Isolation Update, Day ~ 55 or so

I’ll try to make this short.

/In early March I spent a ton of money on a fresh haircut and highlights. Then I went into self imposed isolation and only my husband and the Amazon van driver got to appreciate the effort. Turns out it was the worst haircut I ever had and I had to look at it and try to ignore it every single day since. Now it’s grown way past the stage where I should have had at least two more hair cuts and now I look like Mary Berry if Mary Berry was a zombie.

/Last week, I got up early on Grass Cutting Day and went out to pull weeds from around the outside of the pool screen so I wouldn’t be humiliated when the grass cutters got here. Long story short, when I fell backwards, I landed on my butt like a baby just learning to walk and then my top half continued on it’s own slammed backwards onto the wet grass. My brain felt like it came loose from my skull for a while but that only lasted until that evening.

[Interlude: I couldn’t get up by myself and no one was around so I had to wait one hour and fifteen minutes sitting in the wet grass and watching surface mud sink deeper into my pale blue terry cloth slippers until my neighbor came out for his coffee and came over to help me up. By that time I was completely soaked and my t-shirt was sagging but mercifully and by rare coincidence I was wearing a bra so no free show for him. He was probably looking at my hair anyway. UNCOMBED zombie Mary Berry.]

/I thought that was the end of it until the next morning when I took that lovely first sip of coffee and jumped up right to the moon. Turns out that the double impact with Mother Earth meant that my teeth banged together two times , cracked one or some molars not sure yet and exposed a nerve. It was so painful that I didn’t even care that I looked like zombie Mary Berry.

/Later that day, I potted up a baby flapjack plant which is my new favorite plant and took it over to leave on his front door step to thank him for lending a helping hand.

/On the weekend, a week-known local musician lives on my street and he got his band together to give a free concert in his driveway for the neighborhood. I’ve been strict about keeping my husband well away from the threat of contagion all this time, but he kept bringing it up and looking at me hopefully so see if it would be okay.  Meanwhile, the street is a short cul-de-sac with only 7 houses on each side, so I spent a few days calculating how many individuals who believe that the stay-at-home mandate in Florida didn’t apply to them would be roaming around with neither mask nor respect for social distancing. But when the time came we made a plate of snacks, brought a cocktail for him and a bottle of red for me out to the end of our drive way and settled in.

/It was so much worse than I thought it would be – kids were careening around on bikes and skateboards, half naked teens were standing on the cabs of pick up trucks and there were more motorcycles and golf carts filled with slap happy adults then I could ever imagine would be in this neighborhood. Yet, we felt adequately isolated on our own patch of cement sidewalk compared to the roiling mass of celebrants who were dancing in the cul-de-sac (where the free margarita bar was located.

/Overall, it was good. My husband was so happy and he didn’t even mind very much when I got halfway down the wine bottle and started channeling my inner Lucy Ricardo by explaining something to him that had to be urgently explained right then and there while pouring another glass for myself and he ended up partially covered in a pretty nice 2017 Malbec.

/Anyway, that’s what’s been happening around here. You?

And So Monday, We Meet Again

Much to report!

Lemon Tree – I don’t see a single pea-sized fruit anywhere. Lots of blossoms left so I guess it’s not game over yet but lots of flower-drop, too. I did clip off some leaves (see below) and a new leaf is already growing from that spot so there’s life in the tree it’s just that it remains uncertain if fruit is in the tree.

Retro party food – I made two Jello poke cakes in two weeks. There they are:

Now it’s out of my system and I don’t have to make any more of them. Which is lucky, because you can see that I’m already out of ideas.Of note in these two photos is that the round cake was transported in a covered cake carrier that I got from the Dollar Tree for one dollar and the rectangular cake is my first foray into decorating with lemon leaves.

Went to a seafood restaurant for dinner on Sunday. It’s the kind of single owner, non-franchise place that I usually like. Sami, you know, is a fussy patron and things started off on the wrong foot when he ordered a “Sweet Rob Roy on the rocks” and it was delivered on the rocks but in a martini glass which he found intolerable. I asked the waitress for an empty rocks glass so I could pour Sami’s drink into it and when she finally came back with it, it was a beer glass. Note that we did ask if they had a full service bar before we ordered anything so outre as a cocktail on the rocks in a rocks glass.

Also, when the martini glass full of booze and rocks was delivered, the waitress put it down in front of me and when I started to slide it over to Sami, the base of the glass caught on an uneven plank in the table and about half of the contents sloshed out. The waitress stood and watched but never said a thing as we scrambled for paper napkins to gather the rocks and mop up the booze. Those wet napkins stayed at the edge of the table for the whole meal when the food came, it was plunked down without any napkin replacement.

The menu was large, the food was dished up in very big portions but is some of the most god-awful stuff I’ve had in a long time. Here is Sami very pleased about the three enormous pieces of haddock in his Fish ‘N Chips basket … then he tasted it.

 

Anyway, long story short: I’ll never get him back there. Eateries only get one chance with him and that chance is 90% dependent on the server and 10% dependent on the quality of the food.

Our visit to that place is summed up by this brief video shot underneath the illuminated rotating lobster that welcomes you to the restaurant.

Scene: Upon departure after the meal

The players: A married couple.

Action: He – [complains] / She – [shushes]

fin

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Complaining and shushing.

A post shared by Cripes Suzette (@cripes_suzette) on Nov 10, 2014 at 8:03am PST

Public Service Announcement

Just want you to know that I’ve been out of gin for three days. I know! – I’ve been handling this misfortune remarkably well. Not sure how long I can tolerate this. That is all.

The Wages of Sin Is 10 Bucks

At least in New Jersey, it is. Speaking as a person who paid $10.00 for an espresso martini last night, this article resonated with me:

Where Do Cocktail Prices Come From?

link via Maggie’s Farm, always my first read of the day

And I had that espresso martini in a burger joint in Bumville, NJ not in a swanky Manhattan lounge. I used my unofficial and uncredentialed but avidly pursued status as a Booze Detector to determine that there was precious little actual booze in the thing, if any at all.

That’s what I get for veering from my usual practice of ordering drinks made from nothing except booze and ice. Here’s last night’s photo of the boozeless $10.00 concoction.

We continue to go to that place because:

• Sami thinks they have the best burgers in NJ
• They make a Sweet Rob Roy on the rocks exactly as it should be and they do it without needing an explanation from us.
• It’s on our drive home from Philadelphia

Lesson learned. From now on, it’s an extra dry gin martini straight up in the approximate vicinity of a big green olive speared on a plastic cocktail stirrer. Maybe a bottled beer once in a while.

“Martinis Are Essential To Cultural Conservatism”- Robert Bork

“Tipsy Onions are bathed and packaged in French Vermouth.”

I feel somewhat the traitor to the glorious concoction. I’ve lately taken to using a Tipsy Onion which I know pushes the thing into Gibson territory but I don’t care. I don’t mind being bathed in vermouth every once in a while. But not as a regular thing.

Here’s an National Review article that gives a whole new meaning to the term “getting borked” . I like to think that in my own little way, I honor the man on the occasional evening at 5pm.

Respectfully disagree about the stemmed glass, though. Vintage sherbet glasses are the way to go.

actual little pink sherbet glass of Suzette