Friggin' Soup!

TGIF!!! You know what that means...it's F bomb Friday, hosted by MiMi over at Living in France. It's really a fun challenge. In fact, last week, I commented on someone's entry that I too, found myself looking for moments that would qualify for this exercise, and what do you know...ask and you shall receive.

Last Friday was a fairly laid back day. Since we do our grocery shopping on Saturday, we only had one thing left on our menu of meals to prepare. It was a "hearty lentil and ham soup". Got great reviews, and the recipe can be found here. Normally, I get really excited about making and eating soup in the wintertime, regardless of the fact that my children usually treat it as if I'm trying to feed them 'bubonic plague in a bowl". Today, however, since it was an unseasonably warm day outside (in the 70's) I was not excited about eating soup for dinner. Regardless, I decided I would be the good homemaker (just saying that makes me laugh...I know better than to say I'm a good homemaker) and make the soup anyway. I found the recipe, and was gathering the ingredients necessary, when I thought I had found my out. Singing the "Halelujah Chorus" in my head, I dialed my husband at work...

Roon: "Hello"

Me: "Hey, did you happen to grab any cinnamon sticks at the store? I didn't remember seeing any, and I was just wondering where you might have put them."

Roon: "No...was I supposed to?"

Me: "Well, the lentil soup calls for a cinnamon stick. I thought you would have put it on the list."

Roon: "I didn't. Does the soup really need it?"

Me: (Getting really irritated that my husband is not taking the bait, I try harder.) "I don't know if it really needs it, but since we've never tried this recipe before, I hesitate to make it without all the ingredients. It wouldn't be fair to the soup if we hate it because we didn't make it right, would it?"

Roon: "I don't think it needs it. Make it without it."

(I'm thinking: What a CHEAPSKATE! but I calmly say I will, and hang up the phone.)

I go into the kitchen, pull up Google on the laptop, and search for alternatives to a cinnamon stick. I find my answer, and proceed to make my soup.

Hambone (check!) Into the pot...

Lentils picked over and rinsed, whatever that means, (check!) Into the pot...

Mushrooms, looking kind of sad (check!) Into the pot...

Onions. Where the frick are the onions?! We have got to have more than one onion in this house. (By this point I am livid, and dial the phone again.)

Roon: "Hello."

Me: "Did you put the onions away where they're not supposed to go?"

Roon: "I didn't buy any onions. Did we need some?"

Me: (Did he even READ this recipe?!) "Yes we did, but we have one, so I'll just make it work"

If you read the recipe, you will see that it calls for 3 whole onions...I had 1.

Back to the kitchen to chop my onion(s) and other ingredients that need chopping...

Celery (how old is this? Oh well, not so crisp, but not totally rotten yet. Why didn't I see Vivienne's tip on keeping celery fresh earlier?!)

Carrots (Friggin' A, where the he** are my carrots?! Dang you Roon the Rabbit! Guess 1/3 of a cup will have to do)

Chop chop chop...Wait! Half this onion is rotten! FRICK!!! What am I supposed to do now?! The kids aren't even going to eat this anyway...

I guess 1/6 the onion needed is better than nothing, right?

Beef broth. (Finally! An ingredient we have PLENTY of!) Into the pot...

8 CUPS WATER. Now, I'm no mathmetician, but even I can eyeball that the pot (the largest one I own) will not be sufficient to hold all the ingredients plus the water. FRICK!

Well...I'll try it anyway.

2 cups...in.

2 more cups...in

The pot is now to the brim, and I have, in the words of "Chunk" "HAD ALL I CAN STAND, AND I CAN'T STAND NO MORE!"

I call Roon one more time to inform him that he has two choices.

1. He can continue to force me to make this soup, with it's insufficient ingredients, to eat in 70+ degree weather and I'll leave him.
2. He can pick up pizza on his way home, he'll keep me happy and his most favorite appendage and we can pretend this whole ugly incident never happened.

He chose the latter. I strolled into the living room, put my feet up, and changed my Facebook status to the following...

Lentil soup: Time of death- 4:10 pm. R.I.P. We'll have pizza at the wake!

Suspicion: Confirmed.

THIS JUST IN: In case you were wondering...I am NOT, in fact, smarter than a kindergartener. As I was helping Bubble do his homework tonight, I was giving him the required positive reinforcement, you know, the "ata boy"s and "awesome!"s that make a boy someday aspire to go to Yale, Harvard, or at least the local community college. It was towards the tail end of this homework session that the following exchange took place:

Me: "Great job, Bubble! Now all you have to do is write 'go' three times, finish your capital letters, and then do your smaller case letters!"

Bubble: (Rolling eyes, and generally addressing me with a tone that says he knows that I must have slept through kindergarten) "They're caalled...LOWER CASE LETTERS!"

I think I'm in trouble. If he already knows thinks he is smarter than me, what will happen when he's a teenager? I blame Schoolhouse Rock. The only ones I remember learning were "conjunction junction (what's your function?!) and "I'm just a bill". So much for my dreams of winning the Pulitzer Prize!

The Bachelor...con QUESO.

I know that it may have appeared to the untrained eye that the cast of "The Bachelor" continued their journeys down the Pacific Coast Highway in California. I, however, have a much different view. You see, with all the cheese I saw and heard flying about, I maintain that they, in fact, were barrelling down the mean streets of the midwest...more specifically: Wisconsin. Follow me on a brief journey as we discover how many types of cheese could be crammed into one 2 hour episode.

COTTAGE- Early in the episode, 9 women were told they would be leaving the mansion "forever" and that they would be forced to "rough it" by staying in these little cottages on wheels. I say, make 'em stay in a place where they will not have immediate and easy access to a power source for their hair straighteners, and see what happens...could be scary!

VELVEETA- Like Gia, it's a soft cheese, which can easily satisfy any all-American boy, but no matter how you slice it...it's still fake. Carrying her around like a baby all day...what is he a pack mule? Maybe she should have rethought the stillettos!

COJACK- Or should I say CoJAKE? This was shown as Corrie and Jake playfully rolled down the sand dune in a spontaneous fashion. I guess Tenley hadn't yet started complaining about the sand in every crevice of her body, or Corrie may have had second thoughts about volunteering.

CHEDDAR- Good ol' dependable cheese as the girls referred to their week long road trip in RV's as being on the "Highway to love". I'm sure they came up with that all by themselves too!

STRING- True to form, the "dress" Ashleigh was wearing at dinner after the group date did not leave much to the imagination, making many (or at least me, Lady, and Lady's husband) wonder if she actually owns clothes that are more than just a strand of dental floss.

SOY- Like Vienna, I believe that both were derived from a PLANT. Why else would Jake continue to keep her around? I wonder which bachelorette they will bring back to try to convince him to let her go...

NACHO- After Jake sent Ella home (WWHHHHYYYYY?!!!) he returned to the table where Kathryn was anxiously awaiting the offering of the rose. Little did she know that he would instead send her packing, announcing that it's NACHO rose either! Maybe it was the lecture she gave him about paying attention to her...

PEPPERJACK- Throwing the unused rose into the fire after the 2 on 1 date may have added some heat, but it obviously wasn't put there by accident. Props to the producers for adding some drama...after all, there hadn't been any for about 35 seconds!

MUENSTER- An acquired taste, Vienna seems soft and delicious to Jake, while she leaves a bad taste in the other girls' mouths...especially Ali's.

BLEU- Upon realizing that Vienna had received a rose, many of the girls let loose with a string of obscenities, that turned the air around them blue.

Lady and I like Ali and Tenley, and probably wouldn't throw a shoe at Corrie. Lady's husband likes Ali and Ali, but predicts the final rose will actually be given to Chris Harrison. He is, after all, the head cheese!

Mission: Completion!

So, it's nearing the end of the month, and I am pleased to report the following. My "Unfinished Project Closet" project for January is D.O.N.E.!!! This is due in large part to, okay let's be honest...completely because of, my wonderful husband, Roon. He is the Photoshop master, and while I do know my way around the program to some extent, he puts my abilities to shame. Below, I have included photographic evidence for all you skeptics out there who think I'm full of s...alami. Granted, I guess I can't call this project absolutely completed until they are in envelopes, addressed, and stamped, and happily sailing towards their destinations, but I'm calling it a win, because dangit, they're AWESOME! If I do say so myself...

YAY ME!!! And Roon.

F Bomb Friday! Keepin' it clean...

The wonderful, witty, and wise (check out my alliteration! I amaze myself sometimes!) MiMi over at Living in France began this little weekly...I guess you'd call it a Meme, I'm not sure though...assignment called "F Bomb Friday". Last week, I did not link up because I'm a loser I couldn't think of anything that really would have warranted an F-Bomb to escape my lips. Once I read her post this week though, I had the idea, that F Bomb does not have to involve you actually dropping the bomb, but in my case is something that makes you want to say a variation such as "what the fraggle rock" (thanks Scrubs...you're my hero.) or make you want to fudge in your pants a little bit. So, I searched through the archives of my brain (There may be daddy long legs, and dead things, Mikey, dead things!) and came up with a few that I can use for this assignment for a few weeks anyway. Here it goes:
Rewind a little more than 7 years to when I was expecting my first child...Sissy. We had just bought a NEW car...and yes it was new, like 3 miles on the odometer when we drove it off the lot, which was dumb of us, and the new car smell made my morning sickness flare up, making it seem like an even dumber decision. Really has little to do with the story...
So, since my morning sickness was so bad, we had missed quite a bit of church there in the beginning. One Sunday morning, when I miraculously felt well enough to go for the first time in weeks, we walked out to our beautiful new car, and my husband opened the door for me to get in (awww what a gentleman!) and it was then that I noticed that the contents of our glove box was all over my seat. What the F R? So, I started to gather it up to put it back. I'm not sure what I was thinking. I seem to remember justifying it as a gust of wind, because that makes sense...wind blew upen a latched glove box through a closed window...nice one Sym! That was when my husband noticed...
Not only was his driver's side window smashed in, but so was the rear passenger window on his side, and the back window! Double "What the F R"?! We were not the only ones hit. Every car on our street had been vanalized, some worse than ours. What could possibly make this moment even dumber or more frustrating? WE WERE MOVING THE NEXT DAY!!! Triple "What the F R"?! Had the stupid thieves waited just one. more. day. we wouldn't have even had our beautiful car parked on that street! The real joke, I'm sure, was on them, because since our car was new, we didn't have much stuff in it. The stereo was security protected so that if they removed it, it would be worthless, and we basically had nothing in the trunk but the spare tire. HA HA! I think they decided to get back at us for our lack of acceptable loot, because you know what they did steal?

A bag of Werther's Original I had kept in the glove box to suck on after the aforementioned morning sickness flare ups! Really! What the F R, right?! I guess candy is just THAT important so some people... I hope you choke on it, ya felons! No, wait, that's not nice. I guess I should say that I hope it was worth all the trouble you went through to get it. The blessing in disguise? We had thought about packing up a load to take over to the new place the night before, but decided against it at the last second. Otherwise, our TV, computer, and who knows what else, would have been in the car for the would-be thieves. I guess the Lord works in mysterious ways...

Thanks for the great idea MiMi! Lots of fun!

We interrupt this service call...

Dear "J" from Citi:

It has been a week, and I think I have finally settled down enough to write you this note of apology for my behavior during our phone conversation. I now realize that even though you were droning on and on about information that was not pertinent to my question...I should never have interrupted you. I had assumed at the time, that if I felt you were wasting your time explaining something that I didn't need explaining, I would be helping you out, but alas, I was wrong. I should have let you finish making me feel like an idiot. My bad. Your lecture on "courtesy" proved to be very helpful in my day to day life. After all, I was the one that needed the lesson, because I am, after all, the one being paid to be courteous to people over the phone. Granted, calling you a "Jerkwad" and asking you to "please stop talking, and just do what I asked you to do, so I can be done talking to you" may have been over the line, and for that I extend my sincerest apologies. I also realized once I hung up, that the fact that I used big words like "condescend" and "patronize" may have aided in your frustration, as apparently you do not know the definitions to these words, or you never would have denied that you were doing either of them. I am quite sure, however, that I do not need to apologize for walking you through the fact that I do know how to do basic arithmetic. Shocking, I know, since I am a woman... but I do not need you to explain numbers to me by saying "39 dollars, so basically 40, plus 59 dollars basically 60 equals 100." I do know that 39 plus 59 equals 98, but I can understand the confusion, what with my lack of a penis and all. More than math and courtesy, I must also thank you for one other very valuable lesson. This one being the answer to the question "why do major companies keep sending all their customer service centers to India?" The answer to that is: If I wouldn't have been able to understand you through your accent, I may not have been able to notice how rude or unhelpful you were. Too bad you work in the branch in America huh?
I would write more, but I must go. I apparently have to crunch some numbers to pay for finishing school. Best wishes for you and your future with the company...

Signed,

Disgruntled customer looking for a feedback button...

Sym

Send Her No Flowers

When I was about 14 years old, my mother introduced me to the classics. Okay, maybe not the "classics" one would expect to be called classics, like "Pride and Prejudice", "Gone with the Wind", and "Casablanca", but they were classics in their own right. From the first time I saw "Pillow Talk" starring Doris Day, Rock Hudson, and Tony Randall, I knew I was in love. I could watch any of the 3 movies that the three of them starred in together over and over again...except I don't very often have the time for that. Are you kidding? I still have upwards of 20 DVR'd shows I need to get around to watching...but that's another story. So, anyway, my mother introduced me to these movies, and I now have the complete set of them in a fancy purple case, that is almost too lovely to open. But that has little to do with my story...so I'll move on. One of the characters in this box set is the hilarious "George Kimball" played by Rock Hudson. Or at least...I used to think he was funny. You see, watching a hypochondriac complain of imaginary ailments is funny until you realize that you are living with one. No, not my husband...my daughter. You see, she is what my friend "Lady" calls a "Frequent Flyer" to the nurse's office. At least once a week I look through my daughter's school binder, only to find yet another yellow carbon copy form from the nurse with the appropriate information filled out. These complaints can range from a "sore spot on left side of head" (No, not a headache, a headache would indicate a real problem...she complains about sort spots on her forehead!) to "Under right arm tender from sleeping with Barbie doll last night...skin intact". Yes, these are the things I just know the nurse rolls her eyes about the second she sees Sissy walk through her door. "What seems to be the problem today, Sissy? Did your Webkin try to kill you?" If the occasional note were the only form of communication I had with the school nurse, it may not be so bad, but I think that she has begun trying to teach me a lesson. I don't mean to say that she is out to get me, because seriously... I'm not that paranoid. Yet. There have been no fewer than 3 times so far this school year when I have received a call from Sissy's school nurse to inform me that Sissy had a "fever". Over the phone, the nurse will use very serious tones when she states that Sissy has a "fever of 99.4" or a "fever of 100" and "she needs to be picked up right away." I will send my husband or a friend to retrieve the poor, nearly on her deathbed, child from school, only to have her walk through the door feeling as cool as a cucumber. Apparently my daughter has a super power. Not only is she a hypochondriac, but she's a hypochondriac with the ability to raise and lower her body temperature at will! Seriously! I take her temperature when she comes home with a "fever" to assure that Tylenol or Ibuprofen is necessary, and she will be an even 98.6. What the crud?! But of course, out of fear of infecting the entire school with her cooties, I have to keep her home until she has been "fever free" for 24 hours, which means the little phantom fever girl gets two days of vacation, while I get an extra kid to follow me around and ask me for stuff. Thursday was one of those days. Nurse called at about 8:30 to tell me to come get her, and since she couldn't go back to school on Friday (per the 24 hour fever free rule), Sissy had earned herself a nice long 5 day weekend, courtesy of Martin Luther King day, and her own spontaneous combustion. I just hope she can take a lesson from a fellow mutant with super powers..."With great power, comes great responsibility". Use it wisely, Sissy, eventually you'll just be the girl that cried "wolf" living in a rubber room...or I will.