Hey Kids What Time Is It?

 

UPDATE: Sami and I are having a little bicker about when to cook some of the Easter dinner items. My menu is filled with nostalgia:  it’s the typical northeastern Pennsylvania holiday menu: ham, baked lima beans, cole slaw and potato salad¹. The beans and the cole slaw have to be done ahead in order to be at the right level of maturity for Sunday dinner. Sami, claiming lack of refrigerator space, stopped my plans to cut cabbage last night. But I have to so something today because I’m out of town on Saturday  and Sunday morning will be too late. If it’s refrigerator space that’s the issue, I am going to propose that we get rid of the 12+ year old can of decaf coffee to make room. His position is that someone could drop by at any time and request decaf coffee² and we should be prepared so my proposal is sure to escalate the bickering up to  squabble level.

Family holidays! Amirite?

1 Plus stuffed shells and a yet to be determined dish made of butternut squash and beluga lentils.

2 I pity the fool who would have to actually drink this.

If Only Someone Would Start A Blog Dedicated To The Butter Lamb

I’m the one with the butter lamb fetish but my daughter follows all things lamb cake. Looking for inspiration for her annual effort, I suppose. Check this out:  Mary had a little lamb, with icing white as snow.

Some of them are so gruesome they are making me choke with laughter. It’s hard to pick a favorite but if I had to, I’d say it’s this one:

How appropriate for this time of year! It looks more like a Macy’s Parade float than a cake, doesn’t it? I don’t know which decorative element I like more – the gum drop bell or the HoHo legs. I see they were going for livestock realism by making a nose out of sideways M&Ms.

The wide range of facial stylings and the creative implementation of the decorator’s vision is killing me. Some are missing a nose or mouth and a few unfortunates have no features at all. Some give the overall impression of being a dog or a goat rather than a lamb but really you should take a look at them all.

Dear Suzette,

How can you tell if Easter is less than a week away?

signed, Puzzled

Dear Puzzled,

Because the butter lamb shows up in your refrigerator.

Like Buttah

Sunny Sunday. Those weathermen don’t know a thing about making accurate predictions.

It was sunny in Philadelphia and we spent as much time as possible on the terrace. And by terrace, I mean a 3 x 6 ft fire escape. Only 3 folding chairs could get squeezed into that space so we had to develop a schedule to rotate all  6 adults. The dog shoved himself into any available space, even places that you wouldn’t immediately recognize as a “space”.

A rare moment when two chairs were empty. The dog straddles two worlds – the outdoor air full of the scents and sounds of Philadelphia and the indoor possibility of someone dropping something on the way to the kitchen trash can.

We used a pair of opera glasses to look down on ladies in church hats and little kids dressed in Easter finery. We saw one mom leading a pack of small boys, all dressed in velour tracks suits of different colors. The mom’s was purple. The number of people walking around in black burkas increases every time we visit there

After looking on the dairy shelf for weeks and finding none, we did get a commercial butter lamb this year after all. It looked to be a combination of plain and blobby while it was still in the box but was remarkably detailed out on the plate. We enhanced it with clove eyes and gave it some parsley to graze on.

The clove eyes give this a very “Lamb Chop” look, don’t you think? The turkey salt shaker made a surprise appearance on the table.

Easter dinner was in Philadelphia at my daughter’s house. The girl is full of surprises. She colored some blown-out egg shells and stuffed them with confetti and a special Easter fortune.

I was hoping that this paper would read “You may quit your job” but it didn’t. 😦

And that is the end of any fun I am going to have in the near or foreseeable future. Work is all-consuming now and I bit off more than I could chew. I woke up at 4:30 just to make sure my heart was still beating. And it was, at the rate of a mile a minute.  See you on the other side.

Status Update

Nothing much to say except to report on my latest injury:

I was pushing my home office chair towards the desk and my bare foot shoved itself under the edge of the plastic mat. It’s all spikey under there to grip the rug and at least two of those spikes kissed my big toe. And by “kissed” I mean “made it bleed”. So add bloody and possibly in danger of tetanus toe to my recent foot smash by encyclopedia drop and the belly flop onto concrete sidewalk.

Now let’s talk about injuries to the spirit. It’s a source of sadness to me that members my immediate family circle are not fans of raisins. This means that they always reject the notion of my beloved Martha Stewart Double Raisin Pie. Maybe I’ll just show up with one for Easter. They will be all  NO THANK YOU so that’s probably not a good idea. I should spend my time producing a home-made  Butter Lamb this year. (This is my favorite Butter Lamb tutorial on You Tube. Love the part where Grandma starts snoring at the kitchen table).

Here is somebody’s home made Butter Lamb with features not normally seen on Butter Lambs: hooves and I guess those are feelers?

I’ve been working from home for many many days. I should really get it together and try to haul the majestic self over to the office next week. I’m looking forward to wearing shoes again. Might wear a bra, too.