Briefly . . . and I can be brief.

Today DTD was baby-sitting the 8 year old daughter of my "little sister" Barb, we grew up on the same block. I hadn't seen Belle for almost 3 years, for which I should be jailed. I used to watch her quite a bit when they still lived in St. Pete. But they played dirty and moved 45 minutes away, which may as well be Alaska as far as KEM is concerned, since KEM thinks everything she does should be in a three block radius from her driveway.

Anyway, I was charmed to pieces with Isabella. I asked, Do you remember me? She shook her head, No. Oh, man. She remembered my sister, Mike, my niece, Jazzi and the climbing tree out front, to name a few. But she didnt' remember me, the story of my life. She wanted to climb the tree, of course, but it was so cold I said, Well, you go right ahead and I'll watch you from the window. So she went out to the walkway and stood there viewing the tree and all the thick ground cover surrounding the tree. She looked back to ask, with a worried expression, Are there snakes in there?, and pointed to the laurel stuff or whatever it is.

Actually, it wasn't two weeks ago that I was walking the long boardwalk that wraps around the front and side of the house (our house is added onto and the front door is way around the front of the house and down the side . . . weird, but what do you expect from KEM?) and a snake slithered across the boards right in front of me, as in, I came two inches from placing my foot on it. Scared me to pieces, just a medium black garden snake, I guess, I hope. I've seen them before.

So, I said, Well I have seen snakes, but there are no snakes today because it is too cold for snakes today. She looked at me a little strangely but apparently decided to exercise faith because she stepped knee deep into the plant cover and tramped to the tree.

Meanwhile, DTD comes up, having heard all this, and says, You don't tell her there are no snakes today, you tell her there are no snakes, period. DTD couldn't believe I told her there were no snakes today, like an 8 year old would take great comfort in such a hair-brained announcement. Besides, I really didn't know FOR SURE there were no snakes today. We have these horrid railroad ties lined up along the wood walkway, stacked two high. What they are is Roach Motels and Snake Cottages and the sooner these boards and ties are replaced with something civilized, the happier this kid is going to be.

So, I really bombed this whole thing. I should have said, Well, let me come with you, just to be sure there are no snakes today. Live and learn. The sad thing is, the more I live the less I seem to have learned anything. But somehow, I got a kick out of it. DTD has that effect on me.

When Belle came inside, with no snake encounters, Thank you, Lord, she wanted to go upstairs to see if I still had shoes in the big closet. See, she remembered my shoes but not me, so demoralizing. Upstairs we got sidetracked by all these photos scattered on the floor, which I am trying to organize, ha, ha. She was very interested to see and there were some old pictures of DTD as a baby, and me, her mother. Belle said, Oh, now I remember you. I said, YOU DO?? She said, Yes, you had brown hair in these pictures. So, there you have it, my carroty orange "do" has been my undoing and it's got to go, in less than three weeks it will be gone, at my next Fantastic Sam's visit. Back to brown. Then I won't be able to wait to see Belle again and get her reaction, Oh, there you are.

Still kicking, obviously, after Jazzi Jerms. One friend said this story reminded her that when her mother was little she went in the kitchen when no one was around and let her dog "clean" all the dishes. Ha, ha. So of course the little girl's mother was horrified when she found out. Then CDW, never one to let me down, writes this:

OK my darling...letting dear little Jazzi lick the dishes...wellllll, brought memories back when Jon and I were first married. We went to visit his best friend who married his cousin (worked out well for Jon...adding his best friend to the family)...anyway, they had a little dog named Blitz. They let this little dog lick all their plates after eating. It grossed this Kansas farm girl out the door! :) Butttttt, I know my KEM and she is the cleanest girl in the world...until she forgot to wash the dishes in the dishwasher! HA! Oh my goodness...I think I would have thrown-up for sure when I discovered this little fact after consuming tuna-not-tasting-right sandwich. :) But boy, did it ever make a fabulous and funny story!

The sad truth is that KEM'S World Class Cleanliness has suffered some as of late (like the last 10 years, June Cleaver, rescue me!), but that's okay, at least I still floss my teeth every night without fail. The day I give up on that, just shovel the first spade.

Well, I have to be happy (brag) about my new coat, can't help myself here. But I had noticed this gorgeous teal coat with Ethel when we went to the mall over a month ago. We both flipped over it, but it was way too 'spensive even way on sale. But it was a light wool, and supple and stylish. My nice red coat from J. Crew, from way back, is stiff as a board, heavy wool. I feel like I'm in a straight jacket in it or I move like a robot in it, something like that.

Well, J. Jill, home of the teal coat, sent me a lovely coupon in the mail this week, so I wanted to get there in the hopes maybe that coat was still there. But our weather has been SO cold that the hope I held was slim indeed. As I was walking tonight to the back of the store, I spotted the teal coats from afar on the sale rack. Heart beats faster. There were three left and only one in my size and guess what? It was 50% off the sale price. And the nice clerks said teal looked good with my orange hair. So, the long and short of this is, I left J. Jill swinging a sack with a $170 coat for which I paid a gentle $37. See, if I used my J. Jill card, I could get 5% more off. Didn't even know if I had my card, but, lo, and behold, I produced it from the depths. This was a little God gift and I'm very grateful for it and I hope you all get a good deal real soon, too, because it makes you feel SO SMART.

Oh dear, I hope I don't discover a ciggy burn on my new coat tomorrow or something equally dreadful.

Not too brief, huh?

Color me TEAL,
KEM

We are still here. The dog dish tuna did not do us in just yet.

But I don't feel like blogging. The death of the luge Olympian kinda bummed me out.

Happy Birthday to Sweet Tulsa!!! We go way back to ages 12 and 13, met at summer camp, suite mates, were there one month together. Then fast forward a few years to boarding school, same place as the camp, we were there one semester together. Then fast forward 24 years and we are now bosom friends.

I love ST so much. We really weren't friends until email, 8 years ago, so I am forever indebted to modern technology. It happened one night when my sister said, Let's look up Hampden DuBose Academy. ST responded, she is the glue of the group, inviting me to join the school's activities online. We started chatting via email and it just kinda kept going. This goes to show you that you never know what little God gifts are around the next corner, because I never would have guessed this delightful surprise in a million years, I mean, it was so out of the blue. And now ST is one of the pearls of my life.

She was one of the boarding school's beauties, I admired her and her effortless popularity from afar. And she's just as beautiful on the inside, which is the best. She has really been there for me. EVERYONE loves her, I do not exaggerate, ST has a winning mix of attributes, but I think I will cease and desist before I embarrass her :) Have a sweet day, Sweet Tulsa!

I'm thinking about turning into June Cleaver next week, just to try it out. Her schedule always seemed so even. But the modern woman has 50,000 interruptions every hour, it seems, and thus can never get anything done . . . unless she is exceptional, of course, which I am not.

Experimental KEM

Back to Dust and How

Very bad chain of events today. It really started last night cleaning up after pork chops. So, today I am so busy visiting people that I have to rush home to inhale a tuna sandwich and walk Jazzi before rushing off for more visiting and choir rehearsal. Hadn't unloaded the dishwasher so reached in and grabbed my tuna mixing bowl. Reached in again for spoons and what-have-you. Mixed up my tuna really fast. It's a little wet because my new "no hands" can opener takes the lid completely off and then I drop that on the floor for Jazzi to lick. Meaning, I forget to hold the lid to the can to drain the tuna. I substituted the cone of my orange juice squeezer. It was a poor substitute.

So, I sat down to eat and first thought was Gee, this tuna doesn't taste so good, I guess it's too wet. Or, thinks me, maybe I'm just having bad luck, what with the gruesome frozen hamburger patties the other night. So, I eat it, what else are ya gonna do? Jazzi always has fun licking the tuna can and bowls and plates. I know, that's totally uncouth, but whacha gonna do?

So, I walk and visit and play piano and come home. Mike is home first and can't wait for dinner (leftovers) so he is eating the leftover tuna. While the more substantial leftovers are heating in the oven I go to unload the dishwasher. Sometimes I count each piece, just to make me feel good about hard I work. WOW, 66 pieces of silverware and dishes, that represents a whole bunch of elbow grease, I boast to myself.

As I was putting a glass away I noticed that it looked smudged. Hmm. I chalked it up to being the glass in the corner of the rack, far removed from a good wet spray. Still, a doubt lingered. So, I picked up a glass bowl next and there were little specks of broccoli hanging around. Uh-oh. I really can't stand it when I put away almost a whole load of dirty dishes. As I go to retrieve them -- and how can I remember exactly HOW MANY plates I stacked or how many forks, so you have to go deep into the piles to play it safe -- well, a VERY BAD thought struck me.

Yes, I had made my tuna in a dirty bowl with dirty spoons because I had never run the load, thinking I could fit in a couple more saucers. Not just ordinary people dirty, but dog-germ-infested dirty. You might be asking, How could you not know, after unloading 53 pieces of dishware, that you were unloading dirties? Well, that is so easy. Because I am a rinser. I rinse the dishes so well they almost look whistle clean going into the racks. I've read many times how the manufacturers and experts tell you, DO NOT RINSE, be late for your own wedding, but DO NOT RINSE the dishes going into the dishwasher. I ignore it. But I don't rinse with soap too much, just a little if the rag is feeling weighed down with grease. Still. Still, this rinsing fetish is no substitute for really washed dishes, hence my heart five fire alarm attack . . . whatever am I trying to say?

I yelped, MIKE!, I made the tuna in a dirty bowl!!! At first it hadn't dawned on me that it was a Jazzi-tongued bowl, but Mike instantly said, I thought the tuna tasted funny, was it a bowl Jazzi licked? I looked stunned. While living on borrowed time I racked my brains to remember if it was indeed a Jazzi-licked bowl. Maybe I lucked out, knowing all the while, Fat Chance. So I went over the meal prep from last night step by step. Then I knew, I had stirred together the pork chop topping ketchup and brown sugar in that bowl and without a doubt Jazzi cleaned it up for me. Oh, man, we are doomer than doomed. Woe is me, I am undone. I asked Mike, Should I throw out the rest of the tuna? He said, Yes.

Not only that, but now I don't have room in the dishwasher for today's dirty dishes, you know, 'cause I had to put any questionable dishes in with all the true dirty ones when I reloaded. And if you set a dirty knife on a clean one, what then?, then they all have to go in and be washed, right? So, that about filled up all the empty space I was saving for today's dishes. Really, why don't I just run the load every night, even if it's one coffee mug? Mike always told me to run the dishwasher every night, full or no, and I thought, Wicked waste. Well, see the messes I get myself into?

And my brother-in-law, when he once observed the "make-my-dinner-reappear" site of Jazzi standing in the roasting pan on the floor, where once had stood (lain) a turkey, said, Remind me never to eat at your house again.

Well, I do believe this little post will single-handedly, in one fell swoop, end my blogging career. Nice knowing you. And I guess my future dinner guests will all walk in on four legs.

I really did have a nice day until the shocking realization I now have some dread doggie rooted disease which may very well quell my fountain of life. Right now. Tonight. I hope I die peacefully in my sleep. Mike, too. Never mind blogs and dinner guests. If the tuna hadn't tasted so peculiar, I might have hope. But it did and I don't.

And to think my sinus problems have been under control with the turkey basting washing method. Someone please tell Dr. Lanza I thank him. And to think I'm going to miss the Olympics, which I had so looked forward to. But my last day was a good one, I squeezed two glasses of tangelo juice, I had a sweet visit at my childhood home, how fitting, had a nice visit with neighbors of my childhood home and darling little girls. I snapped plastic beads together to make a necklace for them. Laura, Baby Claire said to tell you hello. Hello from Baby Claire. It's so nice that yesterday I reminisced about Michigan lake water lapping on the seawall. Oh yes, even DTD stopped by last night. Good-bye, Cruel World. Farewell, Fair Friends. Someone take Jazzi for us, Boo Hoo, sweet ketchupy dog. Such a crying shame.

KEM, The Mortal, mortalizing (one last made-up word) sooner than expected

When I picked up Pat for lunch today, I went inside her house, and the first thing I spotted, there on the coffee table, was a beautiful photo album, all with golden-white and antique-y embellishments. And just what should be the contents of this album, pray tell? Only wonderful old photos of Pat as a little girl at her lake house, that's all. And all her family members who were smart enough and wealthy enough (Pat's grandfather had something to do with the invention of the paper bag, don't quote me) to carve out this little slice of heaven-on-earth that Pat enjoyed to the hilt for many years. Her elegant parents used to play cards with another lake couple. Pat reminded me of the young Haley Mills. Friends, this was another time, another place.

Oh boy, I saw the boat house from which she used to jump into the lake for swimming. I saw the stone path that climbed from the lake to the house on the hill. I saw the giant fish they would catch and fry. The yard and giant trees. The vegetable garden, Oh, law!, as they used to say in North Carolina. The boat, the porch, the glory. I heard about the nearby little quaint towns they frequented, oh yum. I'm telling you, I was THERE, I was living it, heck with lunch, this was way more fun. I could feel the cool soft northern grass, so different from Florida's St. Augustine grass, under my bare little bunioned feet. Flat feet, too, which allows for more surface to cover the grass. I could sense the coziness of belonging to such a dear house and place, the kind that gives you shivers. The picturesqueness (word?) breathed peace, quiet, contentment, happiness. How's that for an unbeatable foursome? Pat's house for many years was only reachable by boat, isn't that just dandy?

Now of course everything has changed. She has a dream to go back one more time. Her heart is YEARNING. There are roads now, and the new owners ripped down the old house, but at least rebuilt a similar style. Furthermore, there are condos springing up all around the huge lakes, even movie stars have descended. So, I told Pat we should take a road trip and go to her old lake and my old lake. She thinks that would be a long drive, but I said, We could stop along the way. You watch, KEM is coming to 100 miles north of Toronto. Coming soon . . . stay tuned.

Well, we finally tore ourselves away from desperately fond memories and went to WineBurgers, a neat little place in a sort of out-of-the-way location near the water. I wanted to redeem my dreadful burger experience from the night before, and Pat loves burgers. Too bad it was closed. So we went to Billy's across the way, a St. Pete kind of landmark fish house. Thick creamy clam chowder, a bowl, of course, I have no use for a spoonful of a cup, a grouper slider with jazzed up French fries and Key Lime pie. When I heard the man who made the soup made the pie . . . SOLD.

Then I ran home to fix pork chops, mashed sweet taters with squeezed tangelo juice, broccoli. My stepson saw the pork chops and said, What's the sauce? I said, Good old-fashioned sauce (I'm always purposefully mysteriously vague with him because you never can tell what suits his fancy, or not). He said, What? I said, Ketchup. Well, these were little frozen organic babies, these pork chops, can you even believe it, after the burger fiasco? But I'd made them once before and these were as good as the burgers were bad. So that means they were VERY, VERY good. This meal was topped off with a sliver of anniversary cake by Carolyn. It was merely a sliver because that was all that was left.

As you can see, this was a very low calorie day. And brown sugar went into the sweet taters and the ketchup sauce, just to round things out, especially me. If you are wondering what is with the organic meat, just let me say, Watch the documentary FOOD, INC. Life as you know it will be gone from you forever, like pulling the plug on a tub full of water. WHISH . . . GONE!

Okay, why not finish this cold night off with hot chocolate and Dear Carolyn Hax?

Flakey Lakey Chubby Tubby KEM

Hello. We had bad little burgers for dinner. They were frozen organic patties and they were the perfect topper for a day that was ho-hum through and through. These patties looked beautiful frozen, red and fresh, but when they hit the fry pan, they smelled funny and turned into unappetizing gray oily flat discs, with a repulsive hump in the center. And they leaked that jiggly stuff, too. And later on they tasted funny. BOO! HISS! Honestly, life is so much a collection of winning some and losing some. I had good faith in these organic burgers from a reputable company. Their bacon is to die for, and die I will because I eat so much of it. But those burgers were a first and most definitely a last. Mike ate two of them.

I have higher hopes for tomorrow. My friend Pat and I are going to lunch. She is a former adult piano student I had once upon a time. She has carroty orange hair, same as mine. We feel a connection because we both spent our summers up north in cottages on a lake. Well, I was in Michigan, of course, and she is Canadian. Her cottage really was on the lake but it wasn't a cottage, it was a great big impressive glamorous summer home owned by her maiden aunt. My grandparents' cottage wasn't really on the lake, rather across the street from the lake, but on the golf course, which had its own charms. And it really was a cottage.

Anyway, Pat is one who can make me laugh. For instance, I called her Monday night to set up lunch for this week. I said, I can go any day this week. She said she could, too. Then she said, Well, I guess Monday is out. That just struck me as hilarious. This happens time and again and sometimes we laugh so hard we can't stop. Once we went to a women's retreat together and driving to the hotel that night she was saying how her husband said they were running out of money. And she said, incredulously, What does he mean, are we going to be out on the street? Then we went into hysterics for several minutes. I think it's the way she says things. She is totally adorable, pure and precious and innocent.

Today was a day where the house was colder inside than it was outside. How does that happen?

Okay, so I'm all doom and gloom and won't poison you further tonight. Mike thought I was way too hard on the man at the post office with the 10 million packages, which he kept retrieving from his bottomless tub, seriously, like it was a VW loaded with clowns, absurd. Unbelievable. Mike says, What was the man supposed to do? I said, Plenty, he was supposed to go through the line time and again, two packages at a time. Mike blames it on the post office. This is true, maybe the post office could establish a five parcel limit on transactions. Or a separate lane for BUSINESS. I still say the man was out to lunch. Anyway, I'm blaming my dumpy, umpy, umpy attitude and thus dumpy, umpy, umpy day on hormones. What good are hormones if you can't pass the buck to 'em??

Time for some Gorilla Munch, to drown the bad beef taste.

Going to accentuate the positive tomorry,
KEM

KEM is having to give up her favorite thing. Naptime. Giving it up along with her bottle and pacifier. Say a prayer.

Since I am giving up naptime, that means I can't blog at 3:00 AM, because now I go to bed at 11:00 PM. So this means I am going to have to find a time to blog in daylight hours. Say a prayer.

Today I was trying to mail my mother's-in-law birthday presents. Her bday comes the day after Valentine's Day and Sweet Tulsa's bday comes the day before Valentine's. I think I have that right, and not the opposite. I love it when bdays fall on sensible days that you can remember. Miss Orcas' bday is the same as my dad's. Good going, Miss Orcas. DTD'S Aunt Jane's bday is the day before mine, except I never remember that until my bday, when I get a card from her and then I slap my forehead and utter, RATS! This happens every year. I'm about to cave in and buy a birthday calendar book.

Well, so I stopped at the post office to pick up boxes. They said, FLAT RATE. That sounded pretty good to me, Priority Mail and everything. Well, I made the mistake of thinking that the FLAT RATE would be REASONABLE. I'm so silly. So I went home and packed all the gifts in two boxes and went back to the P.O., only to find eight people standing in line ahead of me. Before long there were eight people standing behind me, too. I know how to pick 'em. This man was at the counter, he had a huge tub of boxes and manila envelopes. I kid you not, to the tune of $351 worth of postage (that includes 2 books of stamps, I think). Don't be fooled by KEM'S dainty looking little ears, she was going to hear the grand total or perish. Think about this, people, $351 to mail all his junk!!!, minus two books of stamps, I think. And it wasn't a couple of giant boxes, oh no, it was 10 million little packages, plus a couple of medium boxes, is all. I have to tell you, my Christianity was melting down and flowing under the post office doors like molten lava. I was HOT! The noive of some people. That man should have gone through the line 30 times, mailing two packages at a time, like the rest of us mortals. It was all I could do when it was my turn, three hours later, to say to the clerk, That man was SO OBNOXIOUS!!! Instead, I said, Wow, that man sure mailed a lot of junk! See, I HAD to say SOMETHING. But the clerk didn't take my bait. I guess he's a better Christian than I am. Or wants to keep his job or something.

Well, turns out that my FLAT RATS, I mean, RATES, boxes were going to cost a small fortune to mail. And I was just mailing clothing, light as a feather. The gentlemanly clerk told me to switch out all my stuff into REGULAR Priority Mail boxes, which he handed to me. So I stepped aside and went to work, feeling like a total dork and everyone staring at this dumb girl who don't know nuttin'. The end result of this, however, was it saved me FOURTEEN DOLLARS!!! FOURTEEN DOLLARS?!?!? GOOD NIGHT, NURSE!!! I guess you only want to use FLAT RATE when you're shipping lead bricks to Hong Kong. Honestly, who comes up with this stuff? The regular boxes are identical to the flat rate ones, except the flat rate ones say in tiny print, flat rate. I said, Can't you just cross off where it says, flat rate and let my carefully packed and addressed boxes be? He said, They don't like us to do that. Well, I'm not going to argue the finer points with a lovely postal clerk who is saving me $14, which I'm sure he didn't have to do.

I'll betcha every single one (emphasis on one) of you reading this already knew the dif in the boxes. But KEM didn't. She learned something today. She also learned she'd better cut off her tongue. 'Cause I had Jazzi in the car, nice cool day, and this little post office is always packed, just ask the man in line in front of me, 'cause I asked him and he told me. Jazzi was with me because she thinks a car ride is the equivalent to dying and going to Doggie Heaven. So, I prayed for a parking space, which you are lucky to get in the first place without circling the block 10 million times, I prayed for a parking space right in front, the best spot, the only one where you can keep an eye on your dog the whole time you're in line, all three hours. And when I drove in the lot, there was the space, just for me. I always pray for openings to merge on the Interstate, too. And 99% of the time I get one. I guess God is testing my faith the other 1%. So, I should have been much more charitable about the nasty man mailing his life away, who thinks he is the only person in the world. But, honestly, don't you think if you are using the post office as your office away from the office, that you should let all the little old ladies just trying to mail a Valentine go ahead of you?? Yes, I thought you would.

Oh my goodness, I found out today that Cheryl across the street is NOT hosting her annual Valentine party this year. Rats. No, make that SUPER RATS. I know she's done it 10 years in a row and it is a BLAST. She is too tired this year, I don't doubt it or blame her. So neighbor, neighbor's sister and I are going to take Cheryl out for dinner, for a change. But still, Valentine's won't be the same without this girls' party, she has the neatest girlfriends and we look forward to seeing each other this once a year. Rats. Except last year in the gift exchange, which gets really silly, I ended up with an XXX rated book about how to spice up your love life. I have a knack. I give sweet little things like delicate flowered bone china coffee mugs, and what do I get in return?? A book that I had to burn. Well, after a perfunctory glance-thru it sailed into the trash out on the street, and then CDW said in an email why did I do that, maybe I should have another look-see, just in case. But she didn't know HOW BAD this book was. So I went out in my pj's to get the book out of big black receptacle anyway, about fell in, before the trash man came by. But the book had to go right back out . . . it was frying my fingers right off my hands. At any rate, CDW got a big charge out of this.

Napless KEM

Very proud of myself because I did not open my email or Facebook today. Have exactly 26 minutes to finish junk and get in bed. I'm motivated. Motivated out of sheer disgust with myself.

My friend CDW told me about Pioneer Woman, she does recipes and blogs and junk. So, last night I spent all night reading Pioneer Woman's Love Story. It was good . . . up to a point. She's really a captivating story teller. But the funny thing is that CDW was loving the recipes and having great success with them, trying some others for Super Bowl party, etc.

All of a sudden, Pioneer Woman sounded familiar to me. Then CDW said that PW shows all these beautiful step-by-step pictures for each recipe. Ding-a-ling-a-ling. I looked up the site and searched for Cauliflower Soup, and sure enough, remember when I had all that broccoli and cauliflower and cabbage all in that one week?, overly ambitious, well, the cauli was about to bite the dust so I Googled Cauli Soup and whose recipe should pop up but PW'S. Yeah, the same one came up again, no mistaking it, because PW says lean in close, she has a secret, blah, blah, she loves soup. So, that tickled me, I had already tried a PW recipe two weeks ago and then CDW tells me about it. Things like that make me pink. Now I want to try pound cake and others that CDW is raving about, like Drippy Beef Sandwiches. PW is a one woman wonder, no kidding, you should look her up.

Happy Anniversary to Mike and me. I have such a nice husband :)))

Okay, I'm off. I typed this so fast I won't be surprised if you're all mixed up, like when I was describing blue spots on my hands.

Mission minded KEM