Again, for those of you who are still in the dark ages (prior to 2009), and still have dial up internet, I apologize for the time it takes to download an e-mail with a picture. I’ve been quite silent lately on the e-mails, due more to my bad mood than not having anything to write about. The bad mood may be related to a family funeral recently, or it may be related to living out of a suitcase longer than I like, or having a sore butt from driving around the country, or from this knee I’m going to have scoped on Wednesday, or due to the three checks I had to write this morning after completing our taxes for 2009, or from the credit card bills that came after our trips across America, or _________ (fill in the blank). But sometimes you have to get something out that’s “sticking in your craw” to be able to sleep at night. And sometimes it’s just something that tickles your funny-bone that you have to share. This is one of those things that made me laugh. If you don’t think it’s funny, I don’t care. It’s my story.
After the Easter weekend, with no kids able to come to dinner other than our oldest daughter, Becky, Jean and I were sitting on the deck chit-chatting, having a homebrew and some wine. Jean decided to make her favorite meal, and one of my least favorites, pork steak. It’s kind of like the old “Jack Sprat could eat no fat” nursery rhyme, except when you saw the graphics in the childrens’ book, Jack was skinny and his wife was fat. I can’t stand a “fatty” piece of meat, and Jean loves the fat on meat saying it gives it great flavor. The difference is, that in the real picture, not the nursery rhyme book, Jean is the skinny one and I’m the guy who has to buy his clothes in the “big and husky” department of Macy’s.
Jean put the pork steaks on the grill and we sat for a while solving everyone else’s problems. She opened the grill cover, and there was a flame from the fat (she said she had bought them lean with no fat on them) on one of the steaks, but not the other. When she turned them, she realized that on the one that had no flame, she missed taking off the maxi-pad they put in meat packages to soak up the blood that leeches out in the package. If you could see the picture, the pad appeared to be done, so she peeled it off and set it aside. It takes me back to the family holiday dinner when she left a spoon in the bottom of the jello dish, covered by cut up bananas, and put it in the refrigerator to set overnight. I fould it the next day when my spoon “clinked” as I was scooping out some jello. With these kinds of cooking faux pas, you’re probably asking yourselves, “Jack, how did you get so fat?” If you have any friends or family members that have trouble putting on weight after an illness, send them over for a few days and they can learn from a master.
On a different subject, Diane Ebaugh had the run at her place yesterday. I walked, probably my last walk before the knee gets scoped on Wednesday. I was walking a three mile loop when I happened upon a school of five or six suckers (a kind of fish for you city slickers) that had been run over by a car. They have eyes on both sides of their heads, so you would think they could see the cars coming. That part of the road is thirty feet above Algonquin Lake’s water level. I know the water got high this spring, but not that high!
After the run we sat around talking about everyone who wasn’t there. It was a small group since everyone who is anyone was on spring break or home with their families. I’m a little hard of hearing, but I thought I heard the other table talking about Margie Moore working in the emergency room of the hospital. I kept hearing about Maggie, and wondered who that was. It became apparent, the more I heard, that Maggie was the alter-ego of Margie. Margie was the calm, kindly clerk who never let anything bother her, and Maggie was the one who seethed inside when someone called, when the ER was inundated, asking where they could dispose of their thermometer that contained mercury. It got worse when Maggie told them they could call the health department, and the caller asked, “Do you have their number?”
Do any of you have one of those little bells that I could have by the couch, so while I’m recovering this next week and need something, I can ring it and Jean will come running?
Just (Trying To Stop My Checkbook From Bleeding) Jack