Pet Peeves

An ongoing list, in the order that it comes to me:

1) People naming their black cats after black people.

The Haps, August 2019

Nothing is the haps. That's the beauty of it. I'm winding down from our family trip. All the folks at the forklift factory are on vacation, so there is less urgency, and I'm working on a presentation for a forklift festival next weekend. Any time I get to hang out with my boyfriend, Keynote, I'm in a good space. Last weekend I even got to cook.

When I was growing up, the Time Life Foods of the World cookbooks were one way in which you learned about other cultures. We only owned the Scandinavian book, which came out in 1968. I can't recall when my dad learned that he had a half-sister in Norway that his mother had never told him about, but I think this book arrived just in time for that. I loooved this book. I pored over it. I wanted it badly. It is now mine. In the grand tradition of my family, I almost never use it. I have one recipe I make, which is red cabbage. A red cabbage was staring at me from the crisper, so I made the cabbage recipe. I freestyled a bit, because I didn't have enough jelly in the fridge, so I made further international adjustments to the recipe by using jamaica concentrate and some raspberry jam from Afghanistan. Now I have cabbage that tastes like raspberry. It's an acquired taste.

We even had the chance to have a beer out with friends. Crazy, right? This never happens.

 

This week there was a trip to the doctor, which gave me the chance to take this photo of the gate next door. Why are medical buildings from the 1950s so cool?

Thursday brought total excitement. It was my night with the mama. I got there to find that the toilet had just broken for the third time and the maintenance guys had gone for the night. I called a plumber, and he said that it would require parts that couldn't be gotten at 7pm on a Thursday. I was certain we'd need to use the restroom before then. So I ran up the hill to get my car, while the caregiver packed a bag, and the medical office gathered the mama's morning meds. By 8 or so we were at our house, where mrguy had made up the mama's bed with the Miss Piggy sheets. She was asleep within an hour. 

This is what the inside of a toilet tank looks like these days, People!

Crazy

Triumph Over Everything Else

A photograph like this just wills itself into being.

Several months ago I heard from a co-worker that a forklift designer at Hammerslag was on medical leave. She'd reached out to him for a work thing and he kinda email-blurted his situation. She knew how fond I am of this guy, so she told me. And I reached out to him and said hi, and can I be helpful. And his situation is rather dire, but I now have the pleasure of his company on occasion. It's amazing what happens when you raise your hand. You get to spend time with people you'd always wanted to know better.

So this is how I came to know this restaurant, which is situated in the town where he lives. It's his favorite. Sometimes I join him there. And now I know that he will always order the same thing (chicken tikka masala) and doesn't want to share naan, which is fine because I always order the same thing (bengan bartha) and don't care about sharing. Plus our favorite naan is amazing (it contains chopped chicken, cashews, chopped maraschino cherries, anise, coconut flakes and raisins) and why would you want to share when you can get two orders? And then he blurts out a bunch of stuff at me and doesn't let me talk and apologizes and I'm just happy to hear all his stuff. He doesn't seem to pass judgment that I work in a forklift factory and am not really a forklift-ist.

Yesterday mrguy, who was going to join us, was felled by a hideous migraine. I really wanted to stay home and take care of him, but he said he'd be sad if I didn't go have dinner with our friend. So I did. I took our friend some banana bread (turns out he loves banana bread), and for the first time we ate in the main dining room of the restaurant.

Let me back up and say that when I go there and say I'm meeting my friend, they know exactly who he is. I see his interactions with the owner, where they offer to send him food and they really want to take care of him. These people are the *dearest* with him. And he's straight up with them, this time telling them that it's back but he's fine. Which is the truth. His fucking cancer is back and he feels no effects but he's gotta deal with it.

So we're sitting there and gossiping and as the sun's angle changes I see that this place has a retractable roof and the weather is perfect and the paint on the buildings next door is amazingly peeled and beautiful.

I caught this picture which, as I said, made itself. And a great one of my friend pointing at the ceiling. I've never seen a photo of him so happy, and it's my job to look at photos of people I work with.

He and I talked about people at work and work methodology and disposition of assets for people like us who don't have children. He wants to donate his awards back to the company, because without him he wouldn't have developed those projects. We couldn't believe we were discussing this, but if it gave him some relief I'm happy.

 

I hope we have many more dinners and that the awards stay with him a very long time.

Triumph Over Old Bananas

As readers of mrsguy are aware, no overripe or half-eaten banana may go unused in our home. They all go into the freezer where they turn black and wrinkly and freaky looking.

And they taunt me.

 Like this one in the Belfor mug, next to that can of frozen fruit punch that I don't remember buying.

So today I made two batches of the ancestral banana bread recipe. One for mrguy and one for a friend I'm having dinner with.

Thank you, Banana.