Lost Socks

The Bizarre and Wacky Holiday Website is really stretching today.  It is Lost Sock Memorial Day.  Now I can see a day to look for lost socks, or throw out those socks you know are never going to have their mate back, or even match up non-matching socks that you might be able to wear together without causing an uproar.  But a memorial day to lost socks?  Are they assumed to be dead if they are not found by May 9th each year?  I think Sisi's sock drawer IS a memorial to lost socks.  If I could only get across her room to check it:

Lions and tigers and bears Oh My!

Lost socks seem to be the least of our worries in this room.

Today I will be tackling clutter throughout my home.   I think this may be a good place to start.  Then if I have time I will build a memorial to Lost Socks.  

Happy Weekend

To celebrate Sisi's birthday the kids and I headed north to Grand Bear Lodge Friday after school.  The kids enjoyed the indoor water park and the amusement park.  I enjoyed watching them enjoy themselves.  I also did go down the crazy inner-tube slide once.  Yowza!   That was enough spinning around and going fast for the next year for me.  My inner ear must be getting old.

I did go on this ride once with the kids, too.  No spinning.  My kind of ride.  They, however, think it is boring.  Because of course there is no spinning. 

Here is the birthday girl, apparently having a pretty good time.

Today is Mother's Day, as you all well know.  I bought myself a Mother's Day gift of some flowers and spent part of Saturday afternoon planting them in pots on the deck.  I put a few new perennials in the flower bed around the deck, too.

I bought some phlox, sweet william,  delphinium, pansies, petunias, verbena, lobelia, and this beauty:

Nothing says "Happy Mother's Day" like a beautiful hibiscus.  And I also brought some of these babies in to make my kitchen smell like Mother Nature's Love:

Space Queen

This morning I put the dog food away after I fed him.  But I put it in the fridge.  Where it does not belong.  Oh spacy me!  Then I fired up my trusty laptop (I think he needs a name) and found out that today is Space Day.  Happy Space Day!  Enjoy some space.  Don't let anyone invade your space.  Think about outer space.  Have a close encounter of the third kind if you can!

Former Astronaut and Senator John Glenn changed Space Day to International Space Day.  I guess he just sat in the Senate one day and said "make it so" and it became an international holiday.  And it was good.

But I think if he'd had a little more imagination he could have declared it to be Intergalactic Space Day.  So instead of feeling like king of the world, he could feel like king of multiple galaxies, if not the entire universe.  I think I could qualify as an international OR intergalactic space queen, if I just put my mind to it.  Or put my mind on other things than what I am doing at the time, to be more specifically confusing.

Ok, I confess I had to look up the adverb form of specific in the big red dictionary.  I wasn't 100% sure it looked right when I typed it as above.  (It is.)  But as I was browsing through the S's, I was enjoying the combination of words at the top of each page (as I have been known to do) and came upon a new favorite:

Sowbelly Spangle.

I do believe that an Intergalactic Space Queen would wear such a thing, don't you?

p.s. - Susan, tomorrow I may not blog or may not blog until evening as I am taking the kids on an overnight trip for Sisi's birthday.  Do not worry.  Make sure you have some kind of silly reading material at hand to get you through your morning.  You may borrow my big red dictionary if you would like!

Oyster Hoagies and Margaritas

Today is of course Cinco de Mayo, more commonly known in the US as a day to drink margaritas.  (Sisi's teacher was pronouncing cinco as kinko and Sisi said she had to set that woman straight!).  It is also Oyster Day and National Hoagie Day!  So make sure to partake of all three or at least any of the three that interest you.

Sorry Dad, so far no National Rhubarb Day has been found.  It should be a priority right after Hummus Month gets established.  Or perhaps we should try some rhubarb hummus.  That would go great with an oyster hoagie!

Excuse me, I actually feel a little bit ill right now....
*****
Ok, back again, with bad food combinations cleared from my brain.  Oh no, wait a rhubarb margarita just popped into my head.  Ack!

I'm envisioning a holiday called "Bad Food Combinations Day" coming up soon. 

Onion ice cream anyone?

Getting Susan Back on Schedule

Poor Susan has had her entire schedule thrown out of whack by my unorthodox blogging times the past few days.  So she said yesterday both commenting here and at the post-steering-committee-meeting-debriefing (no briefs were removed, don't worry) at the Medici.   We had a wonderful time at the debriefing (again, no worries about briefs here).  We had the visually hilarious experience of watching our wait-person bring a bottle of wine to our table that he opened with the usual flourish but it was a screw cap. I needed those laughs after Monday's hideously busy "day off" (ha!) and Tuesday's all-day meeting in Peoria for work (leaving my house at 6:30 a.m., ack!) and then the steering committee meeting.  I have been sitting so much in the past 24 hours that I can say my behind is not happy.  But I'm still smiling.

Anyway, I was so danged busy running around on Monday and sitting around on Tuesday that my blogging schedule got messed up.  But I'm back.  You can hum a few bars of "I Will Survive" or you can imagine Jack Nicholson, whichever the phrase I'm Back calls to mind first.  Or you can imagine Jack Nicholson sticking his head through a wall while singing I Will Survive, Hey Hey! if you like to integrate various parts of your brain with scary singing scenes like that.  As I sometimes do.

And if you prefer to imagine Governor Arnold in his space alien acting days, you will be glad to know that tomorrow morning I'll Be Back!  on my usual schedule, Lord willin' and the creek don't rise.

Green Bananas and Purple Lilacs

My lilacs erupted into May.  This may be their finest year since I moved into this house 11 years ago. 

As you can imagine, their aroma is incredible.

Onto the green bananas:  plantains, sliced, fried, smashed and fried again equals "patacones."  Smashed as in squished with a glass, like this:

But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.  First the plaintains:

You can get them at Walmart.  Today they were 54 cents each.  The clerks always freak out a bit wondering what they are and how to cook them. 

You peel them and slice them:

Then you fry them in a little vegetable oil, flipping them to cook on both sides until just slightly crispy:

You then take them out of the oil and, here's the fun part, you smash them!  Smash smash smaaassshhh!  Can you tell which part of this process I love the most?  The SMASHING!  Aaaah, so much fun.

Half fried, smashed green banana!  Oh happy day!

Now you fry them again, flipping them over to cook on both sides.  The oil gets a little wild and bubbly.

When they are done you put them on paper towels to drain a little of the oil off, then salt a bit.  Then eat them!  Yum, yum.   If your kids find out you have them you will have to share. 

 That's why you should always buy at least 2 plaintains.

May Day!

No, no I'm not calling for help.  It's the first of May, known as May Day.  Time to dance around the maypole.  Time to plant some spring flowers.  If you live in a socialist-leaning society (or state of mind) you can honor the working class.  In Ecuador people get the day off work (if it falls on a work day, of course) and people jokingly refer to it as The Day of Bums, since they all get to relax and be "bums" for a day.

It is also Loyalty Day, Save the Rhino Day, and Mother Goose Day.  Whew!  What a busy day.  No time to be a bum after all.

If you want to call for help with this term (if you need to be saved from a rhino, for example), you must repeat the term mayday three times.  Otherwise you will be ignored and it will be assumed you are dancing around the maypole.  The term is from the French venez m'aider which loosely translates to get your ass over here and stop that rhino from charging me immediately.   Isn't French a beautiful language?    So eloquent.

May is an eloquent word in English.  I love the sound of it.  I think of Lilies of the Valley when I think of May.  Mother's Day.  A woman's name.  Birthdays of my daughter, my sister, and my mother.  The end of the school year, the beginning of summer, the month that the pool opens!   Take three bunny hops.  Mother-May-I?  Yes, you may!  Peonies and lilacs.  Rhubarb.  Kids baseball.  It's a great word, a great month, and so very polite.