Crazytown State of the Union

This post is what the LB would call a sneak attack and what I, the KP, would call “KP standard operating procedure.” Meaning, I don’t do anything consistently. Except feed my child and poop. It’s been since god-knows when I last posted to this blog, leaving all the dirty work to the LB. I abandoned her, bloggedy-speaking, but I had a rough move into the little apartment a year ago with the IC and never got my blog legs back. Until now. And so, humble readers, I’m here to represent the other half, the shadow side, if you will, of Crazytown. Far from dormant, Crazytown is just as crazy as it’s ever been. More so, actually. Did you know that the LB is, in addition to her wine-purveying job, in charge of our theatre company’s tour? She’s updating spreadsheets, getting stipend checks cut, making us discuss things like “per diems” and other unbelievably bureaucratic shit like that. If you’d told LB 5 years ago she’d be doing that, she might have laughed your nose off. I just follow orders nowadays and it feels good! (Just kidding, LB, you aren’t drunk with power yet. Yet.)

LB and I have spent the last 2 years working on a play with our theatre company. Even though we don’t live together in a single geographic location we are fortunate enough to have a reason to spend some portion of almost every day together at some point for some reason, contrived or not. We are married on Facebook.  First I married LB on Facebook, then she married SHG, but strangely I am not also married to SHG. Shhhhhh…. I think we broke Facebook. We were all three of thinking of getting married in the real world just to get stuff on a registry. What do you think? Three women (in other relationships) getting married for the photo op and registry? Isn’t that a genius scheme?

But I digress. What about the KP? I’m in the process of leaving tinytown, my cute 2 br apartment that’s just a hop-step-and-jump from LB, for a real house in a real neighborhood just a smidge further away from LB. I’m shacking up (or homing in) with “Meatball” a man-person with a nickname accidentally (or was it?) coined by SHG. He has a daughter, too, and she’s 10 years old, help me god. We are going to abide by our promise to his parents to take her to church each week, help me god. What’s the day I’m supposed to do that?

The 10-year-old, help me god, has been raised by conservative Catholic grandparents so I feel I’m about to go on the ride of my life as we uncover the panoply of cultural and moral biases that have been pre-programmed into her wee noggin by “Those Who Keep Fox News On All Day Like a Damn Sweater,” my nickname for Meatball’s parents. SHG and LB in particular have already been indispensable friends for listening to me ventilate about TWKFNOADLADS. I feel, as always, deeply grateful for my community of friends whom I know will transform this little girl’s frightened worldview into one that is far more tolerant and open-minded, just by being themselves.

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SHG Meme Attack

So, I was tagged by Starrhillgirl for this meme. This means I have to do it. I signed a contract long ago stating that I would indulge her whims to the best of my ability and I can’t really claim to be unable to fulfill this task. So, the deal:

I have to link to her here and say thanks. Thanks SHG!

I have to say 7 interesting things about myself.

I also have to nominate 7 other bloggers. I don’t actually know many people who blog, I mean, like for real. I actually don’t know many people who blog at all. Even in a computer only sense. Meaning I read blogs but rarely comment. So I don’t know the people whose blogs I read. Dig? So, um. I will just have to fling some of these at people who are strangers as far as they know.

Interesting facts: (these are not very interesting)

I am not a citizen of the US.

I don’t drive, as in, I have never had a license in my life.

I don’t like fruit except for apples, which I am picky about, pomegranates, which might as well be gold, and green papaya.

I hate the word “gifted”. For that matter, you can include “gifting”. I am pretty much only ok with the real word, gift.

At any given moment it is very likely that I am worried. I like to keep a low-grade anxiety running all the time.

I recently went skiing for the second time in my life. My greatest relief was not that I did pretty well, but that the redneck population had a strong showing on the mountain. I was terrified everyone would be rich “ski people” and I would be shamed off the slopes.

I just finished off half a tube of mini eggs trying to think of something else to say.

My 7:

Elsie

The Widows Cookbook

Fatbiscuit

Fast Grow the Weeds

Food in Jars

Jocelyn’s Stories

Urban Hennery

There you have it.

xo,

LB

Dydd Gwyl Dewi hapus

Happy St. Davids day.

The day I vow to learn Welsh every year. So far, not so much. I didn’t get around to getting daffodils this year but I will blame it on the fact that the day fell on a Sunday.

I did have tea and Welsh cakes and Club biscuits earlier in the week with The Fella and my little Mummy so not so bad and I do love the Land of My Fathers!

On this first day of March we are getting snow, quite a bit. It seems like it has been forever since we have had a real snow. Didn’t we used to have blizzards?

I have had a very quiet weekend which I think, even though I get a bit restless, was right on time. I hunkered down and did very little mixin it up. In fact, I am sure I let some phone calls slide but, well, I needed the peace. I did have a lovely dinner with Starrhillgirl last night and we were joined by the Kingpin a bit later on. We came up with at least three schemes (ridiculous of course) so I think it was a very productive night.

Random tidbit: I was looking at my kitchen chairs and realised I have recovered them twice, both times right after a big fight with an ex. Interesting? Well, to me it is.

The fact that I have been analyzing the kitchen chairs should indicate how quiet the weekend has been.

Things on my mind:

Tiny houses.

Fake weddings.

Fake wedding pictures.

Dinner.

The Spring.

Finding a way take a damn trip.

xo,

LB

Snow and Sweets

Well, we finally got some snow to speak of, which is the only reason for it to be so damn cold outside.

I spent quite a few minutes with the fella flashing my camera into the night and watching the air fill with tiny lights.

We also have had some beautiful days since that night. Warm and with sun and the windows open and they came just in time.

There is a light at the end of the Winter tunnel. I have never noticed a winter so tough. I am sure that the atmosphere around the country has it’s say in what is going on this Winter. In these last days, though, you can feel the spring coming. My Lilac tree has tiny little buds. The other night when the fella and I were getting out of the car on the farm, you could smell it. The moon was working up to tonight and the hills were bright and the deer were foraging and you could smell the earth for sure.

Good sign.

Also, in the land of random kitchen/food projects some of us manged to make a very successful batch of caramels.

We also managed to get another delicious dinner out of Elsie while we were there. She is getting the short end of the stick, but don’t tell.

We celebrated our achievement with homemade mac and cheese and golden beets.

Some pics.

Sweet.

xo,

LB

Just the pics

Happy Happy!

Today is Starrhillgirl’s birthday. A day to celebrate, for sure.

The day my beautiful friend was born.

Oh Happy day. Happy Anniversary!

xo,

LB

18 yr Anniversary

Today is my Birthday!

This week, Starrhillgirl and I will have a birthday. We are having our 18th birthdays since the year we met! It wasn’t until I started counting the years this past week that I realized it had been so long. In my mind we were stuck somewhere around 15 years, but really we are creeping up on 20.

How the time flies. What a beautiful thing. I know we have a tendency to spend much more time on important dates we share with lovers/partners/husbands/wives, but I think all the time how lucky I am to have such a great family of friends.

Starrhillgirl and I have been through 18 years of ups and downs and we are still in love! We have lost family and friends. We have lost love, found love, Traveled, lived in separate cities 3 times. We have lived together 3 times (depending on how you count).

Sometimes people mix us up. Only one of us prefers girls and only one of us doesn’t eat meat.

She insists I was blond when we first met…………….I wasn’t, but don’t burst her bubble.

We have had a good 18 years. Here is to 18 more.

Happy Birthday.

xo,

LB

Cheese and More.

So, the cheese has been made! We gathered at Elsie’s house early Monday eve to do the deed. Cho girl and Starrhillgirl and Elsie and I made our very first batch of cheese. There is actually a much better run down over at Caved because Starrhillgirl live blogged it as we went. We managed one batch of Ricotta and one batch of Mozzarella. This took 2 gallons of milk and gave us 3/4 pound mozz and 2 pounds ricotta. Kinda expensive so we have decided we should buy a cow! I don’t think you can have a cow in the city so we may have trouble figuring that one out. However, it is a very useful fantasy because now we can also fantasize about cheese presses and cheese wax and getting rich on cheese! Likely, huh? We did a lot of talking and wine drinking and porch sitting as well. Considering how much time we wasted on other things, I think we did well. We got to Elsie’s at a little before 6pm and we were eating mozzarella with one of Elsie’s tomatoes and some of her basil by 9pm. Deelicious. I noticed today that the texture of my mozz was a lot firmer than it was Monday night. Not sure what that is about.

Tuesday night I had a group of fabulous women, Starrhillgirl and T and the KP included, over to my place. We had a big ol’ clothing swap and drank wine and had snacks. I made salsa and, much to my dismay, it was really tasty! Everyone got some good stuff and we had a great time. The KP entertained us with strange outfits and the rest of the stuff will be hauled off to the goodwill. I love a good swap.

xo,

LB

Things That Are Mostly Food

Well friends, it has been too long. You may wonder why you haven’t heard from the Kingpin in a while…….couldn’t tell ya.

Anyhooters, not too much to report round this little town. Had a nice chat with my farmer last Saturday while we were picking up our veggies. The IC lounged among the old gum splotches on the red hot sidewalk while the KP and I took in the coarse language and bold statements of our favorite farmer. Pretty soon I had to roll on to work and the IC wanted her friggin lemonade already so we went our separate ways. We got potatoes, tomatoes,zukes, cukes, onions, cabbage and yellow squash. Yum. Haven’t put much away. I find I have enough to eat but not much extra. Next year I will have to up the ante. I did make veggie stock and froze that in cubes. I am eye balling the cabbage in the fridge trying to figure out how to freeze it. Thoughts?

Starrhillgirl and I had dinner at a friend’s place and I force fed her some of the bread pudding I had made that day. It turned out well considering I refused to do a water bath and just packed more bread in to make up for my laziness. I also used less sugar. Our friend, who I won’t name, thinks bread pudding is gross……We had a wonderful time eating delicious food we didn’t have to cook. I even liked the the slaw that had some mayonnaise in it. Usually I won’t go near that stuff but I was a brave girl and reaped the benefits!

A week ago I made my first ever Johnnycakes from local cornmeal but I’m not sure how I feel about them. I will have to continue that experiment to see if they get any better. Dense would be a generous description. The search for the perfect ice tea continues. So far Stank votes for the apricot flavoured black tea over the orange spiced white tea.

A man finally came to look at my oven to see why it wouldn’t light on it’s own. He says it isn’t supposed to and there is no pilot for the oven, only the stove top. He thinks this is because “It came over on the Mayflower.”

Critter Alert: something woke me up the other night by skittering around on my porch. Please don’t be a rat.

Question: I recently got to know (again) Laughing Cow. You know that weird “cheese” that comes in triangle shape, wrapped in foil? I don’t think it is actual food but man it was tasty! So, what gross non-food food do you think is delicious?

xo,

LB

Can You Tell When… Someone Is On Crystal……?

This is the search that led some wayward soul to our blog yesterday. Yikes!

We are not on crystal, though we are on snow day. Spent the morning and afternoon enjoying the beautiful views on Stank’s farm, keeping the wood stove going and staring at his cat. Heard from Fatbiscuit and the Bean and “Nana”. They are all together at Fatbiscuit central attempting the highly technical task of building a tiny log cabin. I believe they are actually using glue! No way out if they misplace a log. I said log! The kingpin is downstairs making baked goods with the IC and her little friend from down the way. The IC actually chose not to go out in the snow just to avoid wearing pants appropriate for the weather. They did not strike her fancy, fancy. This is probably for the best since the big kids don’t have anything water proof to wear and the snow is heading in the direction of slush.

The messy part of the baking must be over. The have abandoned the KP for something more fun.

Wishing I could head over to Starrhillgirl’s wood stove for a stiff health giving drink.

P.S. The girls have changed in to something “dressy” in order to handle the important task of licking the spoon. This involves at least one naked bum. FYI.