QOTD: how many words did I use in this post? Hmmm…? Care to guess?
~ • ~
I’m tired.
My home is in chaos with no end in sight for these remodeling projects. The country is going to hell in a handbasket courtesy, most recently, of the Supreme Snort Court. And the world is a dumpster fire thanks to Mr. Putin.
I am almost without words.
Thus I’m going to step away from blogging for the month of July, maybe longer, so that I might REGROUP. Perhaps RECONSIDER what I want to do here. RELAX, even.
But before I go, let me share the following with you. 😋
~ • ~
AND FINALLY READER COMMENTS IN THE FORM OF A TALLY…
About ice cream flavors. You told me your favorites. Listed below in descending order of preference are the flavors with two or more votes:
OVER THE WEEKEND I FINISHED WATCHING the last hilarious season of the TV show, Grace and Frankie. One of the episodes* in this season involves Grace [played by Jane Fonda] reconciling with her younger brother [played by Jamey Sheridan] who she hasn’t seen in years.
She invites him to her house on the pretext of familial love, but the truth is she’s feeling unexpectedly nostalgic and wants him to give her the family recipe for chicken paprikash.
He knows this recipe by heart.
In the course of their conversation he figures out the subterfuge and starts to walk out, but Frankie [played by Lily Tomlin] finds a way for the two of them to get along.
He was young when their father died and he wants to know fun little details about the man. So for every chicken paprikash ingredient he says, Grace tells him something personal about their father.
This episode was quintessential Grace and Frankie, funny and poignant.
Absurd, yet believable.
• • •
THIS EPISODE GOT ME THINKING ABOUT fun little details about my father; he died when I was 15 so my memories of him are from a kid’s point of view. The details I remember aren’t about his professions, or his accomplishments, or his character– just idiosyncratic things about an adult.
Thus in honor of this coming weekend’s Father’s Day in the US, and for snorts and giggles, I share a list of some fun quirky details about my dad.
Ostensibly it’s about my father, but perhaps gives a glimpse into who I am as well. I’ve read that the oldest daughter is a female version of her father. Maybe so, maybe not.
All I know is he was character.
• • •
✅ He could wiggle his ears.
✅ His favorite holiday was St. Patrick’s Day. He wore a green necktie and green suspenders, and insisted we have corned beef & cabbage dinner– with a shot of Irish whiskey for the adults.
✅ He collected antique guns.
✅ He was a camera-shy** camera nut, with more brands and lenses and tripods and lights than you can imagine. Equipment everywhere.
✅ He kept bees and we ate honey from the hive.
✅ He had a pair of boxer shorts underwear that had a white background with red ants crawling around. When he wore the underwear he’d say he had “ants in his pants.”
✅ He was ambidextrous.
✅ He didn’t suffer fools easily, nor dawdling little girls, so if I was being pokey and said “I’m coming, I’m coming” he’d yell “SO’S CHRISTMAS.”
• • •
Questions of the Day
If you knew him as a child, what fun and/or quirky little details do you remember about your father?
Are you like him in any ways?
If you watched it, what did you think of Season 7 of Grace and Frankie?
** The best photo of him I have is of him sitting by a cadaver he worked on in med school. While interesting, it is macabre, not suitable for this PG-13 blog.
“If you have been mixing a dense mixture for several minutes or more, it is possible that the force of the planetary action can over-tighten the bowl.”
Planetary Action is “a double mechanical motion in which a tool is rotated on a center, while that center is revolved in another circle at the same time.”
BLUESY THE MIXING FLOOZY nestled in the corner on the kitchen counter
~ • ~
This tale involves our KitchenAid Tilt-head Mixer, BLUESY THE MIXING FLOOZY. She’s okay, no need to worry, but there is a casualty in this story.
You see, once upon a time we bought the KitchenAid Tilt-head Mixer Ice Cream Attachment. It’s two parts that involve an insulated freezer bowl and a goofy little paddle thingie.
We did this so we could use BLUESY to make ice cream at home for the heck of it. Thus it came to be that the other day I decided we needed to make ice cream and we did.
But in the process of using the KitchenAid Tilt-head Mixer Ice Cream Attachment, the insulated bowl froze onto BLUESY. Not budging at all.
This did not make us happy.
Following KitchenAid’s “stuck bowl” advice for how to free a stuck bowl, we tried using multiple warm wet kitchen towels wrapped at the juncture where the bowl attaches to the mixer.
Bowl still stuck.
Again following KitchenAid’s advice we put dabs of vegetable oil at the juncture where the bowl attaches to the mixer, then applied brute force.
Bowl still stuck.
Then being innovative little suburban scamps we improvised and tried using WD-40.
Bowl still stuck.
At this point, I’m ashamed to say, I was ready to give up on BLUESY, the old girl. So I went online to see how much a new KitchenAid Tilt-head Mixer would cost. I was shocked. Prices have doubled since we bought her.
So we took extreme measures.
Zen-Den, following the last ditch “stuck bowl” advice, took BLUESY into the basement, placed her on a folded beach towel on the floor, then carefully used a rubber mallet to bash the base of the insulated ice cream freezer bowl, slowly reshaping the base of the bowl.
Then he used a flathead screwdriver to lift, force, cajole the insulated bowl loose, destroying its structural integrity in the process while accidentally leaving a small scratch on BLUESY’S pretty blue finish.
We can live with this.
In fact I feel the scratch, a mere boo-boo, adds character to BLUESY. Not to mention we saved $449.99 by not buying a new Kitchen-Aid Tilt-head Mixer.
Cha-ching!
~ • ~
Close-up of BLUESY THE MIXING FLOOZY’S boo-boo
~ • ~
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
Have you ever wanted to take a mallet to a machine? Did you do it?
If you have a stand mixer [any brand], have you ever gotten the bowl stuck on it? If so, how’d you get the bowl unstuck?
Here’s how this blog post came to be, my little scribes. I read something that was lame, lacking any spunk. In truth I couldn’t believe it’d been published.
All I could think was: “this is insipid.”
While I thought that was the right word to describe what I’d read, I sometimes doublecheck words when I want to confirm that I’m using a word properly, that I know its real meaning.
That the word hasn’t become slang for something I don’t want to be saying. That I’m not inadvertently being vulgar.
So being a conscientious person I went to doublecheck the meaning of the word insipid. I used the trusty New Oxford American Dictionary that’s on my iMac.
Come to find out I do know the definition of the word insipid. It means: “lacking vigor or interest.“
Yep, that’d describe what I’d been reading.
However there’s more to what I learned. You see, while looking up the definition of insipid, come to find out, there are subtle differences among three words that are occasionally used interchangeably. Please refer to image immediately above this paragraph.
These words are the ones that writers, myself included, often misuse. Perhaps you’ve used them wrongly, too. No judgement here.
To demonstrate that I, a wordsmith, now understand the nuances implied in each word I’ll use these aforementioned words correctly in one long sentence. This sentence is the summation of our home improvement journey thus far.
When writing anything I aim to not be INSIPID, but admit that studiously researching a topic for a post can be TEDIOUS, not at all like the excitement created by the comings and goings of the tile guy who is making my daily life anything but UNEVENTFUL.
THE PHOTO PART
Tile around tub in progress
Tile guy’s stuff stored in guest bedroom
Example of 23.5″ x 11.75″ tile up-close
Tile guy’s tools in garage
Cabinet in guest bathroom in place
QUESTIONS OF THE DAY
Do you sometimes wonder how the heck someone got their insipid article or book published?
Do you look up words in the dictionary to make sure you understand a word’s true + current meaning?
Is the tile in your bathroom primarily small, medium, or large like the new stuff we’re using? What color is it?
THE SPECTACLED BEAN 