MonkeyPants

Eggs Benedict For The Win!!

I have wanted to try making Eggs Benny for a long time, but was put off by nonsensical fear of Hollandaise Fail. You know, how the butter and eggs can cause a warp in the space-time continuum and rip a hole in the very fabric of existence? Or at least curdle? Yeah. I was scared of that.

But yesterday, as I was pulling the potato plants out of the side bed (15 little potatoes, but they got put in on a whim and weren’t watered and got no light, so I am pleased anyhow) and making a mental note to add some oregano to the spaghetti sauce I am making with tomatoes, garlic, and oregano I grew, it occurred to me that maybe it was a pretty stupid thing, this fear of Hollandaise Fail.

So I said to E, “I am making Eggs Benedict tomorrow morning.”
“Cool!” he said.
“More specifically,” I clarified, “We are having them tomorrow morning. Whether I make them or you whisk me off to the Sunshine Diner for them, because I have utterly failed and am crying at my own hapless failure.”
“Cool,” he said. He’s good that way.

So I got my eggs out and my butter and my English muffins and my ham and my boiling pot of water and whisked and melted and added and stirred and added it all together and plated it.

The sauce curdled a bit, but it tasted great, as I could tell by the fact that I’d eaten half of one English muffin and E was scraping sauce from his plate and casting his eyes around for more, muttering, “Oh my God, Oh my God!”

And then Scott came over to get E, and he tasted the sauce and then went to lick the bowl. So I am pretty sure I did okay.

Bring it on, I say! I am on my way to becoming a saucier of note!

Hee Hee Hee!

I have been DYING to blog this and now that I have a machine again (Thanks to Scott, whom I will be paying in Boeuf Bourgignon and cream puffs. Yes, I pay my IT guy in food, just as I pay my tax guy in Scotch) I can!



So I was taking the Emery Barnes car back to its spot, because it had to have some graffiti removed. Lo, a Zipcar was in the spot, so I called the office.



David asked if I wanted to have it towed.



“I…Yes. Yes, I do.”



So I got the Zipcar towed. And it felt damn good.

Got Zapped.

My computer caught a nasty virus, so I am not around. Apologies for the lack of blog posts.

I am typing from E’s computer, but it is in his room that is claustrophobically filled with stuff and way too hot. I am pretty sure the spiders are eyeing me up as I type as well. Also, I can’t see the TV.

On the other hand, actually having to pay attention to the TV is boring, when there’s no internet to go with it, and Heroes and House aren’t on. So I’ve been cleaning the fridge and stuff like that.

God, how can I stand the excitement?

ZOMG PONIES!!1!!

The new season of Heroes starts in about 25 minutes. I may wet my pants.

Friday Confessions

When I got home from belly dancing last night (OMG SO FUN!) there was no sound on the TV. Since E was out doing a thing for Alice Cooper, I was on my own. I poked a few buttons in a desultory fashion, but the fact is, I am so completely incapable of figuring out technology, I gave it up and listened to Internet TV while I looked at Flickr. I sort of feel pathetic, but not as much as I think I ought to.

Also, belly dancing is scaring the pants off me. We’re doing all this choreographed stuff, and I feel as though I am flailing like a mad thing. I want to do a lot of performing this year, to stop myself feeling like a flailing thing, but I’m not going to be performing if I can’t stop feeling like a flailing thing.

That doesn’t stop me from wanting new belly dancing pants and a new veil, in loud and clashing colours. I have a feeling I am going to be buying some loud fabric when Rachel and I go to Dressew for Grand Master B’s Blue Jedi gear.

Anyone else feel pathetic, scared, spastic, avaricious or non-matching?

Car 47 Is A Voodoo Car

I knew it was Car 47 when David called.

“There’s an abandoned car. The engine won’t start. It’s the 10th and Birch car.”

“Oh, hey. Is that the green 2001 Protege that’s supposed to be parked at The Claridge but never is? Because that car is a misery.”

“Hang on, let me get the info and share the misery. It’s…Yeah. It’s a green 2001 Protege.”

So he tells me that it wouldn’t start for a member and that she’s ditched it in a one-hour parking zone on Main at 16th. I tell him I’ll be there in about a half an hour.

The thing is, the car is a liability. it eats batteries, draining them dry. It makes mysterious noises. It secretes mysterious odors.

And yesterday I locked my keys in it while waiting for the boss to come and jump start it.

I think there is an angry voodoo spirit in that car, and we should perform an exorcism.

Either that, or get a new Car 47. That would be okay too.

I Am A Crazy Squirrel Lady

We have been watching three baby squirrels frolic about the yard over the past few days. I know they’re only rats with good PR, and they’re destructive and they’re vermin, but these little ones are damn cute!

They like to hang out under the barbecue tarp, and they grunt at me if I get too close. Squirrels grunt! Who knew?

They are also monumentally stupid. I caught a neighbourhood cat about to pounce on one of them yesterday and the stupid squirrel was sitting there growling at it! I shouted and the cat bolted, but the squirrel just sat there blinking at me. They also will run directly between my feet when they’re in the middle of a particularly absorbing game.

So now I find myself compelled to prowl the yard looking for cats, and exhorting the squirrels to climb the trees and stay there, like they can understand me.

Excuse me. It’s time for me to go on Cat Patrol.

I Never Learn.

So today I was on the bus and I saw a sign in a barbershop/beauty salon that said they did threading. And because I am the kind of person who impulsively does stuff, even if I know it’s going to hurt like the dickens, I thought, “Hey, I could get my lip threaded!” Who knows. Next month I may say to myself, “Hey, I could pull my fingernails out!” It’s weird. I know I’m going to regret it, because it’s going to hurt. But I do it anyway. Well, the threading, anyhow. Because I don’t want someone looking at me in sunlight and seeing a ‘tache. I have my small vanities.

Now, there’s the lip thing, and then there’s the eyebrow thing. I hardly ever let anyone do anything to my eyebrows, because they invariably screw with the natural arch, which I quite like, and try to give me straight line eyebrows. Sometimes they give me little tadpolesque shapes. No one needs that.

But I hopped off the bus and I walked into the place. It was lit with fluorescents and not so attractive. In one corner, two young guys were waiting for haircuts from a grim-faced woman in a brown shalwar kameez. In the other corner was a similarly grim-faced woman, also in brown, but with a flyaway perm-bent over a young woman in a chair. She was the threader and she told me to take a seat.

I waited patiently and when the young woman being threaded sat up, she had gorgeous eyebrows. So I thought, why don’t I get my eyebrows done too? The next woman in line took her place and when she got up, SHE had gorgeous eyebrows. So I was sold on the eyebrows thing.

I took my place in the chair and held the skin over and under my eyebrows, the way the grim-faced woman told me. Hey, I thought. This isn’t so bad. It’s twinge-y, and a little sore, but not bad overall. I hope they look ok.

And then she moved to my lip. Oh. Jesus. Pain. Not as bad as I remembered, but hand-clenchingly, eye-crossingly painful. I was crying. “No crying,” intoned the grim-faced woman. “Okay,” I said. “Okay. Sorry,” and I wiped my eyes. I apologized for crying to the woman who was ripping the hair off my face.

But then I got up and looked in the mirror, and she hadn’t screwed with the shape of my eyebrows! She noticed that one is slightly different from the other and she worked with it! She gave me perfect eyebrows! I almost kissed her grim face!

So if we must suffer to be beautiful, today, I am ready for the cover of a magazine.

Friday Confessions

ARGH ARGH ARGH! No belly dancing last night. I was so psyched, and then the new studio flaked out at the last minute! Rachel is loathe to criticize them before she gets the skinny, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that they are UNPROFESSIONAL ASSHOLE TWONKS. And I stand by that.

Of course, we were at loose ends, so Rachel and I went to Book Warehouse, where I made her buy a book. I didn’t make her buy the one about dinosaur poop, though. She did that under her OWN steam.

I am so ready for the weekend. Yesterday I told a student that polar bears run the manitenance systems at work. I always know that when I start making completyely implausible things up, it’s time for the weekend.

Oh, and I had bought pizza for after belly dancing, because I am ravenous after belly dancing. But I didn’t dance, and I ate it anyway.

So this week I am a judgmental, lying glutton. Who knew? And how about you?

Whoosh!

...And the school year is underway!

I have a great mix of kids I know and kids who are new this year. It’s so fun to see how some of my summer students are adjusting to the new year (“Grade five is hard! I want to go back to Grade four!”) and awesome to see some kids who took the summer off (“I saw a sheep! In the Rocky Mountains! And I remembered what you said, so I didn’t try to pet it.”).

I seem to have a crop of some very little ones this year: K to 2 kids who can barely see over the table, some of whom are too shy to actually speak yet. But since I have had kids electively mute for close to 9 months before, that’s nothing new. I did go and buy some firm cushions for boosters for the really little ones. Otherwise they sometimes try to climb on the table in an effort to see what’s going on. I’m hoping that the booster pillows will make the tiny ones more comfortable.

The worst part about my job, especially now, meeting and re-meeting kids, is knowing that some mothers will hear about another academy from other mothers, who swear that THAT academy is the best, and I’ll lose some kids to some other after-school place, where I can’t answer their questions and hear about their lives. I hate that, but there’s not a lot I can do, other than encourage my students to be happy and comfortable (and therefore learn easily and well).

The best part, especially at this time of year, is knowing how much some of the kids that stay will grow and gain confidence and take the comfort they feel in my room out into the wider world. I know that sounds egotistical, but I also know a student is more likely to speak up in a class of three than a class of thirty.

I’m going to encourage them all I can. Come on, 08-09 School Year! I’m ready for you!