Superhero Tuesday.

This is my dining room table.

This is zj's Ironman costume.

This is where zj's Ironman costume lives when zj isn't wearing it.

Welcome to my world.

Yard Sale Vignettes

I had a yard sale over the weekend.

Remind me to never, ever, ever do that again.

Oh, sure I made a little bit of money ($375ish, to be exactish), and sure, I got rid of TONS of stuff, but having a yard sale reminded me of all the reasons why I gave up my career in retail.

Messy customers.  Bad hours.  Lots of hard, laborious, backbreaking work followed by periods of boredom.  Having to put on my game face every time somebody walked up.  Laughing at the jokes customers told that weren't funny, and nodding like I cared at every story they had to tell.  Long periods of time between bathroom breaks.  Lunch... what lunch?  Messy customers  - oh wait.  I said that already...

Anyway, it's totally reasonable to think that one might be inviting trouble when one puts up signs, takes out an ad in the paper, and basically invites people to come rifle through one's belongings.

But what the hell.  I'm a sucker for a dime.

My first customer of the day on day one was not impressed with my selection.  He asked me approximately 457 times if I had any "antiquey stuff."  Then he would paw through a stack of women's clothing and grunt with displeasure.  Then he would ask me again for some "antiquey stuff."  I believe that he believed that if he kept asking I would finally give in and roll out the cart of old doorknobs and antique knives and vintage dishes that I had been keeping from him.  Sadly, we were both disappointed, and he left empty-handed.

Also pretty early in on day one I thwarted a shoplifting attempt.  At. My. Yardsale.  A lady was looking at a purse, which she put over her shoulder.  She proceeded to wander around looking at other things for a few minutes, then waved all friendly-like, said "thank you!" and headed back toward her car.  My retail background and excellent customer service came in very handy at this point.  I considered tackling her, but instead I chased after her asked quite politely "Would you like to buy that purse?"  She looked confused for a minute, but then she realized what she had done and came back to pay for it.  Dirty thief.

Several times over the course of the two days, people who knew each other bumped into each other.  My driveway was like a class reunion at one point.  Anyway, my favorite reunion was between two people who used to work together.  The, ahem, gentleman had apparently recently experienced a death in his family, which the lady had heard about.  She expressed her condolences, there was much crying, hugging and back patting, and then the gentleman launched into a 45 minute tale of how his family was arguing over the deceased person's possessions.  Apparently, just last week, his sister-in-law, who believed he was claiming more than his fair share, had thrown a brick through his car window.  Sure enough, it was covered in plastic and taped with duct tape...

One man brought his tiny little dog on a leash, and the dog growled at all my customers.

Approximately 57 people (give or take a few) would see something of interest, whip out a cell phone, and call someone else to describe the item in great detail, all the while asking me questions about it and relaying the information to the person on the phone.

Many, many, many people commented on how neatly I had my stuff displayed as they were messing it up...

Every single person who walked up wanted to talk about the weather.  I was a Farmer's Almanac of information by the end.

Next year when I clean out my closets, it's all going straight to Goodwill.

Sort of homemade Sweet & Sour Chicken. Because my kitchen is the best Asian restaurant in town.

We were going to have some friends over for dinner the other night, and I was feeling like Asian.  Not like AN ASIAN, that's RJ's domain, but like cooking and eating Asian food.  Whew.  I'm glad we cleared that all up.

Anyway, I was planning on making fried rice, Spring rolls, and Beef with Broccoli.  I know how to make all those things, and all those things taste good in my mouth.

A few nights before our planned dinner, I woke up in the middle of the night.  It had come to me, as if in a dream, that I suddenly remembered that one of our soon to visit dinner guests was allergic to broccoli.

Who the hell is allergic to broccoli?

Really?  Broccoli?

So, I moved on to Plan B.  I'm flexible that way.

What Asian food has not even a whiff or an essence of broccoli?

Sweet and Sour Chicken, of course.

I went to my favorite recipe site, Allrecipes, and looked for Sweet & Sour Chicken recipes.

Apparently, everyone else in the world is either too health conscience or too lazy to use breaded chicken.  All I could find were stir-fry like deals, and while those probably would help my arteries (and the size of my a$$), they would not taste as good.

So I made up my own recipe.

It's sort of like homemade, except for the part where I bought pre-prepared sauce.

It is the best Sweet & Sour Chicken I've ever eaten.



WHAT YOU NEED:

For the sauce:

1 medium sized yellow onion, cut into largeish pieces
1 green pepper, cut into largeish pieces - it's a theme, you see
1 small can of pineapple chunks.  Don't drain it.  If you buy the expensive name brand kind, they will be called TIDBITS.
2 jars of pre-prepared sweet and sour sauce.  It's in the Asian food aisle.  I got one jar of Kikkoman and one jar of La Choy because the colors were both wrong.  If you mix them together, they look better.  I promise.  I cannot make this stuff up.

For the chicken:

1 lb. chicken breast, cut into bite-sized chunks
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons flour.  It can be all-purpose or self-rising.  I don't really care, and it won't really matter.
1 egg
1/2 cup of milk, give or take
Salt and pepper
Oil for frying


WHAT YOU DO:

Put the chopped chicken bits into a gallon ziplock bag with the 2 tablespoons of flour and some salt and pepper.  Squish it all around until the chicken is coated, and then put it in your fridge for a while.  At least an hour.  DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP.  I know what you're thinking.  It won't matter if you put it in the fridge, right?  It. Will. Matter.

Chop the onion and pepper, and put them into a small saucepan.  Dump in the pineapple, juice and all, and add both jars of sweet and sour sauce.  Simmer covered on really low heat for a while, the longer the better.  Somewhere between a half hour and an hour seemed to be enough, but longer than that works, too.  Just stir it every few minutes so it doesn't stick.

In a small bowl, mix the cup of flour with the egg and the milk.  You're going for the consistency of pancake batter here.  As a matter of fact, you could totally turn on the griddle and fry up a batch of pancakes out of this.  But then there won't be any left for your chicken, and you'll be sad.

Preheat 1/2 inch of oil in a big skillet.

Dip the flour/salt/pepper coated chicken pieces in the batter one at a time, and drop them into the hot oil one at a time.  If you try to do a bunch at once it will turn into a big mutant chicken ball, and nobody wants that.  Cook for 2-3 minutes on each side until it's toasty brown.

When the chicken's all done, put it on a big platter and pour the sauce over top of it.  Serve it to your friends for dinner.

They will like it.

Dude. I'm guessing she gave you a fake name, too.

The other day, I remember it well, it was a Sunday morning,  my cell phone rang, and the number that popped up on the caller ID was not one I recognized.

So I ignored it.

Because that's how I roll.

A few minutes later, it rang again.

I ignored it, again.

This went on throughout the morning, with increasing intensity.

After a while, I got a text message.  It read, "Its mitch i guess my keys slipped out in ur house call me back and let me no."

Oh, poor Mitch.

The scenario, at least part of it, became clear to me pretty quickly.

I saw a random hookup on a Saturday night.

I saw a  girl give the guy the wrong number as she pushed him out the door, promising all the while they could get together again really soon, like maybe next weekend.

I saw a drunk-ish guy walking somewhere, maybe a buddy's house, maybe somewhere to catch a ride.

I saw the guy get pissed off when he realized he left his keys there.

I actually did see all the phone calls he made to the number the girl gave him when he realized his keys were in her house, probably across town.

I felt bad for Mitch.

So I texted him back.

"Hi Mitch.  You have the wrong number.  Sorry."

And I never heard from him again.

But I didn't delete the text from my phone, and I've wondered about poor Mitch from time to time.  Did he ever get his keys back?  Did the girl reconsider and look him up later?

Maybe someday I'll text him just to check in and see how things are going.

And then again, maybe I won't.

And they rolled, and rolled, and rolled...

So last week, RJ and I dropped the kids at the sitter's and took off to New Orleans for a week.

For real.

We have never actually done anything like that before, and it felt more than strange.

At first, when we were dropping off our vomiting children into the care of someone else, it felt wrong.

By the second day and the fourth drink we were making plans to do it monthly.  Or maybe weekly.

In any event, we had a good time.

We ate.

We drank.

And drank.

And drank.

And drank.

And drank.

We saw some local sights.

We stayed here.

And skinnydipped swam in our own private-ish pool here.

We met some of the local talent here.

And here.

We walked and walked and walked and napped every day, and ran across a parade and caught some beads, and ran into a surprise Dave Matthews concert, and nearly died in a cab.  Twice.  

All in all, a very satisfying trip.

Laissez Le Bon Temps Rouler.

That means  "Get Drunk and Lose Your Top in a Crowded Bar" for those of you who do not speak French.

And in just a few days, that's what RJ and I are going to be doing.

Actually, he'll probably keep his shirt on.

He's dignified that way.

The one where the Vietnamese nail lady tried to steal my husband.

Until yesterday, I was a 36 year old woman who had never had a professional manicure or pedicure.

True story.

You can weep if you want to.

Ok, now that we've had a moment to morn my lost opportunities at shininess, I can tell you that the situation has been rectified.

See, I've always been of the practical sort, and it always seemed silly to spend money on a manicure that I would ruin in 2.5 seconds flat at work.  And as for pedicures, well, nobody ever even saw my feet, so why bother?  Really, just a waste of money, right?

However, since I quit my job a few months ago, I've developed a fascination for girly things.  RJ looked at me the other day and out of the blue said, "You really are a girl, aren't you?"  Strangely enough, he meant it AND I took it as a compliment.

Anyway, the other day we were walking around the mall looking for some new running shoes for RJ.  Kids were at the sitters, we had just enjoyed a relaxing three margarita lunch, and we had nowhere specific to be for hours.

We walked by a nail salon in the mall - you know the one, every mall has it - and RJ said to me "Hey, wanna get a manicure?"

"I will if you will."  I was still drunk enough feeling rather adventurous that day.

So in we go.

RJ marches up to the counter, ignores the sign-in sheet, and announces, "We're here for manicures and pedicures."

The lovely Vietnamese matriarch type says, "For her?" and gestures toward me.

"No, for both of us."

At this point, a small, unassuming man whom we later determined to be the owner stepped in.  "We can do that," he said, with a sharp look at the other lady, who was clearly trying to cut into his profits.   Ok, so apparently this wasn't a place that was used to giving manicures to men.  Whatever.

After being directed to go pick out our polish - I chose a lovely shade or dark red, by the way - we sat down on the pedicure chairs.  There were two chairs ready, one staffed by a young Vietnamese woman, and the other by the gentleman we had encountered at the counter.  I naturally gravitated toward the young woman, and left RJ to sit down with the man as his pedicurist.  Which immediately earned me the stink eye from the young lady.

Immediately a flurry of talking began.  It was mostly one sided and coming from the young lady, but the gentleman would occasionally nod or make an agreeing type noise.  Throughout the entire conversation, she continued to glance at RJ every minute or two, then look away quickly.

Finally the man spoke in English to RJ.  "She say you look familiar somehow.  Where you from?"

RJ told the man he was from the area now, had lived all over the world, and his dad is American and his Mom is Vietnamese.

Matriarch lady had also been listening to the conversation, and immediately came over to join in, abandoning her customer with 4 of 10 nails painted.

"That why you look so familiar.  You look like the men from my country, but much taller and much more handsome."  A giggle from the young lady who is now vigorously scrubbing the second layer of skin from the bottom of my left foot with something that looked like a cheese grater.  Matriarch gestured to the young lady.  "She think you very handsome."  Then she turns to me.  "You his wife?"  I nodded.  "You do not need to let him leave house without you, understand?  He VERY handsome."

Was that a threat or a compliment?

"Uh, thank you?"

More rapid-fire Vietnamese from the young lady, punctuated with glances at RJ.

Matriarch translated.  "Do not worry, though.  She (gesturing toward the young lady) very happy with her husband."

Oh good.

I was totally worried that I would enter the Vietnamese nail salon WITH a husband, and walk out without one.

Happens to me all the time.

Changing Channels.

I know that I've been going all Laura Ingalls up in here lately with all my nostalgic I'm-a-farmgirl posts, but  really, this is a good story.

Bear with me.  Really.  It's pretty good.

So, there was no cable tv where I grew up, and only the rich-ish families had a satellite dish.  My friend Karen had a satellite dish, but aside from that, most of the people I know had tv antennas.  And two channels.  Three if the weather was clear.

The entire process of changing the channel was a pretty intense one where we lived.  See, we lived down in a valley, which going forward in this post will be referred to as a "holler."  Down in the holler, tv reception was not great, and the tv antenna had to be turned a particular way in order to get the best reception for each individual channel.  Are you following me?    Due to the arrangement of our living room, it took no less than three people to turn the antenna and have it stop in the correct place.  Here's how it played out.

PLACEMENT:

Person 1: In front of the tv
Person 2: Across the room by the picture window.
Person 3: Outside the house by the antenna.  Has a view of Person 2 through the window.

Here, let me draw you a picture.

I'm sure that cleared everything right up, eh?

Anyway, changing the channel was a dance that had to be perfectly synchronized.  If P3 was turning the antenna too quickly, it was impossible for P1 and P2 to relay the information in time.  If P1 was too slow in telling P2 to tell P3 to stop turning the antenna, the sweet spot would be overshot.  P2 had to balance  a fine line between the two.

It was quite hard, and explains why I spent many of my childhood evening watching T.J. Hooker instead of Moonlighting, which was clearly a better show.  Clearly.

I was thinking about this the other day, and it made me realize that my kids would probably never ever see a tv that did not have 100+ stations, a remote control and some sort of built in guide mechanism.

 By the time they're teenagers, our televisions (and all our other appliances as well) might be voice activated, like "TV, turn on Dukes of Hazard," or whatever your preference is.  That just happens to be my preference.  So there.  Anyway, there are a lot of things my kids won't ever know about, like rotary telephones that actually had to be plugged into a phone line, or a car with crank windows, or air that you can actually breathe.

There are times when I get nostalgic for things from my childhood.  But then I just Google them on my iPad, and all is good again.