Potatoes

Oofdah. Mmmph. Okay. I made the hashbrowns with the cheese and the sour cream and the butter.

I’m going to bed now.

This is shameful

Now, I know some of you are shoe mavens, or shoe addicts, or just shoe afficionados. Afficionadoes. Whatever.

And, shoes are to be relished and taken seriously, especially if you spend money on them.

I’ve only bought two pairs of “designer” shoes and both turned out to be miserable representations of workable footwear.

The first pair I bought was Kate Spade. They were cute shoes, with horsey metal clasps along the top of the shoe and cunning wooden vamps and kitten heels. I cannot tell you how many times I walked right out of those slides, almost breaking my face while doing so. It’s ironic that I was wearing a cheap pair of slides when I fell and broke my wrist. I wish it had been the Kate Spades. I think I donated them. Although, because of extreme pique, I may have tossed them into the garbage, along with the craposity book I recently put away.

The second pair was a pair of Donald Pliner sandals. Now, I saw a pair of Donald Pliner sandals two years ago at Dillard’s, that were pretty much the perfect spring/summer shoe. Which would have carried me throughout most of our season. They were metallic, hammered leather, irridescently bronze with cutouts and a small heel that would go with skirts, pants, shorts, underwear, nakedosity, bathrobes.

But, they were $215 a pair. I thought paying half price for the crappy Kate Spades at $115 was evil. There was no way I’d pay for those at $215.

So, I waited. And, I found a pair of sandals at DSW by Donald Pliner! Yes! They were light, light turquoise with a sign on them noting “These are not beach shoes!”

Well, okay. I won’t wear them ON THE BEACH!

They were molded rubber/plastic with a jelly covering over the arch that were cuter than buttons. And only $50!

Here’s a pic. I wore them five times total. Because they weigh 5 pounds apiece. And, they cut into my right toe. And they fall off when you walk. Which is sort of a dealbreaker, since as how one has to walk when one is wearing shoes.

Therefore, I left them out on the deck. I know, I know, that’s against the laws of shoe nature and an inappropriate regard for the expenditure of money and many people are starving in (insert your country here) but, you know what? I paid good money for those, I may do as I wish with them, and I’m letting you know, DON’T BUY CRAP from Donald Pliner or Kate Spade, if you don’t have to. Or other “designers”.

Those sandals make a lovely play on light as we watch the titmeeces and cardinals fight for birdfood. I’m hoping that some plastic-addicted ‘possum comes along one night and turns them into a condo.

Speaking of hashbrowns

Which I would love to have right now, but can’t because we were rudely interrupted.

The barbecue is quite nice. Juicy and spicy and I made it into a sloppy sandwich composed of meat, jalapeno coleslaw that I made yesterday, dill gherkins and mustard. It fit.

Now to strawberries and ice cream.

Post 4th Checklist-Ticks, fungus, rabbit

The two briskets that Mr. Froth smoked yesterday were, well, failures. It seems he didn’t wrap them soon enough and possibly overspiced them, or something. He was totally dejected last night and I was clasping my water close to my bosom as we ate the sliced meat. He usually does perfect briskets. For some reason this batch sucked. They looked perfect. Perfect smoke ring, fat burned off right, just visually very attractive.

And then we ate it, and while it wasn’t horrible, it wasn’t the best. The TWO briskets, one which we planned to give to the neighbors but which now we won’t because we do have standards, are relegated to chopped barbecue sandwiches. It’s very sad.

Now, I shall have to make layered hash browns with cheese, cream cheese and death calories to compensate.

Today, since younger Frothlet was gone, I agreed to go for a walk on the wild side with Mr. Froth. I bless him for not waking me up at 5 AM. He was snoring at 5 AM, while I was fitfully tossing and turning and trying not to kick the cat or energize the Beebs who was panting, laying his head on each of our pillows in turn and trying to go in and out and in and out, for no reason. We both gurgled and twitched our way to 9 AM. Yes!

Then, I had to go for the walk anyway. That’s okay. It wasn’t 8000 degrees out, and it was light, which is one of my criteria for going hiking nowadays. So, we headed out at about 10 and hit the trail. No one else was there. Such a surprise.

Mr. Froth introduced me to a new portion of the trail, which I’m sure had been there previously, but I guess you had to be there in the middle of the night to catch it and remember for the next time. Before we tromped across it we had to navigate an humungous fallen sweetgum/other trees that had probably been struck by lightning and had crashed across the actual main part of the trail that you’re not supposed to go off of. I so hoped there were no snakes in the debris.

Our first sighting was the ever frightening, vicious man-eating armadillo. Yeah. Something we never, ever see along the roadways. But, he/she/it was a cutie, just a baby. And, why the heck was it out during the day? It’s probably rabid and we’re lucky we weren’t infected and aren’t frothing at…um…the mouth, like, right now.

We continued our plod, noticing nothing extraordinary, other than the usual 8 foot pig prints. I continually assessed the tree-climbing possibilities just in case.

We came upon a spillway, with paved berms on each side and lovely yellow daisy-like flowers poking up through the cement. There were many honeybees flitting to and fro having their lunch probably hating us for stepping on some of them accidentally. That area would make a perfect Stephen Kingy or video gamey obstacle to get through. The honeybee field, filled with deadly stinging bees, causing you to have to jump or fly over to get to the path on the other side.

We walked across it. And continued on. But, over to the side was a contraption, just past the Do Not Trespass sign, that made us pause. Mr. Froth wandered around it taking pics and I hesitantly popped about being the chicken that I am, hoping some House of a Thousand Corpse’s guy wouldn’t come skittling out and talk to us. Here’s a pic. We figure it’s a feral pig trap. They’d plop something tasty in there at night and the hogs would head in, knock the stick over and they’d all have Sunday dinner. Accounts for the roads we discovered. The barbed-wire is pretty sturdy.

Geez.

We continued on some more. Yet again. Also, too. We became disenchanted with the actual road we were walking and turned back taking some loop de loops that we knew were around. But, the one loop de loop I hadn’t seen was where the nighttime pig sighting happened last week. It’s one of those very English-looking mazelike forest lanes, grassy with dirt, but the vegetation is thick and impenetrable and straight up along each side.

We stopped and saw a rabbit-yes, a vicious, man-eating rabbit-sitting like a statue, like they are wont to do, those pesky statuey rabbits. He was peering into the right side of the veg and Mr. Froth took several pictures of him, getting closer and closer, and he wouldn’t move. I heard rustling to the right and thought of taking a detour, but the detour was under water, so that would be my nightmare come to life. We eventually came close enough to the bunny to cause him to jump into the forest and probably be deboned by something that he was trying to avoid simply because we couldn’t leave him alone.

Oops. Sorry.

Anyway, it was time to head back, so we did and saw our familiar pile of liquor/beer/wine bottles still piled in a pyramid, separated by colors that has been there for two months. You must give the partiers credit for being so environmentally observant.

As we passed some fallen brush on our left my eye was caught with what looked like a head.

A head? Now, why would a head be out here? And, why would I want to be in the vicinity of a head out here?

Mr. Froth, being the intrepid sort he is, went in and poked it and it was a giant, ivory, petaled head-like fungus attached to a limb. It was quite striking. I’m glad it wasn’t a head, because even Mr. Froth is not immune to wretching at the sight of heads in the woods (see dead raccoon post earlier). We didn’t get a pic.

We finally got to the fallen humungous tree which meant we were almost done and another hiker was coming through with his…poodle.

Seriously. I’m sorry, but you don’t take your dog, especially a toy poodle, on a hike in a nature preserve. You just don’t.

The poodle was brave, though and finally made it through the branches and leaves and sticks and was quite friendly. The guy was a doofus, with no water or anything and, geez, he had a toy frickin’ poodle.

Anyway, penance for my bad thoughts was dealt to me as Mr. Froth was stomping over the fallen tree and warning me not to fall and sprain something, when — whoosh! He crashed and burned with his right foot caught in the tree. It’s okay, since there weren’t any snakes hanging about and he was able to get up to disengage his foot and it wasn’t sprained. That’s a good thing.

We finally got to the car, headed home with a stop for a burger, and as we decompressed after the heat and I went to splash water on my face, he came in and grabbed the LARGE, CLEAN TWEEZERS and pulled an engorged fricking tick from his leg.

“Guess we should wear jeans from now on.”

Perhaps so.

4th Fireworks

Last night we stayed home, eschewing the local fireworks display, wherein thousands of people crowd together to sweat and be dazzled by building-obstructed booms and blasts.

Instead we watched the local Houston display, first. It was preceded by a concert given by Sara Evans, she of country music provenance, Dancing with the Stars–I think she quit midway due to a divorce and all sorts of weirdness. She’s a very lovely woman, with loads of personality and I’m sure she makes her own clothes and has school spirit.

But, last night, I felt as if an augur tipped by a lit sparkler wrapped in a soccer ball had been inserted into my right ear, pushed through my head and out my left ear. That’s how horrid, completely terrible, mesmerizingly dastardly and crappy her singing was.

Her repertoire is the classic country, Nashville, twangy excrescence that drives me crazy. Her band, bless their hearts, were pretty good. The fiddlers were zipping right along. She, however, was not only off key, which was hard to do, because she only has two notes that she seems capable of hitting, but she was off rhythm. And she was loud and prolonged. She wouldn’t quit. I wanted to flush my head down the toilet or spray WD-40 onto the HDTV to kill it.

Instead I went to bed for a bit and then, when the fireworks started I got up and thought, “Okay. Now they’ll have some good music to accompany the dazzle.”

No. They didn’t. They continued with more hillbilly, whiney, screechy, emo-ridden country shit and just wouldn’t stop.

We switched to the Boston Pops event that was televised nationally. THAT was a display. The fireworks were explosively colorful, sparkly, loud, choreographed perfectly and THEY were accompanied by the Boston Pops, who played everything from classical to Sousa to pop to opera to, even some decent country that wasn’t mangled by some goose-honking nostril-flaring bimbo. The performance was stellar. I would love to see it live.

Food Musings

Some people are published authors. Some people are that and funny, the funny being why they’re published authors. Some people concoct, deconstruct, test drive and then display gutbusting recipes for us all to kill ourselves with.

But, some people have dissed aspic by ignoring it. Ignoring aspic. There is not one aspic recipe to be found in some people’s books. Not one. And that’s an epicurean travesty.

A tragic travesty thingie!

How could one possibly omit the beauty you see to your left? (apologies to James Lileks, because I know he’s included aspic shit, but not this particular one)

You’ll note the sensuously quivering mold inviting you to tenderly breach its virgin sphericalness. You will.

You’ll note the artistically arranged refrigerator-bottom leavings that have been appliqued to the quivering sensuous mold. See how it yearns for you to touch it? It even has green Cheerios on it.

Congealed aspic that would make a fabulous Easter hat. Think how cooling that would be on your greasy sweaty head after hiking in the preserve during the midday and not seeing anything scare-worthy.

Don’t forget that this recipe requires large clean tweezers. You cannot just pluck the ones you’ve been using to remove nosehairs and that you threw with the used dental floss into the drawer. Not those. You must get LARGE clean tweezers.

This is creeping me out.

Or maybe you could use your old hair-laden tweezers. This recipe needs some texture. What would make this dish just pop would be some pickled okra and a drizzle of plain yoghurt.

I so want to spoon aspic from my partially congealed reserve (you probably can’t read the instructions up there, but you’re supposed to spoon stuff from your partially congealed reserve). My partially congealed reserve hasn’t had aspic spooned from it in, oh, I dunno, sort of never. My reserve is JUST FINE, thank you! That’s just rude.

This landmark recipe comes from The Creative Cooking Course book, Larousse Gastronomique, that we received, I think, as an engagement gift 800 years ago. The recipes are totally miserable. Just not conducive at all. But they have potential for more indepth research as sources of ridicule.

Don’t diss my aspic, especially that from my partially congealed reserve.

Happy 4th of July

A most blessed and peaceful day to all y’alls. We’re low keying it, doing crossword puzzles and listening to Louis Prima and Keely Smith, smoking two briskets and lolling. There are all sorts of festivities in the community but it’s just too dang hot.

Rereading the Declaration of Independence is a good thing to do.  It reminds us of the precious gift that we have in this country, and how we need to pay attention and to honor it and its protectors and citizens appropriately.

Complacency is not a good modus operandi.

God bless America.

1995 Redux

Back in 1995 Houston had two newspapers-The Houston Post and The Houston Chronicle. In April of 1995 The Post ceased to exist and some of its writers and some of its style were acquired by the Chronicle.

While douching our bedroom, culling our files of massive deposits of unnecessary and really old stuff, Mr. Froth discovered the April 18, 1995 Houston Post that he’d kept. It’s an entertaining read, even just skimming it.

Articles included “Shapiro Apology-remarks about criminalist Dennis Fung…”

“Representative Archer ready to fight battle against income tax “I want to rip the income tax system out by the roots.”

“And Baby Makes Three–Actors Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger are expecting a baby in November… before cell phone messages were made public.”

“Simpson prosecutors use video clip to bolster Fung’s credibility…The OJ Simpson trial opened its 12th week of testimony Monday…”

“Haiti.”

“51% of six Flags sold for $1 billion…”

“Oil futures skyrocket to $19.73

The Coastal Corporation hiked its posted prices by 50 cents a barrel to $18 for West Tecx Intermed…”

Here’s Coastal’s former high muckety muck–Oscar Wyatt

Memmmmorrriesss.

Adrenaline Spike

Well that was invigorating. Mr. Froth’s car’s brakes bit the bullet, more or less. So I met him at Just Brakes, after navigating the screaming gross-motor-skill-challenged doofi that are populating the road today. One sparkling intelligentsia sort pulled into a McDonald’s driveway, just past the under-the-overpass turn we all had to take to get going north, and stopped midstream. Causing me to half swerve into the vehicle-clogged lane next to me. Dumbass.

 

Then, as Mr. Froth was chauffeuring me back to my office, we almost witnessed a head-on. I truly thank God for not making us do so. The roadway is divided, with two lanes going east and two going west—heavy vegetation in the median, which requires you to sort of inch out to see clearly as you try to go across two lanes of oncoming traffic. As you travel a block or so west after the main intersection you have to turn left into a cut through—it divides the highway, allowing maybe two cars to wait to go each way. There is a big obvious “one way” sign indicating that the lanes across which you’re inching—I seem to be doing a lot of hyphens and strange sentence arrangements today—are not to be turned onto going right. Because, if you were to turn right on those two lanes you would be facing oncoming traffic, sometimes speeding oncoming traffic, 40 mph and up (of course the limit is 35) traffic.

 

Which is what the lady in the black car in front of us did. Turned right into oncoming traffic.

 

Mr. Froth honked just as we saw she was starting to turn and I clutched my lopsided bosom and just said a prayer, loudly. A basic one, “Oh please God. Oh please God. Oh please God.”  Like that.

 

Apparently it worked, because the pickup truck and Suburban and ten other cars that were bearing down on her stopped, allowing her to turn around and pull into the drive that WE were going to. Of course.

 

Anyway, whew.

Intellectual Mountains to Climb

Oh bother. We watched the Miss Texas USA contest tonight. Miss Harris County, I think, won.

She’s blond and buxom. I think they alternate between dark haired and slender one year and blonde and buxom the next year. It’s all orchestrated.

It was  a lovely tacky mashup of bad singing, choreography and answers to strange questions offered by the local chamber of commerce/bank/model agency/car dealership that leads to the Miss USA contest, not in Laredo. The advertisers were begging to get out of Laredo for  next year.

Gosh. I don’t know why. Just because the most amazing town landmark is the Holiday Inn, which sent their audience into horking gales of laughter as they watched the program.

But, wait. Why were they watching it in the first place? Hmmm?