by jphilo | Oct 30, 2012 | Daily Life
Today we’re going to enter the holiday spirit and enjoy a good, old-fashioned Halloween scare here at Down the Gravel Road.
Not a haunted house.
Not a freaky costume.
Not a slasher movie.
No, we’re about to experience something much more terrifying than those mundane horrors. We’re checking out the top then scary things lurking in the dark recesses of my refrigerator.
(Insert Alfred Hitchcock Psycho music and creaky door opening here.)
10. Ziplock bags filled with the hacked remains of forgotten onions and bell peppers in the bottom of the vegetable crisper.
9. An jar half-filled with marmalade gone bitter and resentful after years of neglect.
8. A pickle jar in which one sweet gerkin, treading pickle juice since last Thanksgiving, is about to give up the ghost.
7. A bowl of leftover broccoli emitting an eye-watering foul odor.
6. A shriveled grape, a wrinkled apple, and a discolored orange moldering in the plastic, transparent grave of the the fruit drawer.
5. One mummified hamburger bun, nearly as old as King Tut, preserved in a plastic shroud.
4. A bowl of separated egg whites waiting to botulize any fool stupid enough to ignore the green slime floating on the surface.
3. Bottles of steak sauce, liquid smoke, and soy sauce with shelf lives so long they must be radioactive.
2. A brand new bottle of mustard with a plugged spout waiting to let loose and spray an unsuspecting victim with modern mustard gas when the right pressure is applied.
1. A bazillion ketchup packets, collected by Mom during her clean-out-the-fast-food-freebies days, breeding like crazy until there are enough to launch their evil plot to take over the world.
So, are you shaking in your boots yet? Or do you have scarier stuff in your refrigerator? In that case, join the Halloween fun and leave a comment.
by jphilo | Oct 29, 2012 | Daily Life
This weekend, a bully got busted at our house. The discovery, bad enough to begin with, grew worse and worse as the details unfolded. It turned out that the formerly struggling vinca vine, which has been sharing space with the thriving ivy geranium inherited from Mom years ago, showed no mercy to it’s pot-mate once the vinca finally regained it’s strength this summer.
To make matters worse, it took me months to catch on to what was happening. I’m ashamed to say I didn’t notice the vinca vine was bullying the geranium, making it give up it’s lunch day after day all summer and into fall. The situation finally came to light when I took the flower pot indoors earlier this month. In past years, the geranium hadn’t lost so much as a leaf when moved inside. A few days after this year’s relocation, and it barely had a leaf left.
So on Saturday, some repotting was in order. A few minutes of digging in the dirt, and the bully was exposed. The vinca vine root system had invaded every inch of dirt of the pot they shared. Some serious pulling, and even a little hacking, were required to release the geranium from the vinca’s rooty grip before both plants could be settled in their new home.
Now, you may be wondering why both plants live in the same pot once again. You’re thinking the two needed to be separated so the vinca vine won’t pick up right where it left off. But truth be told, I’m running out of both flower pots and sunny places to set them, so this is the best I could do.
Rest assured, I’ll be watching the vinca vine like a hawk. At the first intimation that it’s stealing lunches again, it’ll get planted in an ice cream bucket and moved to isolation. Hopefully, things won’t come to that. Because all winter long, I’ll model compassion, true friendship, and how to establish and maintain good boundaries to the vinca and the ivy geranium. I think that’ll do the trick, don’t you?
by jphilo | Oct 25, 2012 | Daily Life
Thanksgiving is less than a month away, so today’s three thoughts are a warm up for the big feast day. Here are three things, other than the fact that I’m not Tom or Tessa Turkey, to be thankful for this fall day.
- While driving by the Super Wal-mart under construction, which is on the way from our house to anywhere in town, I grew increasingly thankful to be a writer rather than an asphalt spreader. How do construction workers stand the smell?
- Whenever a piece of apple core gets stuck between my teeth, I am thankful for the nameless person who invented dental floss.
- On drizzly fall days, I am grateful for rain-slicked and shining red leaves of the burning bush outside our kitchen window.
What makes you thankful this fine fall day less than a month before Thanksgiving? Leave a comment!
by jphilo | Oct 15, 2012 | Daily Life
Life has been a series of cooking adventures down our gravel road lately. The man of steel is cutting down on sugar, and allergy tests keep revealing more foods I need to avoid. At this rate, we’ll be reduced to foraging nuts and berries in the fall and eating dandelion greens in the spring.
Our cooking adventures were an effort to avoid that cruel fate, and they led to some surprising foodie finds. For example Balkan Meatballs, a scrumptious winter comfort food, tastes better when vegetable shortening and almond milk are used as substitutes for butter and milk.
Sometimes, life does give you lemonade.
The next foodie find came compliments of the Pampered Chef Deep Covered Baker, a Christmas gift from the man of steel. With trepidation, I followed the recipe for juicy roast chicken. The oxymoronic instructions said to roast the bird, uncovered in the Deep Covered Baker, for an hour at 450 degrees. Between the uncovered, covered baker and the high temperature, I expected the bird to be black and gross. But it truly was a juicy roast chicken.
So much for distrusting oxymorons.
The final foodie find followed hard on the heels of the juicy roast chicken. The carcass of the little red hen looked pretty meaty, so cooking the meat off the bones was in order. After putting the carcass in a large sauce pan, filling the pan with water, pouring in the rest of the juicy juice to make broth, and heating the pan on the stove, the contents were simmering briskly. About three hours later, the final foodie find came to light: Even if a person forgets about a chicken carcass simmering briskly on the stove, the pan will not be a burned mess if enough water was added at the beginning of the fiasco adventure. Instead it yields a rich, concentrated broth and meat falling off the bones.
Don’t ask me how I know this.
image courtesy of www.freedigitalphotos.net
by jphilo | Oct 12, 2012 | Daily Life
The past week has been so hard on my perky, Pollyanna you’re-as-young-as-you-feel attitude, it left me thinking I’m plenty older than I feel.
The onslaught began last week with the birth of our first grandchild. Of course, that was a joyous occasion, and the man of steel and I are thrilled to be grandparents. But here’s what was the problem. When I tell people I’m a first time grandma, no one says, “Congratulations, but you don’t look old enough to be a grandma.” Rest assured, from now on, when people my age enter grandparenthood, those will be the first words out of my mouth.
Even if I have to lie through my teeth.
The next item to chip away at my inner Pollyanna was a picture in business section of the Sunday’s Des Moines Register. The photo was of Mike Wells, the CEO of Wells Blue Bunny Ice Cream, and it accompanied an article about the growth of the company. I read with interest because Wells Blue Bunny is located in my home town of Le Mars, Iowa. And I felt vaguely superior to the fit, grey-haired, and slightly balding CEO in the photo. Until I read the caption which said he was 53. So he was a measly high school freshman during my senior year at our mutual alma mater.
O-L-D neon lights started flashing in my brain.
The next blow was a Monday story on NPR about when senior drivers should give up their car keys. One expert advised adult children should initiate a conversation about the subject with their parents before those parents are 60 years old. That gives our kids only four years to screw up the courage to tell us we’re getting O-L-D.
No doubt, the person I cut off in traffic the other day agrees with the news story.
The final nail in Pollyanna’s coffin came this morning when the UPS man left a package, and I could not figure out how to open it. It was all rounded corners and tape. After cutting it open with a knife, I realized the box was a fold-over-and-insert-tab marvel of engineering, kind of like the houses we used to punch out of craft books and fold according to the directions to create a little village for paper dolls. Which made me feel even older because no one younger than me can envision those little villages or has any idea of what paper dolls are. Which leads to one final question: What good is it to be older than you feel, if no one notices you’re as young as you feel?
Please leave a comment, but only if it will put the perk back into this Pollyanna!
by jphilo | Oct 8, 2012 | Daily Life
An article about cutting edge business buzz words in yesterday’s Des Moines Register gave me an entirely new outlook about change. The story explained why the business world prefers the word pivot to change this way:
When things didn’t go well, it used to be that you would have to change. But that word sounds so negative, doesn’t it? Instead just pivot. If you lost your job, you might say, ‘I was a teacher, but I’ve pivoted into fast-food service.
Wow! By changing one little word, people can eliminate negativity in their personal lives, too. Here are a few ideas:
- No need for man or critter to complain about the past weekend’s cold snap and hard frost. Next time the deer along the walking trail stand with hooves planted in the frosty grass, their sides shivering with cold, just say, “Looks like the weather’s pivoting into winter.” Nothing like positive buzz words to warm a body up.
- I can tell Hiram, “Let’s pivot the furniture in the living room,” or “The weather’s pivoting, so we need to lug the flowerpots from the porch all the way upstairs,” and the man of steel will want to do it, what with all the negativity taken out of the pivoting process.
- When I look in the mirror and see more grey hairs, I can say, “Why Jolene, you’re pivoting into a new look.”
- Likewise, my recently acquired status as grandparent can be considered a pivot into maturity.
- Pounds gained from overeating during the upcoming holidays will be a pivot into a new wardrobe.
This word has pivoted my attitude toward change. The other words on the biz buzzword list – crowd funding, showrooming, cloud (as in the internet), BYOD (bring your own device), data mining, freemium (use this one quickly as it’s on the way out), social and mobile (for pitching business ideas), and lean start up – not so much.
But that’s okay. Adding one new buzz word to my vocabulary is all the pivoting I can handle. Though it’s important to make the pivot quickly ’cause you know what they say. The only constant is pivoting so get used to it.
Hmmm…oes that sound right to you?
