisoned my family. Still, I try to make sure we have a lot of greens, beans, onions, mushrooms, berries, and seeds in the diet that we do eat. Maybe I should make some more mushroom soup. I'll put lots of butter and half and half into it, not Dr. Fuhrman's idea at all, but at least I'm eating mushrooms and feeling the umami. Feel the umami, umami, umami. Am I right?

Maybe someone should make an umami emoji. And no, they were not magic mushrooms that I put into my soup. Baby portobellos. Portobellos, portobellos, portobellos. Now, I sound like an Italian. Not crazy any more. I got my portobellos at Costco too.

Thank you for listening, jules

Interrupting

This morning, I walked and afterward, I felt so rotten that I went to Costco because no days are as bad as Costco days.

See, I have this friend that I walk with sometimes. For every ten sentences I begin, I get to finish about three. I should count them but that would be petty, wouldn't it? When she interrupts me, I try to take a deep breath in and blow it out slowly. Some people would have me dump this friend but she has a good heart. She really does. And she's funny sometimes.

There's something else that I don't want to tell you. I am one of those people who interrupt people. I'm trying to learn what it is that I do to people. I'm trying to learn how to listen. This friend is my purgatory. She is giving me a life lesson that I so desperately need to learn, one that I've been trying to learn for twenty years. Crap. I'm not very good at learning, am I?

I remember a different friend, twenty years ago, who dumped me because I never let her talk. We'd taken our dogs to see Santa which had been a desperate failure since my pit bull mix had been terrified of both Santa and her Chihuahua. I'd gotten really low blood sugar in all the stress and she'd told me that it wasn't safe for me to even drive. I had stopped for a green light as I chattered away. When I dropped her off at her house, she told me she was done, finished. I'd thought we had a good time. I told her I could change, that I could be a better listener if I tried. She shook her head and said she didn't believe I could. I got back into my truck, drove half way down the block, stopped, and cried. My friend was really interesting. She owned a retired race horse. She talked with her husband about the plebs, the plebeians, of the world. I had become a pleb. I didn't want to be a pleb.

Since then, I've been trying to change, to see why I need so badly to talk that I don't give someone else, even someone interesting, a chance to speak. I've been trying to become a better listener. It's sort of working. I still get excited and cut people off when they're talking, but it's sort of working, I think.

I've decided to continue hanging out with my walking friend to try to figure out chronic interrupters. What is it that she needs? When I stop talking altogether, she can't keep up the conversation completely by herself. She needs more than ums and yesses and okays. See, even this is narcissistic of me, isn't it? I'm listening to someone like me to figure out me. Pathetic.

What I've begun to do though, is worse than being an interrupter or a narcissist. I've been complaining about the time I spend with my friend. I feel really crappy afterward and I've been complaining a lot. I've been acting like I'm doing her a favor, like she's this barely tolerable person. Even Mike has started to ask me how purgatory went on Monday afternoons.

I need to stop. My friend is nice. She really is. I don't agree with all of her politics, but who does? I don't always think she's interesting, but who can carry on like a stand-up comic all of the time? I also worry that I'm turning Mike into a judgmental person by acting this way, calling these walks purgatory. Mike was never like this before I got hold of him. Mike told me she was nice to begin with.

And she is.

And my walking friend can help me learn to listen. She has a need to talk and I need to figure out why. Then, maybe I can begin to figure out why I need to do the same thing. I just wish I could find a quiet mind when I walk with her. Maybe that's the crux of it, neither of us has a quiet mind, like ever. Maybe we're like two puzzle pieces that will never fit together no matter how many times we try to jam them in place.

I'll let you know if I ever figure it out.

Thank you for listening, jules

Ninety-Three Texts

My son got ninety-three texts last night from three people. His phone was sitting on the end table by the couch and kept vibrating against the wood until I picked it up to see what its problem was. It was the three kids who regularly clog his messages.

lmfao, im so fkd.

lol!!!!! y? yr mom?

gtg, cu.

What language is this? No generation has made so many changes in one decade to our language than this group of teens and twenty-somethings. I don't even understand it anymore and have to look stuff up to snoop.

I guess that's the point. It's like they're a bunch of DaVincis who are afraid they'll be killed if the work is discovered and they spend their wee hours typing into small computers instead of writing backward in their journals.

Funny thing was that in those ninety-three indecipherable texts, they didn't say much, let alone much that was offensive.

I reserve the right to read texts on my kid's phone. So sue me. He's fifteen and still vulnerable to bullying, though their worst insult was that he'd gone to the dark side and become popular. When I asked him about it, he nodded and said that a lot of the football kids were popular and he wasn't going to dis them because of it. I asked about the girl who'd leveled the accusation and he said she put her head down in the halls and didn't look at him any more.

Ah, I understand this one. There was a group of four of them last year, two gregarious and two quiet. The two gregarious ones moved away in the spring and now the two quiet ones are left, a boy and a girl. Awkward! If they like-like each other, neither of them has the courage to admit it. If they don't and they're just friends, the noisy part of their crew, the people that dragged them together in the first place, are missing and nothing requires them to make eye contact in the halls. When I asked Nick if he was still friendly with her, he said yes, but we were in the car so I couldn't tell in his answer if there was any of that nuance that would have told me he like-liked her. He holds that crush very close to the belt.

One day when I brought food for him while he was supposed to be studying, he slammed a year book into his chest and gripped it so I couldn't see any photos therein until I went away. As if I'd be able to figure it out based on thirty pictures in a book. Well, maybe I could have. Poor boy. I snoop openly to protect him, but my curiosity is killing me about the girl. It sucks when you're a teenager and your parents are curious about your life. It does.

At least I'm honest about it. I told him I snooped among his texts because I was worried what they were saying about him. It wasn't too surprising, so I'll let it go for a month or two.

I still won't know about the girl by then. He'll come to it, being ready to show his feelings, in his own time.

In the meantime, that new language. It sucks. I hope it doesn't stick.

Thank you for listening, jules

Karma Appears at 6:37 AM

At 4:07 am, Seth jumped onto my legs and proceeded to march around on my hair to wake me up. He had food. He had water. I made sure of it before I went to bed late last night. The dishes were done. Food was put away. The litter box is not too clumpy. It should have been a decent night. Today should have been a decent day, except for the cat woke me up at 4:07 this morning. 

Now it's 6:37 and Mike is in the kitchen, repeatedly whistling the theme song to 'Monty Python's Flying Circus.' The repetition ensures without doubt that I'll be hearing that song in my head for as much as three or four months. The only thing that could circumvent my horrible fate is if I study, yes I mean study, some other music with as many repetitions when I am as tired as I am today.

I don't have time to study music today. I'm meeting with a friend to do some work I haven't finished. I'm supposed to bring Nick home after school because he still has symptoms of a concussion. God forbid he ride the bus. When did he get too good to ride the bus. Then, because I have the commitment, I'm supposed to go back to school, help cook for the rest of the football team, and haul back home any of the usual boys who might have missed the concept that my boy isn't going to practice and won't be carpooling. My susceptibility to earworms has made more misery added to this day inevitable. My life is a circus anyway. Why not Monty Python?

It can't be any worse than 'La Cucaracha' that swirled in my brain for almost a year when I was in high school or the months at a new job with 'If I Only Had a Brain.' I'm certain that boss never did believe that I did have a brain, though I resisted the urge to whistle or sing that one in her presence. Her fury only accentuated the earworm that season, though I doubt I was the actual cause of her attitude. She's dead now anyway. It was a strange moment when I found out that this incredibly cruel woman had died of pancreatic cancer in a long and drawn-out way after I quit being her minion and told her that I would not stand for having anyone treat me the way she had. Imagine what you would think if you heard a tormentor had been kicked in the gut by karma.

The joy of it was short-lived, though.

So, Mike is in the bedroom now, still whistling my earworm fate for the coming weeks. I wish I could whistle it for you. It's actually a perky little song.

The cat has jumped off the couch and is in the bedroom with him, yowling for him to please stop whistling. The cat hates singing and especially whistling. Maybe it's some frequency I can't hear. Mike hasn't stopped. He's walking out the door, still whistling his cheerful song. The cat is downstairs in the foyer, demanding that he stop this instant. Mike is still whistling.

Maybe it is going to be a decent day. Maybe I've just confirmed a much needed hope that karma is indeed real and every asshole gets his due in the end. I just might spend the day whistling the theme song to 'Monty Python's Flying Circus." Maybe there are a few other assholes I can annoy today.

Thank you for listening, jules

Why Be Normal?

I should be going to bed. Everyone else is in bed, but I suddenly realized, after procrastinating all weekend, that I needed to do dishes and laundry, to order some stuff online, and to stretch. The dog is pacing, telling me he didn't get a proper walk either. I hate when he can so easily state his business with a long stare.

How do they do that? I know exactly what he's telling me. I swear I do.

I also spent the last half hour wondering if my singing drives anyone nuts in church. I hope it doesn't, but I don't sing what's on the page in front of me. I make stuff up. I harmonize. I noodle around in different registers and with slower beats and play as the song is going along. I'm not entirely sure I'm any good at it.

So, should I worry what people in church are thinking about how I sing in church? I'm not doing it out of disrespect. I'm not trying to mess things up. It's what I feel. I like singing this way and I almost feel comfortable enough with these people to do it. Almost.

I hate when I'm a dork and need permission to do things I do out of joy. I hate that. I used to get into trouble for singing at the dinner table. Who punishes a little girl for singing? I'm not bad at singing. I'm really not. I can carry a tune and I've been asked to sing in church before. The choir wants me back, but I'm busy on practice nights and I go to the early service. No choir for the early service.

But am I driving someone nuts and they're too polite to ask me to be normal?

My roommate in college told me that she hated how I always sang the harmonies of songs. She didn't like me anyway, so why did I care? Once, I sang in the lobby of my dorm and someone came up and asked me why I sang like a black person. She meant it as an insult and I understood that. I never sang in the lobby again.

So, is there someone in our small morning congregation who secretly wishes I'd shut up? Am I distracting someone from their own musical meditation? Do I have to be normal? Could I be normal if I tried?

Why should anyone care if I'm normal or not? Some of my best qualities are far from normal.

So why do I ask myself questions like this when it's past time to go to bed? I blame that little girl still singing at the dinner table.

Thank you for listening, jules

There's a Nasty Place in My Heart

Well, crap. I dreamed the sound of a step in the foyer. Since it wasn't my husband, I'm pretty creeped out. I dreamed someone was walking around downstairs and he said he didn't go downstairs. People repeat themselves when they get creeped out. I'm trying to make myself go back downstairs and check out all the rooms and closets just to make sure.

It was probably the cat.

The damned cat.

I'm tired this morning, filthy tired, because the cat kept trying to wake me up. He could see the bottom of his bowl sometime in the night. According to him, the damned thing is empty and that justifies walking on my head while I'm sleeping even though he just finished eating a large cat meal and wouldn't get hungry for three or four hours.

Twice or three times, the damned cat walked across my body last night. There are people who hate cats. I see why. I don't hate cats, I just have a nasty place in my heart right now for one cat in particular. I pushed him off the bed in the night. I'm sure I did.

A nasty place. I don't want to look at him right now.

Not to mention that there was quite a bit of food still in the bowl since it was just the center that reflected the bottom. There was a neat little ring of food around the outside edges that would qualify as two or three meals. And for that he needed to wake me up?

A nasty place.

Thank you for listening, jules

Khaki-Colored Pork Sauce

The neighbor is blowing the leaves from our tree back onto our property. Oh, we deserve it. Last year, Mike blew them into a pile just on his side of the line and I promised I'd pick them up but I forgot. I want to go out to the pile now and offer to pick them up, but I'm not sure I'd be welcome. That man must feel so self-righteous by now.

The cat escaped last night and managed to survive the coyotes and the highway, but when I turned the lights on this morning, I heard him crying at the back door. He's asleep now. I wonder if he'll try so hard to get out now that he knows he might end up spending a cold, wet night on the back doormat when he sneaks out past our feet. I wonder if he'll appreciate the warmth and comfort we offer? It seemed instead that he blamed us for his predicament. He looked at me as if I'd betrayed him. We didn't come calling for him. We abandoned him to the elements. He was so cold, so damp. He had no food, no clean water. He felt so unloved. After he came inside, he ate so much food, he puked right then and there into his little dish, a little khaki-colored pile of puke. A lovely way to begin the day, don't you think?

I just looked into cheese drawer and we have four opened bags of shredded Mexican cheese in there. I hate what happens in a refrigerator when I'm not paying attention. Melted pickling cucumbers, unidentifiable green glop that was only the leftover pea soup from yesterday when I remember details. I do not want to eat that shit even if it is relatively fresh.

I took pork tenderloin out of the fridge. It was at risk of going bad before I'd even cooked it. It hasn't been a good season for dining at our house. I blame football season. I have to pick up my boy every day at 5:00 pm and by the time I get home, we're down to chicken patties or hamburgers. Sometimes I think of the simple peanut chicken mix and coconut milk, but only rarely. I shopped and cooked for twenty-two people last Friday, a Scout camping trip, and by the time we got to dinner that night, I had taco meat for twenty-two and chicken fricassee for about thirty set aside for the weekend, but nothing to eat for that night. Mike and I had argued that I didn't need five chickens to feed twenty-two people. It turned out that two big chickens were more than generous. Now our fridge is full of at least three more meals of chicken fricassee, but we're all tired of it by now. Lunches for Nick for the week? He throws away most of his lunch anyway. Why not the leftover chicken fricassee that nobody wants now that they've had it for three meals running?

So, I cut the end of the plastic wrapper and spooged the pork tenderloin out of it into the slow cooker and set it to five hours slow. The honeymoon is over with my slow cooker. I realize that it's only as good as the ingredients I put into it. I've got pulled pork down, I'm telling to you, shredded beef too. Barbecue sauce and meat. It's a plan.

Until it isn't a plan.

These days, my clan rolls their eyes at pulled pork or shredded beef, even when I buy those big sweet buns with the shiny glaze on them.

Mike was in the kitchen making his own lunch, likely trying to avoid the neatly stacked containers of chicken fricassee in the fridge.

"How should I season the pork tenderloin?" I asked him.

"Don't know. Look it up online," he replied without looking up from his task.

"I have looked it up, multiple times, and they keep telling me to marinate it in soy sauce. I tried that and I didn't like it. Too salty."

"Mustard?" So, I got out what was left of the Grey Poupon, the dry mustard, some marjoram, and a little hickory smoked salt and blended it in a small bowl. I dipped my finger into it and stuck my finger into my mouth. Not bad, I thought as I whisked a little water into it to thin it.

"Here, taste this! It's close, but it needs something else. Can you tell what?" I said, handing him a spoon and holding out the bowl with khaki-colored liquid in it. He dipped and tasted.

"Well, you have the savory part down. Maybe a little brown sugar."

So, I added brown sugar. The color was nicer, a slightly darker green than before. I dipped my pinkie and popped it into my mouth. You can use your fingers when you're cooking for your own family, right?

You know when there's that two second delay after tasting something? Usually, it's a good thing, right?

Puke!

That was the taste I had created. Fresh, unadulterated puke. The only thing I was missing was whole peas. The taste blended with my morning mouth and held on well after I swallowed, salivated some, and swallowed again.

"It's gross!" I cried. "How do I fix it?" I held the bowl out to Mike. He looked at it, green scum floating to the top of a darker brown gunge. I stirred it a little. He shook his head and backed up.

"I'm not eating it."

"Oh, just try it. I really need help now." He shook his head again and pointed to the sink. I dumped the bowl into the sink, splashing a bit onto my shirt. I was going to smell like vomit until I changed my shirt. And I still tasted that crud. How could it still taste so utterly vile in my mouth?

I splashed water around the sink to rinse it and took a sip of water from the faucet, trying in vain to wash down the taste. If I'd still had long hair, I'd have been reminded of my college days. I dried my hands and walked past Mike and opened the fridge.

Barbecue sauce. We were destined to have pulled pork with barbecue sauce yet again. Oh joy.

Thank you for listening, jules