Month: January 2016

Boredom Chowder

Posted on by bangscrafts

“Worries go down better with soup than without.”

-Jewish Proverb

So few people appreciate the power of a good bowl of soup.  You are sitting there, chilled and sad, and then you have a deep spoonful full of a broth that will stick to your ribs and warm you heart.

When I feel the worst or if I feel bored, I tend to lean towards soup-making. Once upon a time I had no idea how to cook, and then I learned speedily, and now I never look back.  I remember as a child thinking that soup was exactly one thing; a can full of something.  Once I realized I could make my own, I’ve never looked back.

I have the specific skill both my mother and sister have (that probably dates back further than that even) to not follow recipes.  I was afraid of the oven for years (as previously posted) and then I came quick to cooking.  After a few easy recipes, I was on top of the earth.

Cutting to the point, bouillon cubes are the freaking bomb.  You can buy a pack of 8 and have so many soups-worth of cooking from them!  I never buy stock anymore.

I have some chowder a’ stewing right now in my crockpot.  I don’t even anticipate eating this until Monday, but that is how ahead I plan.

My house smells awesome!

Eggplant stew

Runaway washing machine

Posted on by bangscrafts

I’ve had a pretty eventful morning for a quite Saturday.  I was able to read about 20 pages of my book before getting out of bed.  I made a quick grocery store run before the parking lot was mobbed.  I even ran to the bank to get deposit a check and get a roll of quarters so I could go back to my apartment to do laundry.

Upon return, I made myself breakfast and hard boiled eggs for the week, subsequently setting off the fire alarm for now a second time while living here.  That was mildly inconvenient, mostly due to it’s unnecessarily shrill note, and that I started fanning the wrong detector before realizing my mistake.

Finally I got around to sorting some laundry, deciding I would get to towels first.  I went into the basement where the apartment’s two washers and two dryers are kept, and I threw in my towels to return upstairs and eat my breakfast.  After eating and sorting another set of laundry, clothes this time, I ventured back down to the basement.

To get to the basement, I have to go outside and then down into a separate door.  Right inside the door is one of those timer switches that you turn and the light goes on, but it sort of clicks the entire time since it’s counting down from wherever you set the thing to.  I usually just turn it just about halfway, since I’m never down there very long.

As soon as I had entered and turned the light on, I was immediately aware that the washing machine was on a rocket mode, and desperately trying to free itself from its hookups and the wall.  I ran inside and threw my laundry basket down, now realizing the machine was dangling off of the pallet platform it sits on.  After sort of just staring at it in disbelief for how fast and loud it is, I try pushing will all my might against the front of the thing, to no avail.  The only victory with doing that was that pressing my body against it muffled the ungodly loudness of the thing.

Briefly it started slowing down, and the light reading “Last spin and tumble” lit up on the display.  Mind you, these are bare bones machines we have down there.  There are options for water temperature and normal/delicate settings, and there’s an Start button.  The doors lock after you insert your quarters and press start, so there are few options other than waiting for your laundry to be done.

The spin starts going haywire again, and it’s trying to run away once again.  I get on the side that’s really dangling off the platform, and I press against the back of it with my right hand and keep my left at the front, and I shove as hard as I can.  This gets it at least back on the platform, but precariously since it is moving forward with every cycle.  I get on the other side and do the same thing, rotating back and forth until it’s as far back as it can go.  At this point I was hoping it’d slow down again since that light had turned on, but it had no indication of slowing down or staying up.

I took a look behind me at the door, paranoid someone was going to come in and see the weird new tenant hugging the washing machine.  Concerned that the person who lives above this part of the basement would hear the racket, I pressed all my weight on it, again muffling the sound.  Minutes went by in this style, me looking over my shoulder at the door every so often, and ultimately even yelling for the damn thing to stop (which I could barely hear over the grumble and swish).

What must have been five minutes went by and my bones felt entirely rearranged in my body by the time the spinning turned into a low pulse.  I leaned down and looked into the front window and watched in relief as it flipped my towels over a few more times and came to a halt.  I started clapping my hands in glee, and then it started spinning again in the opposite direction.  I slammed my palms on the window and nearly yelled again, in what would have been a very dramatic reaction, but thankfully it came to a full stop.

I stood up, shaky from feeling like I’m a Christmas tree in those shakers to remove the dead needles, and opening the door hauled my laundry out of there as fast as I could.  Although then I filled it up again with clothes, but I’m hoping since those won’t be as heavy the machine will feel comfortable staying put for this load.

We’ll see when I go and check on the dryer….

 

My mama can dance, and my daddy does rock ‘n roll

Posted on by bangscrafts

My mom is pretty much my best friend, and there is little contestation in that.  (Except, as a friend pointed out, when it comes to my sister, my dad, or my sister in law).  I welcome the day with a “good morning” text to her; one of us always says goodnight before whichever of us heads to bed first.

On occasions people have asked me if I’m checking Facebook when I’m texting her.  For starters, I do not have Facebook, and I never have.  And since those circumstances, I have referred to my mother as my Facebook.  I told her that once and she sent me a blushy emoji face.

She is the most the most graceful person I know.  Whenever I have a tough conversation, or a bad day at work, I try to emulate her approach.  She invented devil’s advocate because there is always another side and usually it is important to see that.  My mother created in me someone who wants to be fair, to stand up for myself, but to also be patient and kind.

Mom and me

My dad is my dad.  He is exactly the exception of all the stupid He-Man bullshit the world puts out, while simultaneously being the most capable and coolest man possible.  He set the bar high, to put it simply.  When I was a kid all I wanted was to be exactly like him, even down to being an electrical engineer.

Once I hit the age where I realized literature was more my forte, I had to come to terms with being so different from my dreams.  But then I became an adult.  And I started asking to borrow the staple gun, or I got fed up with my landlord and I nailed down the floorboards myself.  It was a great day when I realized I become more like my father every one of them that I live.

phone-update-may-190

 

I hit the jackpot with these parent units o’ mine.  My favorite description of myself is that I am the perfect amalgamation of the two of them.  I have my mother’s beautification skills…with my dad’s power tools. 😉

I miss Don, too.

Posted on by bangscrafts

Part of the daily excitement of my new found freedom is discovering where my mail might be located.  I have a back entrance in a converted house, and the mailboxes are in the front.  I have to walk through this closed off alleyway on the side of the house to get to the front, and then usually I just find a big wad of coupons I toss in the garbage on my way back to my door.

There have been occasions when the mail person leaves one of those “Sorry we missed you” slips, with the location of my package written on it, such as “under the stairs, “under a box behind the  garbage cans,” and so on.  It’s always an adventure claiming my mail here.

Recently, however, I got one of those slips and it read that they attempted delivery but needed a signature, so I would have to pick it up from Gate K at the Post Office headquarters.  I carried the slip around with me for a week and had to look up where this place even was.  One evening I drove there after work to realize the place closes at 5, and it was 5:04.  So I resolved I would need to retrieve my package on a Saturday morning.

I arrived with an hour to spare before I had to be at an appointment on the other side of town.  I parked and walked in confidently to what looked like the right place to go, and after waiting in line briefly, I was told I was in the wrong location.  The woman gave me some clear-cut sounding directions, and I took off accordingly.

This is when I ended up driving through a bunch of steel mills, a correctional facility, making an illegal U-turn, finding Gate F, and then finally coming up to a USPS driver, asking where in the heck Gate K was.  The man reassured me I was not the only person to have asked this question before.

I parked where he directed me to, and followed the “Customer Pick Up” signs, and arrived here:

Post office Gate K

Does this look like somewhere I’m supposed to be?!  I sure didn’t think so.

The blue door lead to a room, about 20′ by 15′, with three doors, a flickering fluorescent light, a rickety old desk chair on wheels, and a table-thing with a bunch of Post Office announcements and protocols pasted all over it.  I was waiting behind someone, and then moved up to the window in the door to the back room.  By this time an old man had arrived behind me and sat rolling slightly in the desk chair, all the while groaning and hacking up a lung.

The Post Office worker had taken my slip of paper and went to search out my package, after closing the little window in the door, leaving me in an enclosed room with this muttering man.  At one point the man got up and ambled over to me, exclaiming nearly incomprehensibly how much he missed Don.  Essentially, Don used to have all the mail all sorted out and stamped, and now he’s gone and everything’s gone to pieces.

The Post Office guy came back after about ten minutes and told me that he could not find my package, but he offered to go back and look again if I had the time.  This stumped me, because what was he doing the first time!?  At this point I had about 7 minutes to get to my appointment, so I said no I cannot stay.  He wanted to write down a number I could call so if and when it arrives back (after it’s yet again undeliverable since I’m not there to sign) I can call them directly and see if it’s there for pickup.

He wanders away with my slip of paper so he can copy it and have my information, and then five minutes later comes back and informs me that he’s having a girl copy it for him.  I’m not sure what took him five minutes if he was having someone else copy the paper!  Meanwhile, five other men have now entered and been told that they will need to wait until both the mumbling man and myself are taken care of.

A woman comes into view in the back room and hands the worker my slip and the copy, and then they proceed to argue over which number Jamie would answer, in order to give me a number to call.  I am already late for my appointment by now.  He has the papers in his hand and he starts walking back to the door, and then he walks past the door and comes back with a huge cart of parcels and boxes and tries wheeling it through the door.  The muttering man is telling him he doesn’t have the right things and he has to go through the other door, and they go back and forth a bit about the door frame.  The mutterer says as an aside “this is why I miss Don,” and I say to him, “I miss Don too, and I never even met him!”

The cart is finally through the door and off with the muttering man, and I’m handed back my slip of paper but then asked to write down my number so they can call me if the package comes back.  I spin and about to exit the blue door, when the worker calls out one more time and repeats what he just had said, while I’m nodding profusely and trying to dash out.

In my car I called my appointment to inform them I would be late, apologizing for the delay, but that I had just escaped the Twilight Zone and I’m on my way!  And, oh joy, that I know I will have to be going back….

 

Can get satisfaction, hey hey hey

Posted on by bangscrafts

Recently, a very important person in my life told me “there is a great satisfaction in being able to lock a door behind you.”

It’s funny how you can be in a brand spanking new place, be working on unboxing, hanging your pictures on the wall, boiling noodles, et al.  But you never think about your door.  You never pause when you get home, other to take your coat off once you’ve reached the forced heat in your apartment.  You just spin rhythmically, take a knee to your door to make sure it’s shut, and turn a couple knobs.

Then someone you know and love goes and makes the idea of a door this whole romantic thought previously never conceived.

Here I sit, behind my locked door, listening to ZZ Top loudly to drown out my dishwasher, and I do feel satisfaction.  Thank you, Anita.

“Oh there’s not too much in here,” and other dishwasher stories.

Posted on by bangscrafts

The kitchen was an oft used room in my childhood, for so much more than cooking.  My first dance parties were in that checkerboard titled room.

Our main chore was emptying the dishwasher.  Molly and I would take forever to load the 5-carousel CD player, that we knew full well only 4 CDs played from, we just never knew which CD wasn’t going to play…big mystery it was.  We’d each hold our huge CD booklet and select 2 each, and the fifth one had to be equally agreed upon.  And of course the whole lottery aspect of the player ruined our time consuming logic.

Every single time, or at least 95% of them, Molly would open the dishwasher and as she was easing the door down to the floor, she would explain (not merely say, no, exclaim!) “Oh!  There’s not too much in here!”  Because, of course, we never wanted to empty the damn thing, and when you’re a child, menial tasks take forever.  For about three years I believed she was actually stacking up memories of what the last load enumerated to be.  And then I became the wiser and realized that there was always not too much in there.

I have to say though, Molly did really try to make chores fun.  (I’ll have to go in pitchforking the woodchip pile at a later date.)  In retrospect, some of her tactics baffle me in the fact that they worked.  Such as the day she decided, “wouldn’t it be fun if we put item away at a time?!”  And then we continued to parade a fork, a bowl, the strainer, to their respective spots.

I have my own dishwasher now.  There’s a couple things I’m appreciating.  First of all, having my best friend be my sibling.  But also having literally the best sister you could ask for constantly there to make awful things awesome.  I can only hope for my future children to have a Molly.  But even then they probably won’t win as much as I have.

In case you ever wanted to have a Carroll dance party, I’ll make it easy for you:

Carroll Dance Party Playlist:

  1. The Go-Gos
  2. Backstreet Boys
  3. Shania Twain
  4. The Bangles
  5. Scorpions
  6. The Coors
  7. Pocahontas soundtrack
  8. Phantom of the Opera soundtrack
  9. Nightwish/The Ramus
  10. Bonus Track: “We didn’t start the fire” by Billy Joel (or Jimmy Bowl [another post])

You need to wear some solid-bottomed shoes, be able to pick up at least one family member, and dance like no one is watching.  Like any good Irish-person does.  Good luck, and tell me about it!

 

Be still my heart, Home Depot

Posted on by bangscrafts

Growing up, my father would always tease my sister and I about going to Builders Square conferences that would last for hours and hours.  We would chime in union with our little voices saying “no daddy, no!!” and he would giggle.  Both Molly and I really detested hardware stores.  Molly was fearful of the fork lift, the floors were so gross, there was nothing to play with because, heck, it’s all pretty dangerous to 7 and 9 year old little girls.  The only fun was found in the kitchen furnishings department, where we could play in the model kitchenettes that we were in a house…and not in a hardware store.

Builder Square ceased to exist starting in 1999, and the Home Depot replaced the location we would always frequent.  I remember us all going and my dad was pretty bummed and leery, but it turned out to be the exact same thing, just with more orange.  Molly and I were still displeased.

I remember going to a movie once and afterwards my dad said we would just make a quick stop at the Lowe’s around the corner.  Lowe’s was pretty new (at least to our area) at the time, and upon walking in Molly exclaimed “ugh this is just Builders Square in disguise!”  My mom nearly busted up from laughter.

One day, something happened.  I cannot even specify what, but I needed something “home maintenancey” and I went to Home Depot, all on my own.

Since then, I have been smitten.  I walk through those aisles, and I see all the different Dremel bits, I peruse the coarseness of sandpaper blocks, I get particle board cut into appropriate sized pieces, I ask when the next shipment of joint compound will come in, I buy a whole brick of cellulose fiber insulation.

My favorite saying of mine is probably, “I am the perfect amalgamation of my parents.  I have my mother’s beautification skills and my father’s power tools.”

There is no culmination to a story pertaining to the Home Depot and me, because we are a love story that will endure.  And not that it matters, but my favorite color is orange.