Fun, Games and Finished Objects

Follow this link back to the AARP interactive jigsaw puzzle for Saturday the 16th.

The “something else which escapes me” [regarding groceries], was an eight-pound bag of jumbo potatoes. I love potato soup, baked potatoes, nuked potatoes. I’m not fond of peeling potatoes.

After dropping off their dinner at the elders’ apartment, I brought my potatoes and carrots home, put them away, and ran the dishwasher. Then I warmed up the leftovers from yesterday’s lunch with my co-worker [half of a chicken-fried steak and half of my sweet potatoes, and a couple of the rolls] for a late breakfast. Then I put on my jacket and headed out in the drizzle for the bookstore, where I was planning to browse this.

The reviews I read in Southern Living and [I think] Real Simple or Cottage Living were quite positive. The two editorial reviews that I read on the Amazon webpage were somewhat critical. I decided not to read it after one reader’s review that said “... did not care to read about her s*x life ...” Nor do I. I was hoping for another Cooking for Mr. Latte, which I own and cook from, because it is so delightful. I own two of M.F.K. Fisher’s books and the pictorial biography A Welcoming Life, which I bought in Santa Fe ten years ago, long before I thought I would ever be interested in cooking.

I am still somewhat amazed to have become so. And perhaps a bit more amazed at my own amazement. My maternal grandmother, my mother, and my sister are or were excellent cooks. But it is all tangled up for me in the overwhelming sense of lack that filled the years from early adulthood to early middle age. [I plan on staying in middle middle age until I am incontrovertibly ancient; I can’t speak for the rest of y’all.]

And still amazed to wander through Central Market as I did on Friday night, looking at all the options and thinking, “That looks interesting. I wonder what it tastes like.” Last night I bought my first Pacific Rose apple. It was, of course, *wonderful*. And I also brought home two Pink Lady apples, which I first tasted at Central Market two or three years ago; they’ve been out of them the last several times I went shopping. And a small bunch of tiny red bananas from Costa Rica that cost five times as much per pound as regular bananas and must have been chauffeured here in a Bentley. Just the right size for a quick snack. And from the bulk foods department, some of the vanilla almond granola that LittleBit and I like so much, and a bag of pumpkin spice granola to try. Yes, it does taste a lot like pumpkin pie.

So what did I browse at the bookstore, instead? This and this. One of them followed me home.

Tan’s comment on my last post, is well taken. My nails are done, a lovely shade of deep coral that is not my usual hey sailor red. And my hair is cut. Every so often I pay extra to have her wash it, and today was one of those days. I love walking out of there with hair that smells like fresh coconut.

I sat in the bookstore and did my seat-of-the-pants algebraic knitting. Slipknot to mark the start, slipknot at the end, careful frogging so as not to disturb slipknots, and finger-to-nose measuring [like they used to do to measure out a yard of fabric, back in the days when penny candy was still a penny]. Five noses of yarn, as it were; roughly five yards.

Small personal victory, I think it was back on Wednesday. I have a cotton lace sweater that I scored for $4 on the clearance rack. It’s meant to be wrapped, surplice-fashion, at the waist. And I have always either tied a square knot loosely in the front, or just let the ends spiral down. On Wednesday I decided to see if I could bring the ends around to the back and tie them. And I could! So I did. Not my best look, perhaps, but it was fun, and all day long as I sat and walked and reached and stretched, I felt like the dancer that I am.

I have a skirt from that season and from the same store, also bought on sale, and a T-shirt or two that tone nicely. I decided to try that look for the dance last night. Nobody ran screaming in the other direction. I danced way more than I have in recent months, and about midway through Gloria Estefan singing Conga, my hips and spine decided to play nicely and let my feet have some fun. I am tired but not sore. There were only two of us at the dinner, and she is someone I had been wanting to know better.

I have also committed to attending the singles’ fireside in BigD tomorrow night. It’s in my old stake, and I will get to see any number of old friends plus some of the new ones from the dinner group.

Things I have noticed recently: I like Borden’s whole milk in the pint bottle. I don’t like their 2%, even though the label and cap are a lively shade of fuchsia. Their “lite” milk is overly sweet, as if it has too much powdered milk mixed into it or was cooked too long in the pasteurization process. After raising kids for almost 30 years, I remember what powdered milk tastes like.

No thank you.

I like Schepps’ [a local dairy] 2% in the individual bottle. But it has a pop-off lid, not a screw-on lid. Perfectly fine if I’m going to be drinking the entire bottle at my desk, or in my car. Not so good if I need to transport it between one and the other. Unlike Cleopatra, cell phones do not like milk baths.

Fun with Middlest while on the phone [I found the link while checking out custom colors on the M&M website]:



Ms. Ravelled as a Red-Hatting M&M.

And a different sort of fun.

Because you *do*. And I in y'all.

It is now 12:48am, and I am officially pooped. Too pooped to take a picture of what happened on the scarf. Tomorrow [whether you define it as later on Sunday or early on Monday], as Miz Scarlett said, is another day. Or two. Sufficient unto the day are the weevils thereof.