Trying to Pull a Fast One

Anyway you title it, the savvy eater will know that at its core it is meatloaf. One does not need be a connoisseur to see the advertising trickery behind fiesta patty, porcupine balls, marvelous meat cake, beef roll and simply fabulous pork loaf. It is all meat loaf in one form or another.

My husband has bad memories of cafeteria food at Ohio State where to this day he is sure that the staff served the left-over meat from the day before, simply creating names and adding ingredients until the original base meat could not be identified.

Yet as I sit here writing, the aroma of fabulous mini-meat loaves wafts through the air from the oven where I have not six, not 12, but 20 loaves baking. Topped with a spoonful of salsa mixed with chili powder with a sprinkling of cheese on top, I think the family may find these mini-loaves tasty.

The alternative to meat loaf for dinner is reservations at a restaurant of their choice. I will let you know how it goes.

That's what I'm thinking about today.

Old People

Nearly ten years ago a co-worker and I who are the same age decided to write a book about Old People. Our idea was to compile a list of behaviors that identified someone as an old person, regardless of their chronological age.

We agreed that we, and four or five other co-workers would form a bond and hold each other accountable for not exhibiting any of these traits. We would be the OPP or, Old People Police, alerting anyone in the group about traits that might label them as someone getting older.

I recently came across an old email from my co-author, one we were mailing back and forth adding items for the book. I list a few of them here. Old People:

-have clip-on sun glasses
-have standing hair appointments on Friday
-carry Styrofoam containers out of restaurants
-have a kissing Dutch couple in their front flower bed
-wear big jeweled rings on every finger
-have a button box
-talk louder into the phone when it is a long-distance call
-have white, boxer-like cotton underwear
-read Reminisce
-use words like malarkey and bologna
-sip drinks through little pursed lips
-carry their purses over their forearm
-have boxes of tissues in their cars
-wear knee-hi nylons with skirts, rolled down to their ankles
-have a gas usage booklet stuck in the car visor
-line up their pills by their water glasses in restaurants
-take sweetener packets home from restaurants
-buy ribbon candy at Christmas and throw it out in April
-place fold-up aluminum chairs on either side of their shiny globe lawn ornament to make 'an arrangement'

And now that I'm thinking about it I say, "So?"

Our Big Adventure

On the search for the perfect winter formal dress four of us, Taylor, her sister Brittany, Lola (their aunt) and I headed for Louisville, two hours away. I really did think we could get there before the winds from Ike reached us. Au contrare!

Two accidents we saw in Louisville. One car had been hit by a falling tree head-on on an eight-lane highway. The windshield was pushed into the back seat. The driver was probably going sixty. The tree was probably going that also. Another tree fell on the middle of the roof of another car nearly cutting the vehicle in half, again right on the Xpressway. I just hurried along to the shopping mall.

And in a half hour we had found the perfect dress. Which I would post here but then Taylor's friends may be able to see the dress before the dance which would never do.

We were hungry and happy and headed for The Cheesecake Factory, our mouths watering and our imaginations running wild about what we would order there and what kind of cheesecake we would have at the end of our meal. We held on to each other in the wind as we made our way across the parking lot to the restaurant.

The restaurant was dark. And it was closed. The servers were still there but the power was out so they could not serve guests. Major disappointment from which we rebounded to try Logan's Steakhouse; same deal, no power. Then Wendy's, McDonald's, the Kroger store was closed and the gas stations...and we were really hungry.

What could we do? Louisville was without power, so we headed back to southern Indiana and thanks to the GPS found a fine restaurant open and with power an hour from the city.

But we found the perfect dress (which I dare not even describe to you).

It was dangerous to be out driving, debris flying around, wind gusts shoving cars out of their lanes but we had no incident befall us.

Oh yes, perhaps this one more thing. When Lola returned to her home, the neighbor's tree had fallen over the fence onto her garage and her house. The garage is a total loss, but the good thing is, if the garage had not been there and taken the brunt of the force, the house would be missing two rooms. This morning a 40-ton crane showed up to lift the tree from the garage and house.

That's what I'm thinking about.

Gas Hunt

Thanks to our local media, which reported that some gas station owners are afraid of running out of gasoline because of hurricane Ike, there has been a run on gas. Long lines of anxious drivers wind up and down the highways creeping forward to get their ten gallons of gas (the local maximum).

Gasoline, which has been sitting underground at the stations for a week, now costs a dollar more. People, It's the same gasoline they had, and didn't sell, yesterday!

And still I hear people remark that they 'have the number' of the media. They, the people, are not going to get sucked into believing everything they hear. They, the people, are going to be discerning and make up their own minds about what the truth is. They, the people, know that media bias infuses every word out of the talking heads. They, the people, will not believe all that they hear.

Apparently not.

That's what I think about it.

9.11

Please read my friend's blog about his experience on 9.11. You will find
Far from the Madding Crowd at http://martyandry.blogspot.com/

Drums

One of my first blogs was about my percussion teacher, then a high school senior. Now he is a freshman at a university in Nashville. Naturally his major is percussion.

The first week of school there were auditions in front of a panel to determine which student would be assigned to which faculty member.

Tension ran high because one of the auditors was a world-famous drummer. Of course I had never heard of him, him with the one word name...and that starting with Z.

But it went well for my friend. He felt good about how he had performed. Although Mr. Z is not going to be on the faculty at this school the instructor assigned to my friend is the drummer for Phil Collins and Genesis.

No, I am not real sure who they are either...OK, I have heard of Phil Collins and could probably pick him out of a line-up. Yet this does sound like a very good connection to have in the music world.

So I am happy for him and look forward to following his career. That's what I'm thinking about today.

Hawk

He was about the size of a bread box, if you can remember what those look like.

I was just minding my own business, sitting at the table in front of the glass doors to the porch opening up my computer to the news and weather, drinking my morning tea and suddenly "Whack!" Windows rattled in the door. I was startled but looked up in time to see a hawk hit the porch floor.

Intellectually I knew he could not get in through the door to attack me but emotionally I did not want to take any chances so I tip-toed over to the door and peered out and down. He looked out for the count, a long count. Who do I call, I pondered, since I believed that hawks were an endangered species. Could I in anyway be blamed for this poor creature's demise?

Then, from his upside down position, I thought I saw his little wingtip flutter, or was it my imagination? Then a definite flutter, and another and then both wings were weakly trying to flap. Even upside down, or a little askew, he looked formidable. He was struggling but he was on his own. I was not about to open the door and help the creature, after all I saw Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Slowly up righting himself to a severe list he took a step and fell. Up again, tentative step and over he went again.

However you have to hand it to the tenacity of living things to want to survive. My cat, KatKarson, hearing the ruckus had meandered (Maine Coons do not speed) over to the window. Whether it was the sight of a cat who outweighed him by a few pounds or the fact that he really was recovering, the hawk spread out his wings and with a little list to starboard soared back out into the woods.

My tea was lukewarm. That's what I'm thinking about.