Vacation with the P's Pt. II: Is it Time to Eat Yet?

Still with the P's and having a good vacation. 

Have you ever wondered if you when you were a baby, the nurse grabbed the wrong infant and sent you off with another family?

I honestly wonder if I was switched accidentally at birth, instead of going to the two vegetarian, skinny liberal arts, hippy college professors, I wound up where I am today.

When I was on vacation with Ivy, food consumption/activity went like this, which is my everyday routine: small handful of nuts/orange/flax seed for b-fast, fruit/veggies later in the day, light, healthy dinner (salad), if any dinner at all, daily-excerise, a few "light" Miller 64 beers, maybe a walk, then bed.  However, this vacation is alarmingly different.

The above picture is my contribution to supper night for my family last night.  It was met with polite reviews.  It was a heart-healthy, low-cal, taco chicken salad.  However, I'm sure everyone wished it was served with some mashed potatoes and meat and would have tasted better covered in gravy.

My family is food-oriented. 

If my family had a restaurant, it would be in the top ten percent of Fortune 500 companies.  People would bite and pull hair to buy stock into our restaurants.  The floor of the New York Stock Exhange would be chaos, screaming in the aisles, pushing, kicking, clammering over our stock.  Our economy would come out of recession and would thrive in prosperity, and one of my siblings, having "saved the economy" by opening restaurants in all 50 states would be elected president.

Customers would line up blocks outside of the front door, waiting to get in.  There'd be fights over who was first in line.  We'd have to hire security.  We'd be millionares and have several shows on PBS and the Food Network.  The Food Network would be changed to The Neumann Network.

My family is food-obsessed.

I suppose to a smaller degree, I am a foodie, who delights in watching the Food Network and America's Test Kitchens, growing my own herbs and canning and creating new dishes, only unlike my family, I eat to live, not live to eat. 

To my family, Food (with a capital "F"), and more importantly, EATING is an activity, a sport, like say competitive swimming or acrobatics.   Eating marathons are commonplace.  My family has a sort of private olympics when it comes to eating, my dad always taking the platinum metal.  Desserts are are required, though my mom's diabetic, and my dad's significantly overweight; second helpings are a must, and counting the minutes to the next meal is strongly encouraged.

The ultimate swearword is not a four-lettered word, but "vegetarian."  To say "I'm a vegetarian" is worse than saying, "I think Al Queda are a bunch of super dudes."

And then there is me, trying to maintain a healthy weight and actually come close to a doctor-approv ed BMI. 

Yet, my family conversations often go like this:

"When's dinner?"
Me: "We just ate an hour ago."
"But WHEN"s DINNER?  I'm starting to get hungry again."

or

"We have to get home in a few hours."
Me: "Why?  The show hasn't started yet."
"We have to start dinner.  We only have 6 hours and my marinade requires three hours chilling time."

"Starting dinner" is a phrase that means cooking, often for hours.  My mom's stroganoff is an "activity" that takes 24-72 hours preparation including: perusing various supermarkets to find sales, purchasing said items, prep-time cutting, dicing, etc., actual cooking time 2-3 hours.  Also, everyone is REQUIRED to participate or be labeled a social pariah.

Needless to say, that means "dinner time" in my family is usually between 8:00-9:00 p.m. followed by an alarming array of desserts and an immediate retiring to bed.

Of course, this leads to obesity but that's fodder for another blog.

Is it lunch yet?  (sigh)

Vacation with the P's or "Anyone seen my Belltone?"

Vacation with the P's or, "Does anyone know where I put my Belltone"?

Yes, I know I'm behind on a new blog or ten.  I have tons of blogs coming down the chute because I'm on vacation with my parents (gasp)!  How old am I?  Twelve?  We're visiting Washington state to see my sister and husband for (another gasp) 2 weeks.  And that was a plea-bargain, because they wanted me to go for three weeks.  It was difficult, but after perusing Jen's supply of prescription meds, it got it whittled down to . . .

Two weeks.

OK, so you can gather all the gaffes I can write about, the gist of it being, how much you love your parents but are horribly conflicted you are because they are so fucking annoying.

One of my favorites goes like this:

You are quickly trying to put on your mascara and brush your teeth at the same time because you know that sooner or later either parent is going to walk in the bathroom, announcing that they're going to have to take a "huge dumper" but "never mind, you don't have to finish what you're doing."  They'll be in just "a moment." 

Or this little scenario:

"Have you seen my coffee, Mom?"

"Copy?  Copy what?"

"My coffee!  Have you seen my coffee?!!!!"

"No, I don't have a cough dear."

(Repeat ad nauseum)

Pets, My Dog-son and Crackie

Ever notice how the saying, "Pets resemble their owners" is true?

Ben's driving me bat-shit crazy.  For the past TWO HOURS, he's been running from the bathroom window to the living room door over and over OVER AGAIN as if he's got O.C.D.

He's furious because Buddy, the dog next door, the "unbearably arrogant brute" Bennie's words, has escaped his yard again.  Bennie finds this personally offensive on many levels because he feels Buddy did this on purpose to personally affront him, throwing it up in his face.  Bennie finds this so unbearably rude, that he cannot, simply . . .

. . . let it go, until he goes back and forth across the living room, 75 times, ruminating over it and making this little huffing-under-his-breath noise, the way he does when he's personally insulted.

Of course this is HIGHLY aggravating for me to have to witness.

Then of course I cringe, seeing the direct comparison between Ben and Buddy, to me and Crackie. And how obsessed both Ben and I are when we have become convinced that someone is nefariously out to get us.

Well, I can't read Buddy's mind, but I know Crackie pretty well.

Here's the whole story summarized.  I needed my counter fixed. I needed someone unemployed with time on their hands, who's talented with a saw. Crackie, of course fit the bill, so I emailed him after basically not talking to him for almost a year. He thought he could fix my counter, too. Long story short, I felt "attracted" (again, sigh) to him while watching him work (over two weekends) .  Of course, he couldn't have gained weight or gotten ugly, no.  I could see the outline of a nicely rounded ass cammoflaged under the soft folds of his shorts, his long tanned legs, thickly muscled and I drooled after having held my Nun-like status for going on 5 years now. . .  Anyway, he saw me wearing my "drool bucket" and put the smack down, rather sharply across my hands before I could even cop as much as a generous assfeel. Like anyone getting a sharp crack of the ruler and the consequent rejection of an ass-booting, it hurt like hell, so I roared back, rather loudly. Then we had a stupid passive-aggressive email pissing contest, then I blocked him.

Isn't that dumb? Isn't my dog-son, Bennie, just a chip off the ol' block?

Sigh.  But there's more.  Like I said, a new man on the horizon.  But that's fodder for another post.

More Asskickings for Stupid People

OK, I've been remiss again.

But here's why.  Montana.  Yes, you'll be getting installments of "Camp Tales" very soon, just as soon as I look over my journal and assess the calamities.

This was 30 miles from where Frontier House was filmed.

But I digress.  Here's a summary of the past month's events: Crackie came back.  Yes, I even beckoned and opened the door for him.  Stupid.  More later.  Cactus wrote me and got hung out to dry.  In fact, after I tore him a new asshole, I even patched it up for him and put a band-aide on it, just to show him I had no hard feelings.  Then I tore Crackie a new one and blocked him.

Well, it's all part of this journey I'm on.  I NO LONGER DENY my feelings, good or bad.  And no longer spare them for some stupid man.  He's going to know how I feel, and that's how it goes.

But there's yet another man on the horizon.  He's old school.  I'm going slow and keeping an open mind.  I watched and grasped The Secret, and things are looking different.

I think for so long I was internally screaming, NO MORE ASSHOLES, that I was drawing them like moths to a porch light.

So I changed up my way of thinking.  And it worked.

More later.