Bless Her Heart

We went out to breakfast mid-morning today and after breakfast we went to the little Russian grocery store about a mile from here. Our ‘hood sounds like it would be all tree lined and charming like Queens where you see little old Jewish women pushing shopping carts. But it’s not, it’s an inner tier suburb with old strip malls built around the time Nixon was president. We have Arabic, Ethiopian, Indian and Russian markets within a mile of our home and two miles away is an Asian store the size of Walmart. TG wanted to make a German style cucumber and onion salad so we needed specific vinegar. Not just any old white vinegar or apple cider vinegar or balsamic vinegar but a strong German vinegar. First of all, I didn’t know you could get stronger vinegar. This stuff is strong so what she doesn’t use in the salad I’m going to keep in the first aid kit to cleanse wounds and with my paints to clean brushes. While she was looking for the vinegar I was naturally salivating hankering after the sweets and cookies.

And I scored. Really scored with Russian Moon Pies. On the way home TG asked me what was in them. I confessed I didn’t know but it looked like they possessed every a Moon Pie does but the banana flavoring and that little touch of lemon in the cookie. It was at this point she let out a sad sad truth about herself that almost broke my Texas born heart into tiny Rhode Island sized pieces.

“I’ve never had a Moon Pie.”

Bless her heart.


image here

The Sawdust Did It

There is a fussy German frau living inside this haphazard housewife. Some days I can let the dust and the mystery ick in weird places go, others not so much and today was one of those days. I found myself mentally shaking a fist at the people who live here because they splash dishwater down the front of the cabinets, leave finger prints on light switches and the ‘frig; allow dust to build up on bathroom counters and splashes accumulate on the mirror. How could they do this to me? I have a laundry room to decorate: with paint, tile and hardware to select and wall art to create. I clean on Tuesday’s and it didn’t go so well today because I would rather be looking for tile and paint. So I half-assed it because I’m sick of doing it. Which will piss me off next week when the house is doubly hard to clean because it was half-assed to begin with. The truth of the matter is I love to clean but lately it’s become a big fat ugly chore. A chore like cooking is a chore. A chore like balancing the checkbook is a chore. A chore like anything-I-should-do-but-I-don’t-care-to-do-in-the-moment is a chore.

I blame the sawdust.

For a couple of weeks The Girl has tirelessly been building cabinets for the laundry room. So there has been a lot of sawdust scattered through the house. It’s driving me crazy. Our house was a blank page when we moved in almost two years ago to the day. A foreclosure, the realtor/developer came through with a paint sprayer coating every vertical surface with white paint; "updating the floors with the crappiest carpet and vinyl flooring imaginable.

If we had only looked at this house a week earlier undoing what "Ladies Man" did in an effort to move the house from 1969 Suburban Chic to 1990’s Slum lord would have been one of those bad daydreams you brush away with a shudder. Every goddamned room in this house needs or needed work. (to clarify, we nicknamed Fannie Mae's realtor "Ladies Man" after this character)

I thought any minute he was going to invite us over to his place for some Courvoisier so we could “discuss further the ramifications of my highly esteemed organization replacing the furnace that may or may not be faulty.” To say this guy pissed me off is an understatement. Thinking about him still pisses me off and raises my feminista hackles . But I digress.


It must be the sawdust.

Today, after I finished damning my family to a level of hell where they see the menace of dust but aren’t allowed to do anything about it; I started ruminating over the latest neighborhood I discovered in our Next Town; the place we will probably move after Beav finishes high school. One of my time sucking hobbies is partaking in real estate porn cruising houses on Realtor.com. The city we are looking at is considerably cheaper so it’s fun to do a dollar to dollar search. Next Town is in Bible Belt and people sort of freak out when I tell them where we are considering making a home. It's also my home town and a place I vowed never to return. I am choosing to egnore warnings it could be Redneckville and we won’t be greeted with open arms and a basket of muffins but something akin to: “Y’all sisters?…or what?…” cue ominous sound of a shotgun being cocked But really, who cares if Billy Bob and Dar Leene hate us because Jesus hates dirty homosexuals! We can afford a lovely house with a pool! Yeah! The pool will not only refresh us in the southern heat but will make a great place to extinguish the burning crosses. The unhealthiest part of the obsession with House Porn is when I dial down the price and discover the fixers in the same neighborhoods. I find myself swoony over the footprint and the bones of certain houses. Nightmares even more nightmarish than the one I live in. “Oh look at those cabinets they just need to be refinished. . .I bet that has hardwood underneath it. . .I could take that window out and put a door to the patio. . .a little paint would be perfect. . .and it’s so cheap we would be able to just pay cash and fix it up for next to nothing!” I found another one just the other day. It has an interior atrium to die for and a kitchen in such bad shape TG would jump off a cliff before she agreed to this house.

Oh. My. God. I need a twelve step program. Best friend Ms. A has a friend, Pilot, who came up with the idea of creating a Flippers Anonymous Program. Pilot has it bad, too. In the last three years he has done two houses. And he lives in them while he renovates. Sick, sick man. But I totally get it. I blame being a control freak. I have to make everything my own; put my mark on it. Like Kipper, only it’s paint not pee when I mark things. This also explains why (as hard as this is going to be for TG to hear) the idea of a turn key ready house is a terribly boring concept to me. I hate boring.

Which is probably why I’ve never had a proper laundry room (or adequate closets for that matter) because I am usually drawn to quaint little houses with big souls? The closest thing I have come to a laundry room was a designated area in the basement of Mrs. Ward Cleaver’s Fabulous House in the Suburbs. But it wasn’t a proper laundry room; it was where the hook ups were in the basement. A special room designated to cleaning clothes makes me feel terribly grown up. I think this grown up feeling is why, when we discussed redoing the laundry room one of my first questions was: “Can we have a chandelier in there? I think it would be a pleasant surprise to see a chandelier in the laundry room.” And wouldn't this fixture be adorable in a peach oned laundry room.

I wish I could blame the sawdust.

The Proust Effect

(image from Blackforestcuisine.com)

One of the many things I love about The Girl is she never needs an excuse to go out for dinner. She worked in the food/beverage industry for years before doing what she does now so the woman knows her way around a kitchen, behind a bar and the front of the house. We don’t do Valentines Day so it wasn’t like we were going out to celebrate what we see as a non holiday. I wanted to go out because I was tired, pining for a cocktail and fancy food. So last night I greeted her at the door with: “Let’s go out to dinner. You choose.” After ten minutes of a good natured back and forth of: “No, you choose. . .“ I finally decided on this place. I hate making the restaurant decision because if the food sucks, I feel responsible. At Mizuna’s, we walk into the room where TG is immediately greeted by a charming man who was genuinely thrilled we had come in for dinner and then he spent the rest of the evening treating us in the manner we so richly deserve. Like princesses. Our meal was fabulous: she had the mac and cheese with lobster and lobster oil; I had the escargot pot pie. But dessert. Dessert was amazing.

I’m usually disappointed in my desserts. Even in my favorite restaurants dessert is usually meh at its best and sent back at its worst. I don’t think of myself as a picky eater but when it comes to dessert I guess I am. Dessert is a special occasion for me. When I was a little girl, my mother--Susie Homemaker--always served dessert with dinner. Mind you, it was a Duncan Hines cake frosted with resentment and a sense of duty. When my dad started gaining weight and his blood pressure went up she gratefully gave up the cakes and dessert then became a rare thing. It is still a rare thing for me and as I try desserts in my city’s restaurants it is becoming even more rare to have a dessert.

The most memorable dessert I’ve ever had was in 1987 at a country club in Orlando. A small serving of fresh raspberries, served in a frosty martini glass with a sugared rim. The presentation was simple and the berries exquisite. Frankly this dessert is the litmus test for all other desserts. Unfortunately, the last great dessert I had was a crème brulee in 2008 at John Gray’s in Puerto Morelos. The rest of the experience was so bad I wrote and tried to contribute an online review but the Trip Advisor nanny didn’t approve of my reference to the bartender as a “surly bitch”. Besides that, she was so busy trying to get into Chef Gray’s pants it was obviously an inconvenience to serve anyone at the bar, especially a couple of middle-aged lesbians. This year, in Mexico, we went to one of John Gray’s restaurants and revisited the crème brulee. He tried to whore it up with espresso powder and ruined it. He happened to be in the house that evening, and because I will say anything to anyone, when he asked me how we enjoyed our desserts I told him. Something to the effect he ruined it by trying to make it fancy. Chef Gray’s excuse was he couldn’t get vanilla beans. In Mexico. Yeah. Whatever. Wouldn’t it have been funny if I asked him if he was still getting some strange from his homophobic bitch of a bartender.

And please, don’t hide a mediocre dessert behind a huge portion! In the south suburbs (land of the minivan and mega church) there is a restaurant called “The Claim Jumper” and it is the glutton’s paradise. The chicken dinner? Half a chicken. A piece of chocolate cake? Half a small sheet pan. Is the chocolate cake any good? No it tastes like my mother’s Duncan Hines cake. So give me enough for a small family and I’ll think it’s better? Um…no.

Last night our lovely waiter/bartender told us he was buying us dessert. In the past, I’ve learned this is most likely because the pastry chef fucked something up and they are trying to get rid of it. I was crossing my fingers he was going to bring me a flight of their sorbets but instead He brought out a bruleewith these amazing macaroons for TG and a flambé with bananas and grapes for me (it wasn’t even on the menu). Not only did they do what dessert should do, but they were transcendent. I never wanted dessert to end. I wanted those lovely tastes to linger on my tongue for the rest of my life. These desserts became an existential experience. (Please don’t lose sight of the fact a trip to Walmart for tampons can become an existential experience for me!) Like Proust’s cookie, they triggerd memories and became the creators of another wonderful memory with The Girl. We waxed philosophically about dessert, how it should be the end note to a meal; without overshadowingit in either it’s mediocrity or flamboyance. It shouldn’t be the late arriving guest, that is like, your best friend from college rolling into your dinner party--late-- all sloppy drunk and loud.

TG explained to me the German for dessert: nachtisch, literally translates “after the dish”. Well of course it does! Leave it to the Germans to be completely pragmatic about dessert. “Und now vee eat cake und vee will undjoy dee cake for we have had our dish or schnitzel!” I woke up this morning thinking about dessert. I doubt I’ll have any for a few months and when I do have one it will have to be as delightful as a simple goblet of raspberries or last night’s vanilla induced petite mal.

Here’s to the Proust Effect! Happy Valentines Day!