Baking @ MindSay 
cooking
So, as I tend to do on Saturday nights after church, I gave lilr a call to see about hanging out that night. She said, "Sure, wanna help me make pasta?" I said, "Sure, I need to get gas first - do you want me to pick up some bread or anything?" She said, "No, we have bread. Just come over." "Okay."
See, somehow, I forgot who I'm talking to with this one. If anybody else said, "wanna help make pasta," we're thinking it's spaghetti night, and the boys will come over later*, and we'll all have supper. Nope. See, lilr is the greatest minimalist I know personally. She's very much a 'use all parts of the buffalo' kinda girl, and whatever she really can't use, she gets rid of. She's also a crazy-quiet perfectionist. But somehow, this combination means that she'll make just about anything, food-wise, from scratch.
*Okay, this'd be back when I had a boyfriend. Lilr is married, but her husband's been pulling late shifts on Saturdays. Which gives us a chance to be even sillier.
And it turned out that she'd found a pasta-maker the last time she was at one of our preferred thrift stores. Cool idea, she has recipes already. And she'd been hoping that I'd come over, and we could figure this out together, and take turns watching Schmoo, lilr's tiny son.
Schmoo is largely unimpressed with me. Lilr calls me his aunt, and tries to encourage him to like me. There's no active dislike; he's just not all that interested where I'm concerned. I suspect that this is largely because I'm not lactating at the moment.
What can be said of the pasta making? "Fail," comes to mind. But, since it's us, a highly entertaining fail. I don't believe that there's ever been a time when the two of us were together and no fun was had. She'd already prepped the dough before I arrived, and I was rolling it out. We inspected this later, and I decided, "Less enthusiasm, more flour." Pasta dough is not like cookie dough, and was apparently making plans involving chemical bonding with the countertop.
Somehow, whilst separating said bond on one of the four, it came out looking like a pasty, wrinkled, halter-cut prom dress. Or, possibly a Schmoo-sized cape. The Adventures of Pasta-Man! took up the next twenty minutes, mixed with much laughter. We've figured out his powers and his domain, but we're really stumped as to who Pasta-Man would have as a nemesis. I suggested possibly Mr. Atkins, but neither of us really stomped on that one.
If you haven't seen a pasta-maker (and this was one of the little old-school ones), it's basically the same idea as the Play-Doh pushers we all used as kids. For some curious reason, this one's left-handed. You can put it on the right-hand side, but you won't be able to vice-clamp it to the counter. So, left hand it is. Actually started to feel the burn in my deltoid and left bicep after a bit, which made us laugh. Pasta workout! It's the anti-Atkins - you burn to make your carbs!
The problem was that after the noodles came out, they all stuck together, so you had to separate them, which was time-consuming, and somewhat unsuccessful. We managed to make about forty-eight noodles before concluding that, given time and energy, this was one case where it was indeed a better plan to buy a box of spaghetti from the store. Sigh. But wait, this left us with over half the pasta dough left!
(I don't know why, but I now feel obligated to recount a day five or six years ago, when the snow was melting in spring. Lilr, in those days, was driving a car that we had elegantly christened, "Butt," as in, "Haul butt across town." The delightful bit about living in a state where snow builds up all winter and doesn't actually thaw until, oh, say, early spring, is that, when it does melt, everything floods. Lilr and I had gotten out of school, met up, and gone driving, because I knew of a place, from biking around, where on Flood Day there might be a large puddle. Or, in this case, it turned out, a rather epic puddle. A puddle larger than the average parking space. Taking up the whole road. Upon seeing this, we drove carefully up to it, and were looking at it. "Whoa." "Yeah."
At the same time, we both decided that we needed to haul Butt through this as fast as possible. Well, we didn't have a whole lot of room to build up momentum, so it was decided that we needed to go around the block again. Fantastic! Great wings of muddy water shot up on both sides, the puddle lapping over the gutter-banks on either side, Butt absolutely soaked down, froth left in our wake. Let's do it again!
We went around the block eight times, accelerating, until the ninth time, when the Sheriff's car was sitting next to the puddle, and the Sheriff standing on the side of the hill, looking down at the filthy runoff in the grass. We quietly crept through, and went off to find other adventures.
The only real moral of that story, for the two of us, was that it's a good thing she's a minimalist, because whenever we have extra resources and no clear plan for what to do with them, silliness ensues.)
Well, I reasoned, we could just bake it and have pasta bread. Oh, better idea - Pasta Biscuits! I explained this to lilr. You take extra dough, and roll it flat. Get a cup or something round, and make little cutouts. Grease a cookie sheet, arrange them about an inch apart, pop 'em in the oven at 350, and see what happens!
She'd followed along with that, right up until that, "See what happens," bit. Badname, my other close friend from high school, was often my mentor (a notion I now find somewhat disturbing). He has what he refers to as, "The gift of BS." And apparently, he taught it to me without meaning to. I don't realize I'm doing it, but, with the exception of K, I can make almost any harebrained idea sound not only plausible, but as though people regularly do this. I wasn't trying, I was actually just thinking out loud on how this might work.
Lilr pointed out that said pasta biscuits wouldn't rise - there's no yeast in pasta dough. I answered her that they would simply be unleavened pasta cookies, which were what the Italians ate the night before they fled from Egypt. Further giggles. Lilr and her husband teach Sunday School (they're Mormon, I'm Christian), and I teach campers, so we started making up new lessons, on what the Old Testament would be like with different people groups standing in for the Israelites.
In case anyone was wondering, the Scots did not blow horns for the six days of marching around Jericho, they blew bagpipes. And the walls fell because the people of Jericho detonated them from the inside, preferring death (because God told them to destroy the city, take no prisoners) to one more day of bagpipes.
So, we rolled out the dough, used the mini toaster-oven (I want one of these. And an air popcorn popper. When I get my own apartment, they will be my housewarming gifts to me...if nobody else gets them first.), used an itty-bitty cup to make cutouts (tasty pop-in-your-mouth size cutouts), and arranged them on the cookie sheet.
While we're waiting for these to bake, lilr and I started talking about the plans for me next year. They involve moving out-of-state for awhile, and it's going to be some of Schmoo's swift developmental years. I commented to her, watching him wrestle with his blanket on the floor, "Y'know, the real thing Schmoo's going to remember about me is that whenever I came over, Mom and Mom's friend were loud and just laughed a lot more."
And she stunned me. She said, "Actually, we don't laugh when you're not around." And she was serious. I was absolutely dumbfounded. I have more fun with lilr than almost anybody I know. I knew her husband liked me coming around because she's not terribly social, but I didn't know that she didn't really laugh. And later, she talked about having a day when she smiled this week - like a whole day, or days at a time, could go by without her smiling.
I had no idea about this, and I've known her since we were fourteen. We're always laughing at my house, my sisters, parents, and I. Sure, we disagree and scrap sometimes, but there's so much silliness, and joy, and just a lot of love that turns into laughter. And she and her husband are happy together, and really, they don't fight the way my sisters and I sometimes will. But, to not laugh? To have whole days where you don't smile?
How?
And how did I not know about this?
More silliness came later. It turns out that pasta cookies are bland by themselves, taste okay with honey, pretty good with peanut butter and honey, and fantabulous with peanut butter. It turns out that if I wear an apron to protect my clothes, every spill I get on myself will be below the knee. Especially melted peanut butter. Sigh, but yum. We played with Schmoo, me making faces in response to his faces (he's at the stage where he's exploring what his expression-muscles can do), which makes lilr giggle. Hearing her laugh always sets me off - it will frequently happent that she starts laughing, and then I do too and have to ask her what we're laughing about. She's such a sweet person; all of her joy is infectious.
I started thinking about it on my way home. I laugh because there's a lot of joy in the world. I also laugh when things are messed up - like, the worse a situation is, the more I'll be trying to find some part of it that I can share with someone and laugh about. I'll sometimes just laugh because I'm really happy, like running in the rain - not because something's funny, but because there's so much joy that I've gotta do something to let it out. And I knew that my family laughed a lot - but I didn't know that there were other families that barely laughed at all. It seems such a lonely concept.
They've been thinking about taking in a boarder, and she said that if I wasn't leaving in six months, I'd be the person they wanted. Then, I knew that lilr and I had fun together, and her husband knew that I respected them both and had what they think of as good values and solid morals. All excellent reasons to want your friend to be the boarder you're looking for. I didn't know that this was part of it - that to her, I'm the one who brings laughter in.
Ironically, I feel kind of sad now.
Neutral -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Final Fantasy & Fairy Cakes
Mam and dad went to the Redcar Races today, so I was staying at nana's for most of the day.
From around 11 till about 6.
I ate lunch with them, then sat with nana and watched TV for a while. Grandad was then watching the football, so nana and I were listening to 8 Out Of 10 Cats podcasts on my iPod.
Lisa can provide endless hours of entertainment. :)
We baked cakes together for tea - I asked if we could make butterfly cakes, so we weighed everything out, mixed it together and baked it - nana and I took turns at whisking, I mixed up the eggs and she spooned it out into the baking trays.
Then I sprinkled some chocolate chips on the top afterwards and nana let me eat the ones that were left - and I licked the bowl .:D
Making cakes from scratch is proper mint - they always turn out pretty well.
Nana made sausage rolls as well.
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After this, we went into the front bedroom - nana started work on a new jigsaw - a rather strange one, as it's circular, as opposed to the traditional square or rectangle ones. The pieces are a weird shape too.
This one follows the old time sort of theme, it's an Edwardian chimney-sweep walking along a street.
I set up my Playstation and I had a quick go of Harvest Moon: Back To Nature, finished off a few days in Summer - there's only about one or two left until it's Autumn.
Oddly though, I quickly tired of it, so I switched to Final Fantasy VII instead.
The only two characters left to get up to level 99 now are Vincent and Red XIII - the two who I use the least.
In order, it probably goes (ignoring Cloud, as he HAS to be there... And ignoring Aeris, because she'd dead...) - Cait Sith, Tifa, Yuffie, Cid, Barret, Red XIII, Vincent.
I can't stand Vincent, he's so fucking useless.
The only reason he got like the leading role in Dirge Of Cerberus is because he's emo-looking, and that makes all the fangirls orgasm.
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Tea was pretty epic as always - nana made ham and cheese sarnies - and we ate the sausage rolls and butterfly cakes we'd made. And of course - there was the almighty Polony sausage. It's so fucking legend - I usually end up eating practically the whole thing. :)
Mam and dad came for me at about 6 - and mam had bought me a tube of gormet jelly beans.
Sigh, I don't like the shitty English rip-offs half as much as I like the American imports.
There's a major difference in price like.
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Back at home, I got the idea to make an AMV-style video - using clips from Final Fantasy VII's battles and cutscenes. I planned to put them together with Precious Jerusalem by Blind Guardian.
But of course - there has to be a fuck-up involved.
I ripped all the videos I wanted from YouTube - downloaded the codecs I needed - but when I went to cut sections out from the clips, I lost all the video and all that was left was the sound.
This fucking happened before - so I'm going to have to save them all as .movs or .mp4s and then convert them back to .avis.
Either that, or save them as .wmvs - but that means losing a shitload of the quality.
GAH...
We had to cook that earlier this afternoon, and would reheat it in the oven when the party started (it's supposed to have started 3 minutes ago) so we could enjoy it. Meanwhile, other things are being prepared while this thing is waiting to go back in.
Like the soup broth.
So I went to go turn the soup on so that could start cooking while we did other things. So my mom went to go move the casserole dish that held the kugel.
But I had accidently turned the burner the dish had been resting on up instead of the soup one.
KAPOWIE!
Exploded. All over the kitchen.
Goodbye kugel, goodbye beauuuuuuutiful blue tray.
Claudia called me this morning and said, “Are you going to work today?” because I was out sick yesterday. I said I was. She said, “because I’m throwing up” so we agreed she should call in sick and rest. When I got to school, realized was extra good because tomorrow is MCAS day for at least D, and that could be rough. She told me yesterday was really smooth minus two small incidents and a little grumpiness.
Today was NOT that day. Was not bad by ANY stretch of the imagination, but not smooth. Started out pretty okay; I had to run around the building like mad, but Kelley and Parker had the other 3 under control, playing games. We started reading instruction, and A and E were really on task, D was in break area ordering Parker around like some kind of slave/boss. I let it be. While A and I were finishing his sheet, which he was ROCKING, btw, E walked in with ‘el verdadero historia de los tres cerditos’ (the true story of the 3 little pigs) and asked me to read it to him/them. He wanted to hear it in English, which was awkward because my Spanish has gone WAY down hill, but they both sat through it fine, and I was proud. I LEGIT love Spanish.
First cash-in also seemed to go well. D only had 15 cents in his can, and wanted to cash-in. I said no, because recess is 25 cents, not 15. So then he asked if he could go outside and watch. I said, ‘sure, you can go watch them play’. I stayed in. They went out around 9:55; at around 10:15, I went outside to let them know cash-in period was over. They’re coming over, and D says, “Miss E, E swore” which was apparently, a falsehood. D had sworn, and tried to get E to say it, too. E is a little too intelligent to fall for that, and he also knew that I didn’t believe it because Parker would have told me if that was truth. So they’re both running towards me come inside, and they’re neck-and-neck, and then D sticks his hand out and pushes E’s chest. I say, “D, remember to keep your hands to yourself” (or maybe I said, ‘we don’t push people’, it’s been a long day) and he says, “Shut the hell up”.
Then, he refuses to come inside. Meanwhile, E goes in, hunkers down, starts Mathing up a storm. A has a bit of a tantrum. D comes into the classroom and sees A tantruming, and calls him one of my LEAST favorite words on planet Earth, “Gaytard” (a nice combo of two negatively-connotated words, awesome), and says, “I’m outta here”. So I said, “okay, but that’s not a safe body, you’ll lose your point” and he told me “that’s okay, I’ll just go kill myself”.
Basically, this was uttered 3 more times before he was really ‘gone’. He said, “if you kill my mom, I’m just going to kill myself”. He’s VERY concerned about having to go to ‘Crisis Services’, which from what I understand of it, is being hospitalized. Mom says this is the time of year it happens if it’s going to happen. I’m afraid. EITHER way, Parker and I go looking for him, and he’s in the room next door. And he’s trying to choke himself. Hands around throat, face red. So we look at each other and Parker goes and grabs him to restrain him. Very vocal during the restraint; we were hurting him, we were jerks, it was our fault, we pick on him and wouldn’t do that to Z… but it was during a restraint, so I can’t really talk to him OR set him straight. I don’t know; it didn’t sit right with me. I called Jackie (principal) and Jerry (psychologist), and they were like ‘okay, he’s calming down, we don’t wanna walk in there and exacerbate the problem’ but then Jerry did end up coming in for a good 20 minutes of talking. Not productive, but 20 minutes. It became after 11, so I went to give the other 2 their cash-in, and Parker said they’d hang out next door a little bit and then do some math. As I leave D goes, “I lost cash-in?” and “Is this going in my folder?”. Hmm. Yes, yes it is. Because you need to learn that there are consequences to your actions.
No complaints the rest of the day. D had at least 2 really good 'do-overs' for being unsafe in the hall (running...). Avery came in today to be A's reading buddy, and I had told him, 'if I get a bad report, you are never coming into my room except for tutoring again' and he took it to heart and I got STELLAR reports back. Reading group baked some DELICIOUS cookies (well, I didn’t have any of the cookies, I was a very good girl and just ate one small bit of dough and THAT was yummy), and they were all really nice to each other and helpful. SCORE ; ). Third cash-in seemed to have gone well, and S.S. was okay, all things considered. Science didn’t really happen; they had extended recess and then D was all twittery because the girl he likes was near him on the blacktop…. Oh well. Day ended on high notes, except when D asked me to read his folder to him and he said, ‘great, you’re gonna get me sent to crisis services’ which I won’t take blame for.
BEST MOMENT OF DAY: I wasn’t around for this, I was in the room doing the end-of-day routine, but Parker was talking to our old, crotchety bus driver because he thinks tomorrow is a half-day (it isn’t). So they’re debating and Parker says, “I’m pretty sure tomorrow is a full day” and E quips, “Go inside and get Miss E; she’s smarter than you”. Uh, I LOVE the fact that the E-Machine thinks so highly of me : ). Actual day maker.
*There's a bulletin of 'safety idea's outside one of the 2nd grade classrooms. Some of them are really sweetly honest about safety, "Never cross the street without looking" and "Don't stand up on a swivel chair". Some of them are good advice, albeit strange, "Never drink poison" and "Don't play with acid" (both by Sam, unexpected). And some were RIDICULOUS and so...second grade <3. My favorite (I have to go back and read them all again, but for now) is, "Don't pour banana pudding on the floor and then walk through it". That IS a good safety tip; oddly specific, but... I love little kids : )
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