I’m Gonna Change My Way of Living, and If That Ain’t Enough…
Well, they tell you not to make too many life changes right after you’ve had a seriously traumatic event in your life, and as usual, I’m not listening. In one short week since I last talked with you, I have:
>Switched banks. A whole new start, right? Out with the old, in with the new. Banking, that is. Love the new one. Hopefully when they write out checks to pay some of my bills to companies that haven’t caught up to the 21st Century enough to have automatic bill pay, this bank won’t bounce the same checks THEY wrote and THEY mailed, as happened twice in the same year with my old bank. Ya know why they did that? Beats me, but I think it almost certainly has something to do with outsourcing the work, where nobody is accountable. Take that, George Bush. Outsourcing Does Not Work if you want your business (or your country) (OR your war) to be run with any sense of responsibility whatsoever. I’ve had enough and I’m not taking it anymore! (Yay me!) Old bank, gone. New bank, huge enough that they have to hire people within their organization to do all the work, which means there’s more chance they MIGHT do it right, capice?
>Dropped my land line and am using my cell phone exclusively now, which I’ve been thinking about doing for quite a while anyhow, and I’m findng it curiously freeing because now I won’t have to go running to my house phone when I come home from wherever, to see if there are any messages. Anybody calls me now, I’m going to know about it in real time. Somebody call me so we can check that out. Anybody? Hello?
>Speaking of my cell phone, I managed to finally call Verizon for a new area code to match the area code I actually live in. When I got my cell two years ago, attached to my daughter’s cell contract in the next state, there were no numbers available in my area so I used her area code, which has always kept me off-balance anyhow, and I don’t need any extra help with that, thank you very much. Old phone, but new number. And actually, it’s NOT my old phone. I got a new one while I was at it, after putting that off for six months. This one’s red, a happy color unless you’re a Democrat. I hope to God I don’t have that backwards.
>Wore one of my late husband’s T-shirts without feeling guilty or morbid about it. In fact, it felt quite comforting. Not so much because it’s red and white striped, but probably because it’s big and soft and floppy. Big and soft and floppy is good, right? (Well…maybe not always…)
>Watched the Ellen Degeneras Show for the first time EVER, and I have to tell you, I haven’t laughed like that, which was out loud and totally delighted, in I don’t know how long. She even had me dancing, even though I was alone in the house with my two cats, who cowered in the corner wondering what the hell was wrong with me. Thank you, Ellen Degeneras, and I hope I spelled your name right. If I didn’t, somebody will tell me fast enough.
>Managed to get my late husband’s insurance company (who generously offered to allow me to leave my insurance proceeds with them, let them manage it, and dribble it to me in monthly checks until the money ran out, wasn’t that lovely of them) to send it to me in one lump sum. I gave them a list of enough reasons why I was perfectly able and more than willing to manage my own money. About a dozen or so, to be sort of exact, all valid if a little goofily worded for maximum effect. In fact, I let Hotclue write it. I got my check exactly one week later. I had no idea until I opened the envelope that their sleazebag salesman had dropped in one day years ago when I wasn’t home and talked my husband into switching his policy so that the face value would begin to diminish after the first three years. Which I’m absolutely sure my husband did not understand AT all. No, I won’t mention their name, but I do seem to remember a picture of a huge rock jutting out of an ocean somewhere…Oh, but I digress. Anyhow, I SO appreciate their concern for me in my dotage. Even so, there’s nothing as exhilarating as winning a battle of wills. I probably misspelled exhilarating just now, but I don’t think I’m dangling any participals. Or is that participles? Sigh…
>Last but not least, my one and only extravagance, because I’m becoming as tight as a witches…well, never mind, I’m trying to be nice here. I bought a Garmin GPS. And in addition to that, I paid for a third of it by cashing in credit card points, also for the first time ever. (You have no idea what it took to get me to do that.) So now, for the First Time EVER, when I get into my car to drive anywhere further than one mile away, I won’t get lost like I always did before. Sometimes, I blush to disclose, less than a mile away. Now I’ll always have that little voice to tell me, “Turn right at the next corner. NO, NO, RIGHT, did you hear me, RIGHT! NOT LEFT, you idiot! RIGHT!”
>I haven’t changed my hair color. But I am thinking about it. 
Ciao for now. I may not be doing that well with Widowhood 101, but I am learning independence. I’ll probably never be fit to live with again.
Beth, and Hotclue is right behind me, laughing. I have no idea why. Love you all, you know we do. Come back and see us next week. We’ll leave the front porch light on for ya.
I Really AM Hot Stuff and I Just Proved It!
So. Beth decided to pull a Hotclue and disappear on Thanksgiving day and stick me with cooking the entire dinner. She didn’t tell me this ahead of time, the rat. Just all of a sudden Thanksgiving morning, before any of the dressing and all the rest of the stuff was started she turned and said, “Hots, I’ve made an executive decision.”
What’s that?” I asked, innocently polishing my toenails, trying to decide between the tiger-striped blouse or the red see-through one, thinking about heading off to Barbados with Count Babbalallapaloozo before all the grunt work associated with these interminable holiday dinners began.
“I’m leaving and you’re cooking,” she announced.
I looked up. “Say WHAT?”
“You’re cooking today. Buh bye, toots!” And with that, Beth disappeared into the ether, which I thought only I knew how to do because after all, I perfected it. But zap! Just like that, she was gone and I was stuck.
In her defense, she did leave the mashed sweet potatoes and the two pies she made the previous day. Big of her. There I am, faced with this humongous turkey that I’m supposed to somehow stuff and bake and have ready by two o’clock when our guests were due to arrive. Make that my guests, Beth had already split.
Well, good sport that I am, I decided to give it a go, so I went online to the Food Network to find out what went into stuffing.
First of all, is it dressing or stuffing? Is it only officially stuffing if it’s actually IN the turkey? How does it get there? When I read the directions my jaw dropped and all I could think of was, “Ewwww!”
I actually had to put my hands in that mess and stick it inside of that raw turkey? Double Ewwww!
But Beth wasn’t coming back, so okay, I printed out the recipe. Chop this, simmer that, add some of this, a few of those. It couldn’t be all that bad, except for the touching the inside of the turkey part. (Triple Ewwww!)
Obviously I was going to have to run out to the drug store for some surgical gloves, since there was no way in hell I was touching the clammy insides of that turkey.
The drugstore was closed. I had to touch the turkey.
So okay, I chopped and sliced and diced and simmered and stirred and finally I had a big pan full of what looked like something a college jock would heave after the first big sorority bash of the year. But I took a huge deep breath anyhow and grabbed a handful and shoved it in. There was no way I was going to eat this, you understand, but we had guests coming. They’d never know.
After an hour of cursing it was stuffed although half of it fell out while I struggled to get it into the pan. I scooped it back up and stuffed it back where the sun didn’t shine in THAT bird and shoved the whole mess into the oven, praying the Count would call soon and rescue me.
No call yet, so I read the rest of the recipe.
Baste it every once in a while. Okay, I could handle once in a while.
About an hour later, while I was looking up a recipe for green bean casserole, which had sounded innocent enough until I saw a photo of it, which reminded me of the stuffing, I realized I hadn’t basted the turkey yet.
I opened the oven door and without giving it any serious consideration ahead of time I reached in and pulled the pan out. It was only then I realized I wasn’t using a potholder. Stung like crazy frickin’ hell, and as I stood there looking at my fingertips turning red, white and bluer than Bush’s face when Malacki stiffed him for dinner, it dawned on me what I’d done.
Well, I did what any other normal person would have done. I ran cold water on it until I realized that wasn’t helping at all and in fact, was only making it worse. Curses! I went running for the hall closet, where Beth usually keeps all kinds of weird ointments I’ve never used, but surely, SURELY, she had something for burns.
She didn’t.
I stood in the hallway thinking about it and while I was thinking, decided to at least, if nothing else, put some antibiotic cream on it. I knew that, at least, was in the medicine cabinet. You know, the one you always look in when you’re in someone else’s house?
No burn ointment, but I spotted a tube of some toothache medicine, thought about it a minute, then I figured well, it works on teeth and gums, doesn’t it?
So on the off-chance I squeezed some on my burned fingers and stood watching while the miracle happened.
I’m telling you, I’m so damn brilliant I should be Times Magazine’s Person of the Year, I really should. The burning stopped after about five minutes and it never came back. My fingers never blistered, never hurt again, didn’t turn red at all.
I’ve invented a whole new use for toothache medicine. Am I incredible or what? This is almost as good as the time I invented a great tool for getting leaves out of gutters. Never did anything with that either, but it’s the thought that counts, right?
My fingers are all perfectly well and accounted for, although the truth is, I really burnt hell out of them, you could see it. But you didn’t see it for long. And why not?
Hey, because I did the Hotclue thing, that’s why not. I put toothache medicine on them.
Ta ta for now, my loves. My guests are gone, the dinner was wonderful, I gave them all of the leftovers just to annoy Beth, and I’m off to the Bahamas for the weekend, since it looks like we’re going to get whomped with snow here in Chicago.
Come back again soon, ya hear me? I love y’all, you KNOW I do. And now you know what to do for burned fingers next time you get stuck cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Unorthadox, maybe, but any port in a storm, right?
Hots Herself, still cookin’ as usual! (At least the guys all say I do.)
