I Must Be Out of My Fucking Mind.....or....If You Aren't Going to Eat That Crumb on Your Lip, May I Have It?

If I had a buck or even a dime for every time I have said to myself, "Lois, you must be out of your mind", I'd be as rich as Warren Buffet.  But this time, I really MEAN it.  I am no longer teetering on the  brink of insanity.......I have fallen smack dab into it and worse yet, I am wallowing in it.

After 75 years of diets and severe food deprivation of every sort, I did swear to myself and to the world at large that, after hitting and passing the 80 mark,  I was never going to deprive myself of a single morsel of anything edible that I wanted ever again..... for whatever time is left to me in this world full of infinite delicacies.  Yeah,  so I wake up this morning and discover that I have put myself on, of all things,  a Diet.  And not just a diet telling me I can't eat this or that, but a diet in which I actually Fast for 2 days out of the 7 that are usually in a week.  I am not sure quite how this happened, but it seemed to be a good idea when I pondered it last night and it somehow retained its luster when I got up this morning.  Utterly amazing.

Even more amazing is the fact that I had decided last night that I would fast on Sundays and Thursdays and therefore, today being Sunday, it would be foodless.  (Actually, I lie..... that is not totally accurate.....these here diet gurus decreed that you can have 500 calories on your fast days...probably to placate all of those wimps  who claim that, without any food they suffer headaches, dizziness, spots before the eyes and all manner of plagues.  I will comment on that idea some other time but I AM allowed to eat something today.  Whatever fits withing the circumference of 500 calories which, I know from vast experience, is not very damned much.  But that's OK. 

Being a creature who has always worshiped food as my principal Deity,  I have spent a lot of my life thinking about food in all its glorious forms and I realize that I have been lying to myself for many years about our relationship.......or, if not outright lying, I have not analyzed the subject sufficiently from all angles and it might just  behoove me to do so before I die......in pursuit of truth and for my own damned good, that is.  I am suspecting that I eat for a bunch of very strange reasons that have nothing to do with hunger and certainly nothing to do with nourishment.  Kind of like the person who smokes cigarettes in order to have something to do with their hands.

I have fasted many times in my life......the longest having been for 4 days with nothing but water.  I survived very well and found that the first day was the hardest and it got easier not harder as the project progressed.   That does NOT mean that I did not trample a multitude of defenceless women and children and even a burly man or two who, on day 5, were unfortunate enough to be in my way  in my glassy-eyed wild  gallop to get my hands (and teeth) on a bagel.   That experiment was to test my theory that my body's metabolism was such that I  could gain weight while ingesting nothing and by simply thinking of food.  Or at least it would not surrender a molecule of fat even if I fasted and walked miles per day on the treadmill.   (Turned out that I was right about the latter half of that theory....I lost not an ounce in 4 days of not eating and you would not have wanted to be around me when I found that out......dishes were smashed, cats were kicked (symbolically) and epithets were uttered and hurled hither and yon..... in spades, baby.).

But even during that experiment I noticed that my body actually enjoyed being given a day off from digesting and processing even as my mind was screaming that I was trying to kill myself and that if I did not give me a ham sandwich or reasonable facsimile immediately I would wither like a scalded seedling and expire then and there and by gum, I'd be sorry then dammit but it would  be too late.

The most interesting eating/not eating fact I learned and relearned over the years but which I have never been able to employ usefully was that when I got up in the morning I was not hungry and if I did not eat anything I was still not hungry and this lasted throughout the day.  It was only toward evening when I noticed the slightly hollow feeling in my middle that I felt the need to eat a little something and then, once I had a single taste of food, I became ravenous and insatiable.

Because I adore food, the textures, the flavors the aromas the mere glorious  sight of it, anything  lurking in the frig, the cupboards or lying on a plate not only beckons seductively to me but gets behind my rotund buttocks and shoves me rudely in its direction.  The first bite is sheer heaven, but, just like booze, after the first sip courses through your body and makes you feel so good, the succeeding bites never quite match up and I find myself continuing to eat just trying to recapture that first heavenly sensation.  Of course, there is also something comforting about feeling full, sated, slightly stuffed.  (beyond slightly stuffed there is only agony and recriminations, blame and finger pointing and empty promises ).  In fact, as dismissive as I can be about hunger during the day, I cannot fall asleep hungry and have been known, after tossing for 3 or 4 hours, to rise from my couch and go in and ferociously empty the frig, shelf  by shelf into my gaping maw......well, I do exagerate, but you get the idea.  In fact, I am saving most of those 500 calories for bedtime gnashing, crunchng and gobbling......or as much of that as can be done with such a pittance of fodder.  Anyway, as of 7:30 pm I am still doing fine with nothing under my belt but water, a few spinach leaves and mushroom slices, black coffee and a few cups of fat free chicken bouillion. 

In case you are wondering, (and I am sure that one or two of you are surely wondering) what bit me on the ass to drive me to such extremes,  I was very impressed with a video I recently watched, on the study that led up to the creation of this program called the FastDiet.  If you can believe a bunch of Mice, it appears that a bit of fasting can actually make you live longer.......and if you are wondering why, after groaning and griping and schlepping along "Oy-ing"  for 86 years I would want to do that,  I do not have an answer today.  Maybe it is just so that I can keep on blogging.

Anyway, I can hardly wait to see how this all turns out.  Will Lois lose 2 and 3/4 ounces?  Will Lois develop a completely new attitude about food??   Will Lois give up the whole idea when the next fast day rolls around on Thursday?  Will Lois fall off the wagon tomorrow ( or, more likely,  tonite at approx 3 am) and devour the entire southern side of Califa Street in one orgy of binge eating?  You may take bets among yourselves......frankly, I have no effing idea.

All I Can Say Is Beware When The Recipe Lady Calls It..... "Easy"

Here I lie in the trusty recliner, a tattered wreck, legs splayed akimbo, arms flung  hither and yon, too weak to even lift said legs up onto the footstool, gasping for breath and cursing in between gasps.  My fingers twitch with an urgent need to strangle someone and I know just who, but in my pitiful condition I would probably  be unable to tighten my grip around that scrawny throat sufficient to do any real harm.  Oh, Recipe Lady....you are getting off easy this time.......and there is that Word........Easy....ha!.   Lies, all lies.

Now, let's face facts here, dear ones......I have been filling and stirring and scrubbing pots and pans  for more than....well, never mind.  We can just say that I've been around, ya' know.  And I know when they say prep time 15 minute, cook time 25, that that means after your sous chef or flunky or scullery maid has assembled all of the ingredients in the proper order across your work surface, scrounged around in the drawers and located all of the proper tools and arranged them neatly in order of use like the surgeon's tools in the Op Room and probably already chopped all the choppables, measured all the measurables and carefully poured your glass of cooking sherry, not for the dish, but for You.   Anyway.....you can't ever believe 'em about those details, but usually when they say bake for 25 minutes they more or less mean that, give or take a few on each side. 

So there I was throwing together a simple looking recipe for "Vanilla Orange Monkey Bread"....oven to 350, bundt pan at the ready, couple pkgs of buttermilk biscuits quartered, shaken within an inch of their life in a baggie full of sugar and grated orange zest till delightfully coated then set aside.  Throw into a saucepan two sticks of salted butter  (OY) a bunch of brown sugar, some vanilla,. melt it all up, stir around just  few stirs, not too many,  set aside.
 
Fling the beautifully coated biscuit pieces into the bundt pan, pour the syrupy stuff over it all, deposit in oven, bake 25 minutes.  My mouth was watering, I was licking all the utensils and all my fingers and when the bell went off at 25 mins I checked things out.  Yes, the top was nicely browned, syrup seemed to be bubbling in the pan.  * Cool for 10 mins before inverting pan over serving dish.  OK......gotta let that sticky stuff set up a bit before de-panning, but not too long or else you will never get it out without the use of a jackhammer.  Sure, been there, done that.  Bell goes off in 10, I invert the pan over serving dish ** and....holy crap, I am standing ankle deep in a lake of syrup as is my whole work surface.  Item on serving dish looks raw on top under the remains of the syrup.  Hmmmm. time out to scrape up all the salvageable syrup into a receptacle and rethink this.  (Don't  be silly......I never throw away good food and I never quit without a decent struggle)

Syrup goes back into saucepan to cook for about 5 mins till it thickens......wish I had a candy thermometer since I have never been good at that "soft ball -hard ball stage" stuff.  Carefully lower bundt pan over object on serving plate, invert, shake to settle hoping that the ridges and curves are all repositioned properly (don't ask), pour revised syrup over all and back into the 350 oven for ???? 10 min....12 min???....15 min???

Scrub sticky floor and work surface while waiting and fuming.  Double Oy Vey.

 When the well trained eyeball examines the top (really the bottom) of the subject and determines that it is sufficiently brown I remove from oven and  repeat from * through **.  Hmmm, well, this looks more promising.....in fact.....delicious.  I cannot wait to sample this amazing looking confection.  I cut a small slice, take a mouthful from near the top where the gooiest goody part is and.....spit it out......oy vey....still a mite unbaked!  How could this be?  Shitpissfuck.

 At this point I am really annoyed and more determined than ever.  I fling the object  back into the bundt pan not caring whether the curves and ridges match up or not, dammit.  Back into the oven it goes for how long?....10? 12? a gazillion? mins.  I am flying  blind here.  There is absolutely is no way to determine whether the unbaked portion of the item will get baked before the syrup turns into concrete or cinders.  Finally I snatch the pan from the oven at 15 mins.....let cool for 10, invert over serving plate and, " voila" what emerges is this gorgeous orangey caramely creation  with only the slight imperfection of one slice having been removed, which I find can easily be concealed by pushing the open edges together while the thing is still warm.  No one will ever know.

A work of art, but how does it taste?  Didn't take long to find out that it was utterly divine and I had to keep slapping myself on the back of my hand and the side of the head to keep me from devouring The Whole Thing.   However, I then fell into the Chair in the state described above at the very  beginning, brushing sticky crumbs from my lips and sighing in exstacy and exhaustion and did not even have the strength to make the necessary corrections to the Recipe.

Needless to say, the very first correction I will make will be to that word "EASY".

(Does anyone remember Senor Wences and his adorable little dummy?.........."eeeasy for YOU....deefficult for me...")

The fate of that damned Recipe Lady is still up in the air.......I am too stuffed with Vanilla Orange Monkey Bread to do harm to anyone right now.

An Ode to Incompetence or Procrastination or Standing On The Lawn Nekkid or All of the Above

Oy!  For days I have been hovering on the outskirts of an attack of anxiety and have just finished performing  the deed which engendered the prickles.....  I have just fired my Gardener for complete and total incompetence.

So what, you say?  Big deal..  Yeah, for me it is a big deal. For one thing, I hate having to fire anyone.  In my lifetime I have hardly ever had to do it, thank heaven.  I guess the time worse than this was when I had to fire my best friend, but hell,, what  could I do.......she was incompetent.  I can't stand incompetent.

This case was paticularly hard because of my own procrastination and....face it.......incompetence at firing people.  I have been wanting to fire this guy for 40 years and just never made it, till today.  Forty years, you say?  Yes, dammit, forty years......wanna make something of it?  Actually, I knew after the first few months in 1973 that he was not the greatest Gardener in the world, but, at the time I was young and healthy and loved working in the garden so it didn't matter so much.  I could sort of fill in the blanks myself and make up for his lack of skills.  But it pissed me off.  As I said....I hated incompetence....his and mine. I would  repeatedly try to improve his methods........I would tell him of things I wanted done that he should have known needed to be done.  He always acted as if I had asked him to do something outlandish and  totally foreign to the world of Gardeners like putting on a tutu and dancing the swan part of the Swan Lake Ballet. ("What??  You want me to trim those vines in front of the gate??  But they don't need to  be trimmed, if you just push the strands aside like a curtain and walk thru the opening.")  Then he would nod sadly and say, "OK, next week.   And, by gosh, sometimes he even did it the next week....but sometimes not and certainly not on a regular basis as needed.   Sigh.

Each month when I would present him with the check for his work (?)  I would clench my jaws to keep from uttering obscenities and put on a fake tepid smile.    Oh God....not only was I incompetent, but a hypocrite besides!  Once indoors, I would groan, screech like a banshee with a vocabulary of particularly dirty words and phrases (in several languages),   pound my fists on the table, hit my head against the nearest wall and scream, "I've gotta fire that  guy.....why didn't I fire that guy?"  And so it went.  For Forty Years.  Yes, I know.


After 20 or 30 years it became like a bad marriage in which only one of the partners was dissatisfied.  I soon realized that it was useless and unrealistic for me to fantasize that he would come to me one day and brazenly tell me he was leaving me for the prettier lawn down the street.  (...but of course I was beyond rational by this time)    .  Of course, it was up to me to act and, so far I had been incompetent beyond  belief at acting on this matter.  (I was worse at firing him  than he was at gardening.)  Sob.  As I may have mentioned, I hate incompetence, particularly my own, so this has not  been good for my general self esteem for the past near half  century.  But as my youth and vigor have gone the way of the bustle and gas-lamps and girdles and skirts that end at least 4 inches lower than the crotch,  it has become an increasing problem and by now the absurdity of it all became so monstrous that words or my mind could not deal with it.  Last week, I wistfully looked at several of my neighbors front yards with envy.....nay.....raging green eyed jealousy....I might almost say lust.........several of the deadly sins....and was trying to decide  between murder and suicide.....I believe they are both also on the no-no list..  And it happened that the Gardener who services those lucky neighbors  was, at that  very moment, servicing my neighbor next door ....the garden, that is.  So I spoke to him and asked him if he could, out of the kindness of his heart, fit me into his schedule.

It happened like when you see a piece of thread protruding from a seam of your garment and you tug on it to remove it and things are nevert he same afterward.   Before I knew what was happening, the sleeve fell off of my caftan and the other sleeve was threatening to follow it, and  had I not gathered up my skirts and what was left of my garment and fled to the porch I  might have ended up standing stark nekkid on the lawn at Califa street.  That little piece of thread apparently held everything on earth together.  When I caught my breath and weakly waved goodbye to him it seems I had contracted for him to come on Saturday and "clean everything up" (also remove a hundred or so unwanted plants and plant 1000 or so desired plants and heaven knows what else besides come every week and  beat all the foliage, plants and vines into submission henceforth.

Oh......talking about little pieces of thread and the consequences of pulling them,  I guess I should go back one step further and tell you what really started the Great Green Avalanche.   You all know what a tyrant I am about saving money and being frugal.   Well, one day last week I got a coupon offer in my email for $30 worth of plants at a local Nursery for only $15.   To quote Eliza Doolittle,  "Gaaaaaooooooow".  How could I resist?  It was only when I stood contemplating 3 flats of Lobelia, one of Gazanias,  one of
Cosmos and two of Impatiens that I realized that no matter how I communicated to my current incompetent Gardener the urgency of getting the young plants into the ground in some tasteful arrangement before the leaves fell from the trees in the fall it was hopeless and the only way in hell to handle everything  was to fire the sonofabitch and get somebody who was Competent.  Now.....tell me.....do I know how to face a problem and solve it or what?  (We will never speak of the 40 years nor fact that that $15 coupon ended up costing the national debt in weekend Landscape transformation fees........that IS understood, isn't it????)

My last word on this whole thing is a warning to all of you........be careful (of exactly what I cannot say) but you never know  when you get up in the morning and open your Email what monstrous changes it might bring about in your erstwhile boring, uneventful, incompetent overgrown jungle of a life.  That is what makes life so interesting, I guess........now I must go and lie down and put cold cloths on my head.

You May Think You Have Seen the Moon, But I Bet You've Never Seen This One........

I am just passing along one of the most awesome videos I have ever seen (sent to me by the brilliant musician and beloved friend, Richard Broadie). I can only suggest you have smelling salts handy, plus a cheese  knife and an assortment of crackers.

Love, Lo

Here is something a bit random, but none-the-less astounding. A work mate of a friend who is also a photographer captured what is, to me, one of the most remarkable things I have ever seen filmed.
It is a 3 minute video clip of the full moon rising over Wellington, New Zealand. It was shot on Jan.28, 2013, a calm summer evening, as people gathered on the Mt. Victoria Lookout point to watch the moon rise.




https://vimeo.com/58385453

Who? Me? .......How About That?

I am flustered and flattered that two wonderful lady bloggers seem to have nominated me for an award.    I am not much for awards since I do not do this for fame and fortune but mostly for fun, but I would be untruthful if I did not admit I am tickled that someone thinks me awesome.  Will the wonders of blogging ever cease?

So let's see now........first I want to express my thanks.

Thank you Bad Word Mama at http://badwordmama.blogspot.com/ and Akashic Window at http://akashicwindow.blogspot.com/ for this unexpected honor.

Now what?  I think I am supposed to tell you and the rest of the world 10 things about myself that no one knows.......not so easy when I have claimed to have no secrets and have spent the last 30 years or so blabbing everything to anyone who would listen.   However,  I will tell you at least a few things that may come to mind in the next 15 seconds.
 
* I have recently looked into a dark, long uninvestigated pocket of myself and found that I am not really the supposedly wise, tolerant, compassionate, kindly person you and I all thought I was........I am a fraud.  I think the real me may be a snobby, supercilious.  judgmental, wrathful, vengeful, mean-spirited wretch......at least on alternate Tuesdays anyway.   There are those days when I rise out of  bed and hardly recognize myself.  Of course, being a Gemini I can always cover my shame by declaring my alter ego to  be the Saintly one and this evil persona is simply occupying the bodily premises until the "real Lo" returns from doing good deeds somewhere.......it is always a shock to me to discover that traits I thought I had stamped out years ago  can be brought back to life by things I hate the most.......like Unmitigated Stupidity......of which there is so much....hence my unfortunate recurring transformations into Ms. Hyde.  

* Actually, I guess I am as passionate a hater as I am a lover and my most recent eruptions have not been from the Terrorists, insane and misguided and  evil as they obviously are, but the Cowards, our despicable elected officials,  who are so in fear of the NRA and their jobs that they cannot enact a single gun control law.  Yes, ordinary terrorists maim and kill, but how can we calculate the number who will be maimed and killed by the cowardice of these failures who are supposed to be doing good and consistently do ill or nothing ?   I fervently wish for some terrorists who would release 160 trillion STD fleas into the chambers of the houses of Congress.   Shakespeare said it best....."A pox on both your houses...."


* The only other thing I can think of to confess right now  is that I have been known to flip to the last chapter of some particularly badly written mystery story to find out whodunit without having to read through all those poorly plotted pages.




I will only say that I am properly ashamed of myself, for whatever that is worth.   But sometimes it feels so good to  be rotten.


  So now you know.  It will not surprise me if my follower count goes down drastically after this.......I really must learn how to lie.  Dammit, I used to know how.....that was before I discovered that it was more trouble than it was worth.  Sometimes I regret having lost the skill.

I have now reached the last part of my award tasks...........the bestowing of the award on some of my favorite Blog Stars, and this is harder than confessing my worst sins.  How can I possibly choose only 3?   (tenks gott my beloved Joe-Cranky Old Man has already been honored with this award so I can ignore him for this effort, but no matter what I do I will have to leave out a bunch of worthy bloggers whom I adore.  Shitpissfuck.) 

OK.  I am going to pass over some of my pet Stars of Blogland who are frequently showered with awards and honors (you know who you are, Murr, Pearl, Mary...)  and focus on a few of my quieter favorites  who warm my heart and make me proud to be among such noble, interesting, talented, intelligent  and brave souls. 

 Mr. T and Baron
 Troutbirder
http://baron-troutbirder.blogspot.com



Far Side and Chance
http://farsideoffifty.blogspot.com
 

 Gretel and her wonderful felt creations
 The Middle of Nowhere
http://allaroundus.blogspot.com

 Daisy and Herself
Fur-licity
http://fur-licity.blogspot.com


Hmmm.....I seem to have exceeded the suggested number of 3 honorees....oh, what the hell.....it 's my blog and I am the Awarder, so revel in your glory you dear folk and thanks for all the pleasure you bring me.

Unabashed Pimping For My Computer Guru- You'll Thank Me For This Someday

Being that my computer is my link to the world of intelligent beings and is the only thing that keeps me from going totally bonkers several times a day, it is of the utmost importance that the damned piece of tech crap remains functional at all times.  (pardon my disrespect, you dear Computer Thingy, but you know that you are often ...ummm..........flighty to say the least). 

Needless to say, on those occasions when I find that no screaming, teeth gnashing, digital tickling, banging, random poking or outright pounding  (either the computer or my head against the wall) does any good,  I resort to my tool of last resort....an incredibly talented, yea brilliant even, but still humble and very AFFORDABLE Expert who has never failed me in my desperate hours of need.  Even better and more  amazing, he can fix what is wrong with you (computerwise, that is) no matter where on this planet Earth you are located....as long as you have a phone and of course, a computer that needs fixing.  Neither you nor he need leave their respective abodes....you and he can stay in jammies and slippers if so desired.  All he has to do is invoke a magic program which connects his computer to yours and allows him to gambol through the mess you or the damned updates and system flaws have created, find the problems and correct them on the spot, finally handing control back to you of a properly restored and chastened servant rather than a Monster threatening to tear your heart out and remove what is left of your frazzled  brain through your nostrils or any other convenient orifice.  It is like a visit from an Angel with a knapsack full of miracles........and I am happy to report that he has just saved my life and sanity, not quite in that order,  for the gazzillionth time, having done it often over the past 4 or 5 or maybe 10 years.

Now, I am confessing that,  so addicted and so dependent am I on these infernal machines, that I have 3 (well, actually, if we are being really  honest, I think I may have about 6 or 7 but only 3 are currently in working order and of the current genre.  The others are lurking about here and there on the premises  because I do not know exactly how to get rid of them, but that is another story.   I keep these 3 around  because it never fails that I must send an urgent email or log onto my Stock account without delay and my main laptop decides to laugh in my face and warn me that, due to  the recent updates last night, which it insisted on making  before letting me log off, it could no longer open the most important program in captivity and therefore was going to take a vacation and go to Disneyland.  It does this periodically and leaves me with the most frustrating plain blue screen.....no cursor.....no icons, no task bar......NO CONTROL............zip, zilch, nada........it also leaves you farmished farchadadt and fardrayt......totally helpless, totally crazy, I tell you.   When this happens I usually scooch my tush 12 inches down the table to my backup laptop and almost invariably the two demons have gotten in cahoots and #2 refuses to perform too.  Sometimes it may be my fault because I cannot see well enough to plug the proper thingy into the proper hole and it has simply died of electricity deprivation  but often it has been afflicted with the same kind of errant update bug and snickers slyly at my hysteria.  I am then driven to dash in panic to the office where my old desktop sits ruminating about  better days when it was my one and only love.  As I turn it on I detect the mean gleam in its eye as it sees a way to punish me for my neglect and, since it has not had any updates applied for sebenty-eleben years  it is obviously unable to perform any but the most simple tasks and I am not in the mood to play Free Cell at this moment so all I can do it weep bitterly and reach for the phone to call David.

Incidentally, he can perform small miracles as well as large ones.   One of the most helpful things he has done for me recently was to  enlarge the size of the Cursor to Gigantic so that my poor dim eyes  can find it and see it.  Seriously, this has enabled me to continue to use the computer.......you have no idea  how frustrating it is to be unable to find the cursor when it is tiny and  hides coyly among all your blind spots.  Head bashingly frustrating until David reset some options for me.    One of his most valuable saves.



As long as I am being honest I must admit that for the Blank Blue Screen Affliction it was necessary for David to come to my house so he had to change out of his jammies, (tho I didn't) but for a number of years when he and his wife had moved to Portugal he saved me via long distance numberless times....only trouble there was the poor dear had to stay up till 3 or 4 am Portugal time in order to reach me at my preferred time of  6ish in the evening here, but he did it often and without complaint and was always able to fix my computers with thousands of miles separating us and 9 hours in time difference,.  What a guy.

Needless to say, he is 100% trustworthy and will NOT steal your passwords, secret codes or even notice your porn sites.  I wholeheartedly recommend his services for large problems or small ones.  (And NO, I am not asking for a commission.......my reward will be in saving your sanity and helping him  gain a new client.   I love Symbiosis.
                                                                
                                                                           DAVID GOES
                                                                        (finder of lost minds)

http://PatientComputer.com

(818) 284-5865

David Goes
PCT Business Services

david@patientcomputer.com
(818) 284-5865

 

Hey, Mr. DeMille, Doris Is Ready For Her Close-Up

                                                           TA DA  -  BIRDS !