Smiley

This is a dumb, but "feel good" post.  My cheeks are hurting from smiling so much and laughing so hard, and what a great way to go to bed? Why? Because for the past year, I have deprived myself of watching the Daily Show. AppleTV and Hulu decided to go out for some cocktails, go dancing and hook- up and it looks like I now have the joy of watching one of my very favorite shows. So I've watched three episodes and enjoyed several scream-laugh moments all to myself and grinning ear to ear from the moment a show would start until the credits rolled. Ahhh...back to some normalness for me that I thoroughly enjoy. Thank you AppleTV and Hulu for being smart and sharing your love of each other with the rest of us. I heart you.

Bisque-gusting

I thought of this title and figured it was so rad I might not even have to tell the story associated with it.  But then you'd be left hanging and wondering, "Kathy. What was so bisque-gusting?"  Oh, I'll share.  Warning though, it is one of those stories that suck and aren't funny or really even interesting.  I just like my title because it's so damn clever.
Here's the lame story...  I live near a Fred Meyer and the other day Farrah and I needed to make a quick stop for various crap and I wanted to get back home for the opening ceremonies for the Olympics.  While there, I eyeballed the soup section where they sell their "selected" soups.  Easy.  No effort.  The perfect dinner.  I grabbed the Lobster Bisque with Sherry.  Mmmm...sounds interesting.  Why the Lobster Bisque?  When I was 18, my parents took me out to dinner for my birthday and I'd had Lobster Bisque.  It was wonderful.  Being the silly person that I am, I assumed Fred Meyer had the same quality of soup as the 5 star restaurant I'd been to.  Of course, I expected the same damn soup.  I cooked it, sat down to watch a cheesy movie, and could feel my face contort.
It was pretty terrible.  And yet, I continued to eat it.  I don't know why sometimes I do this.  Maybe I think of starving people and I feel guilty if I don't finish.  Maybe my tastebuds will adjust and miraculously the taste will improve.  Maybe I know I spent a good hard earned 5 dollars on this crap that could have just as easily gone to the coffee shop I go to everyday for a mocha.  I just kept eating it.  What makes it so effed up was I could actually pinpoint what the flavor was that I was tasting.
Bile.
Somehow, Fred Meyer had found a way to make Bile Soup and call it Lobster Bisque.  LIARS!  You know when you are running around and you kinda over do it and a little up-chuck burns your throat.  That's bile.  That taste...is Fred Meyer's Lobster Bisque with Sherry.

Ultimately...I threw in the towel and made myself something else to eat.

It was worth having a bowl of bile just to come up with the title of this blog entry.

The soup was Bisque-gusting.  Get it?

Salad Debacle

I ordered lunch today and chose the Caesar salad as I have before, with chicken.  When the girl put the plate down in front of me, I started to chuckle.  "So...am I suppose to cut the romaine?"  The romaine lettuce was cut in long sheets about 8-9 inches long and had strips of chicken and drizzled dressing over the top.  She quickly brought over a butter knife for me and I had to shake my head.  I let her know that I hate being a complainer, but there was no way that I was going to be able to "chop" the lettuce as it should have been in the first place with a butter knife nor on the size of plate that had been given to me.  I told her I just wanted lunch but didn't want to work so hard to get the food into my mouth.  She said this was how it had always been.  Not true.  I had the same salad and loved it last week.  The romaine was chopped in bite size pieces in a large bowl with bite size grilled chicken.  She told me she would take it back to the back and have them cut up the lettuce for me.  Grrrreat.  We all know what kind of risk we take when we send something back.
She took it and and brought back what looked like the chef had taken the knife through the whole thing one time because a single piece of lettuce was the size of my face and placed in a small bowl.  When she brought it, I thanked her for trying and let her know I'll still have to cut it and I just didn't want to make a mess.  So what happened?  Every time I cut a piece of the romaine, 2 pieces would fall onto the table.  This happened about 3 times until I had a small pile of my lunch ON the table and not one bite yet in my mouth.  Eff.  This.
I signaled for someone else who looked like they were more in a management position and told him to just take it back.  He looked at it and said, "Why is it in such a small bowl?  Did you get the long strips of romaine?"  Ugh.  He looked at the mess in front of me and I said I hate to be the person to send something back, but this was stupid.  He took it back with no qualms and returned to me a normal Caesar salad.

Here's the thing...
I learned in Culinary Arts that the food you made needed to be beautiful, delicious, but also practical to eat.  This was someone trying something way too artsy and impossible to eat, and therefore not fun to enjoy.  For the price I paid for my salad, I shouldn't have been expected to do all the freakin' work.  That's how it felt:  Here's a bunch of leaves of romaine lettuce, a few strips of chicken, some giant croutons, and a lot of drizzled dressing.  Good luck not getting it all over your shirt and thanks for the money to do my job for me.

Anyway, not ordering that again.  That's not artsy...that's lazy.  No matter how pretty the presentation looks, I should still be able to eat the damn thing.

Fail.

Hand Shaker

I can't be positive that I haven't already posted about this subject matter at some point or not...but if I have, it must be because it's important.  When meeting someone for the first time, I think people should take some time to evaluate how they intend to shake the other person's hand.  First, don't have a pussy hand shake.  ESPECIALLY if you're a guy.  Nothing makes me have less faith in whatever you're going to be like when I feel like I need to bow down and kiss your hand like a gentleman.  Because I'm not a gentleman.  I'm a 100 pound woman who shouldn't have a stronger hand shake than you.  Also, don't be a sweaty mess.  Hell, be honest and even tell me as you're wiping the sweat off onto your pants that your hands are all sweaty before you touch my hand.  I don't mind.  I mind, however, suddenly having a hand that I now have to wipe on my pants.  Thanks.  Finally, there are the guys that have to either prove their masculinity by trying to break my bones in our friendly greeting.  What is wrong with these people??!  I just met some guy who works out at my gym and he introduced himself to me by squeezing my hand and fingers together to the point of almost cracking something.  BE CAREFUL!!!  I'm delicate!  Also, it makes me super angry when my hand is being gripped by a stranger and I feel like I'm already in an abusive relationship with them before I can share what my name is.  When guys do that to each other, it is positively rude.  It's almost a sign of pea-cocking without actually having to puff out the chest.  It's like a game of "who's got the stronger handshake".  Well, asses, to take you seriously in any type of greeting when shaking hands, your handshake must be firm and serious but never painful.  You're just a jerk at that point whether you realize it or not.  How about you practice shaking hands with your mother or 90 year old grandmother?  Or try with a homeless man who's lost everything.  Would you be such a jerk that you would grab that man's hand and squeeze what's left of his pride out of his hand, or would you shake it like you are truly glad to meet him?

In any case, this obviously just happened.  I should've said, "Hey jackass! Nice to meet you, but how about I take a hammer and slam it down on your hand and see if that enhances this greeting.  You'd hate me about as much as I'm hating you right now."  But, I'm not that way so I let him get away with it unfortunately and he will shake someone else's hand violently and they will suffer...and I honestly don't think he is even aware that his handshake is a total put off.  Next time I see him I'll just waive.  Protecting myself.  Geez, sweaty-hands-McGee just came up and said hello and now my right hand with it's delicate bones and tendons are also covered in someone else's sweat.  Gross.

Ssssssssssnake

For the past few days, my garage has been a stinky stinky smelly gross...place.  Couldn't think of another word there.  Well, I've been wondering what the hell I dumped in the garbage to make the whole place smell like death.  Did I roast a chicken like a month ago and suddenly decide to throw it away now?  Did I decide to thaw out some trout that we caught while camping and just keep it in the garbage can for the past 2 weeks?  Did I change a shitty diaper and wrap it up in another shitty diaper and not remember doing it?  Why, god, why did it smell so bad?  I sprayed all of my recycle cans as well as the garbage can down with a ridiculous amount of Lysol hoping that it would ward off the stench until garbage day.  Yesterday, Farrah and I were walking through the garage to head for the mailbox and low and behold...the smelly problem made itself known.  Somehow, a gardner snake had slithered its way into our garage and miraculously got its whole midsection smushed, like something drove over it.  I don't know how it would have been driven over and then drug its sorry snake ass back into my garage to live out its final hours, but something along those lines happened.  After the discovery had been made, Farrah and I had the heeby-geebies all the way to the mailbox and back.

How the hell was I going to get the evil dead out of my garage?  Every time I visualized any means to do it...I'd wiggle around as if a mouse just dove down my shirt.  But it would have to happen eventually.  Now that I knew what the source of the stink was coming from, my gag reflexes were working overtime whenever I walked out there.

So, once I picked Farrah up from Summer Camp/Summer School, I made the critical decision.  It had to be done.  Today.  But like hell if I was doing it alone!  Farrah was going to have to be my side kick in this matter whether she wanted to be or not!  I grabbed a shovel and moved certain obstacles out of the way to do what I had to do.  I knew if I watched what I was doing, I'd probably freak out.  So, I decided to use the shovel and angled it for the thrust to scoop up what I could with my head turned the other direction (I could tell part of the snake was "stuck" to the ground).  Once I felt the weight shift onto the shovel's head and I looked, I screamed like the goddamn thing woke up and I started to run from the dead snake.  This wasn't just a dead snake.  It had some sort of bulge that I had assumed was it's guts being pushed all together because on the other end, it's eyeballs were pushed out of its face.  I know.  Gross.  But it wasn't its guts.  No.  The bulge was a silly massive amount of maggots withering around having the time of their life while I watched in horror.  How on Earth was I going to scoop this thing up which still had a foot of tail that needed to be taken along with the rest of its dead body?  I gave the snow shovel a small glance, then said screw it.  I couldn't be a total pussy about this, so no to the snow shovel.  I gave my shovel one more push and made sure I had the whole damn snake while I ran with it.  Then came Farrah's role in the whole ordeal:
"MOMMY!! THROW IT IN THE NEIGHBOR'S YARD!! THROW IT IN THE NEIGHBOR'S YARD!!!"
Well, that was out of the question because, of course, they would have heard her giving me directions on where to discard the carcass.  So I opted for some rocks near a bush in the open where I prayed some other nasty ass animal might find it appealing and eat it.  Or even better, have the upcoming 90+ degree weather completely dry that thing out.

In the meantime, the area in which the snake had met its unfortunate death and stuck a little to the garage floor, I had sprayed down with kitchen bleach cleaner.  That wasn't enough for me because there were about 10 maggots still crawling around in the poison.  So I went for the gusto and poured about 1-2 cups of bleach on the whole area.  The damn things were swimming in it.  Farrah was freaking out because "it wasn't working!!!"  I let her know to just give it time.  They would not survive.  Payback for the poor snake.  The poor, disgusting, smelly, rotten, decaying, maggot infested snake that chose my freakin' garage.

I hope it goes to hell.

Look at the eyes!  Sick.