Blog Snippets.

Today was an unusually great day, somehow. Had guests for big pot roast lunch and stayed calm before, during and after. Even while scraping out inordinate amounts of congealed yellow fat from the chilled short ribs pot. I offered my guests a look-see at the bowl of fat, but they not-terribly-demurely declined. Memo, entertain at lunch, not dinner. If old opened wine is a no-no for cooking, I'd like to know how.

With all the heavy pollen, the poor Jazz has been rolling around on the floor like a little demented dog. So off to the vet we went. I hugely admired the many cute dogs in the waiting area. One dog had all the heavy drapey folds of skin around his face, I forget what he was, but he was blue. Yes, he had bluish spots. NEVER saw a dog like that, the most unusual dog I've seen, besides the hairless dog. I had a shameful response in the presence of the hairless dog's owner, a southern belle. She brought the dog out for us to see and I shrieked, WHAT'S THAT???

So tonight someone sends me an email that's titled NOT A Bath Towel -- DO NOT Put In the Laundry. What is not a bath towel is a draped dog, draped in his own rolls of folded skin, that is. Thick curtains of billowing excess dog skin. Man, I'm waxing poetic. It's hilarious, he's curled up on the bathroom rug right next to the shower curtain. Everything in the picture is white and honest to goodness, you cannot tell there is a dog in the picture. For all the world the dog looks like a bath towel. I was especially amused since I saw the similar dog at the vet's, only blue, and, by all appearances, only drapey around the face.

The vet says that Jazzi should go on Benadryl and new fatty food, that this will ease her allergies to the environment. When I checked out at the desk the lady gave me the food. I asked, Where's the Benadryl? She looked at me like I was crazy. Benadryl, she said matter-of-factly, as if that suffocated all questions. I said, You mean Benadryl???, like the kind I take to help me fall asleep at night, the kind you buy in the grocery store? Yes, she said. Well, really. I was expecting some kind of Doggy Benadryl. And what on earth will it do to the Jazz? She is to take 3/4 of a regular adult tablet, one gram for every pound she weighs. I take one tablet and it knocks me out cold. I think it's safe to say that I weigh considerably more than my little dog. If I can do the math, I'm taking one gram for every 5 pounds. Why, then, does poor Jazz have to take one gram for each of her single little pounds?

Then it was choir practice, where the only note I played was the one I hit accidentally with the notebook I was using for a firm surface to do Marilyn's Numbrix from Parade Magazine. I didn't play because he used only the orchestrated accompaniment tape tonight, as it was the final rehearsal for the Good Friday and Easter performances. The director said at the beginning, I didn't think you were coming tonight. That's interesting since no one told me not to come. I guess I should have just known, based on prior experience. Oh, well, something interesting happened anyway. The director handed me an anthem and said, This is a great piece we will do sometime. I looked at it and immediately recognized it. You see, it was one of the very first pieces I every played for this choir 5.5 years ago when I first started playing for the choir. (Weird sentence.) I thought it was an outstanding anthem. At the time I had instruction from my piano teacher for this accompaniment, which I vividly remember. I also remember being very nervous to play it, as I was still new on the job and it was an exquisitely pristine type piano part. And what church pianist is going to forget a piece where the measures alternate between 5 eighth notes and 3 quarter notes?? Furthermore, this was the very piece I had been asking my director to repeat, starting last summer. I couldn't remember the name of it, but I wanted him to look it up.

So here he is, all proud to hand me this piece and it turns out to be the one I was begging for anyway. Only he said, We've never done this piece before. And to add insult to injury, the main soprano said we'd never done it either, 'cause she would remember. Well, NO ONE is going to tell me we never did that piece before, because we did. FINAL. The lady and I even went back to the music files to search for it. I found it, except it was a set of brand new, never used music. Which made us even more confused.

There is an answer to the mystery. Just suffice it to say, we did the piece before. My darling hat-making, elite-running, duo-partner Christa thought this was so much fun, that God has a sense of humor, that the director picked the piece without knowing it was THE piece. I agree. I was able to put my bag of reading material to good use. I found an article that said we must sharpen the brain by doing games. So, I promptly did the Numbrix. Then my brain turned out sharper than anyone's. But I take no credit, as I have to work harder at the piano than the singers do singing, them's just the facts of life. THAT is why I remember this piece, besides it being so special.

So much for Blog Snippets, I'm getting carried away.

I had instructed Mike to eat three Deviled eggs for dinner, after his Tenebrae service (the eggs I had made for the lunch and forgot to set out, did I just say something about a sharp mind?). He could also have the leftover Marlboro Man sandwich filling, I suggested. I wondered why he didn't object to eating old gray meat again, so far be it from me to incite a riot over it. Later, after he had eaten it, I said, Did you read my blog today? He had not. So, that's what he gets. Sometimes, ignorance is not bliss. Anyway, kiss the old gray meat Bye-Bye. Never again, I can tell you that much.

Now, at this very second, I am becoming ill from inhaling dead vacuum fumes. The fumes have all entered my air passages and it's a ghastly gas filling my head and lungs and everything in-between. You see, my vacuum has been ailing with the consumption or something for the past few months. Yes, the vacuum from Empire Gorilla State Vacuum, if you recall some of my first blogs, which who on earth would do that? A while back I noticed a peculiar odor, as in the motor burning up. I would freeze and then go on with my vacuuming. Each time, and it's only been a few times this has happened, the vacuum would rally, which I don't quite, you know, grasp.

Well, the last couple of nights when I turned it off, it made a sick coughing and sputtering sound. Groans and wheezes. I'm telling you, this thing is human. I was getting more nervous by the second. Tonight when I went to turn it on, I thought, Oh dear, is this thing on its death bed, or what? So, I vacuumed the bathroom and before I could even finish, it let out more than a death rattle. It shrieked and moaned and whistled to the high heavens. I was so scared I pressed the off button with my foot quickie-quick, in the hopes it wouldn't explode with flames licking the ceiling. Man, you won't catch me plugging that baby in again, it's last gasp was just that, it's last.

And the odor of death was wretched and crept through the house, invading every square inch. Ominously. Like in the movie The Ten Commandments. Remember when the death angel visited the homes that didn't have the blood on the posts, how it was visualized as a foggy vapor seeping under the doors and windows? Well. Just the stench of DECAY. Ugh. Mike knows I basically cannot live without my vacuum, which of course has given up the ghost on a long weekend. And if he's counting on a vacuum hospital visit in hopes of a miraculous revival, I do believe he is sadly mistaken. And to think, I just inserted a brand new vacuum bag. At least the dear will be well-dressed for burial. Good-bye, Fair Friend. (Am I losing it, or something?, maybe I've gone too long without doing my Numbrix or Jumbo and I'm left with a bowlful of mush.)

Anyway, it was a good day. And I'm happy I can sit here and say that in spite of losing a long-term useful and loved family member (that never talked back) that faithfully answered my every beck and call and dutifully served me without complaint until THE VERY END (except when it was a lemon when I first bought it), I still had a very good day. Now THAT'S saying something.

This piece of trauma calls for hot chocolate and Zucchini bread. By the way, Pioneer Woman's Baked Fudge must go into your Big Bang for The Buck repertoire immediately. It takes 10 minutes to mix, if that, and is nothing less than a smash hit.

How do you get rid of dead vac fumes? Always sumpin'. Oh, and this blog is far too long to proof- read in my present condition, so, good luck . . . now that you've read it.

Two complete tablespoons of butter in each modest-sized baked fudge cup,
KEM