Picture Sunday

Hello! Hello, people! Hi!

OK, so I guess I should tell you right off the bat that I've been drinking. It was a very work-filled weekend, and so when the work was done, I celebrated. As one does. Three martinis later, I oddly seem to not be able to type as well as I normally do. Imagine that.

Anyway, welcome to Sunday, you end-of-weekenders, and this week's Picture Sunday is going to be a local edition. I didn't go to B'burg this weekend, what with Mr M off doing his musical thing (he's playing in a musical, in the pit, "the pit" apparently describing the musical to a tee). Instead of being ignored or left to my own devices, I just thought I'd stay here at the Poderosa and make myself useful.

And I did. And that's why I'm drinking. And that's also why I can't move my arms. Only my fingers, which I'm moving, for you, my dear readers, and I hope you're grateful.

But let's go back a couple of days. To Tuesday, when the sun was actually out here in B'field.

Yes, it's a yearly occurrence here in Podland, The Appearance of the Daffodils. They appear in my yard, right in their little fenced-in area, they stay for about a week - then they die. And then they ugly up my yard until I get the energy to go out and pull as many bulbs as I can out of my little fenced-in area. As you'll see, this year's edition has less flowers than usual. This is a good thing. My ultimate goal is to have no daffodils whatsoever in my little fenced-in area, so I can plant my own flowers in there. And they won't be daffodils, thanks.



Like I said, that was earlier in the week. When the sun came out.

This weekend, however, there was no sun to speak of. In fact, there was rain, rain, rain. No, you don't understand. It rained. The creek behind my house was swollen with water, as were all the other creeks and streams in our little burg here.

And that's where Picture 2 comes from. See, it's a substitute of sorts. I found this while driving the same little piece of road over and over for about 45 minutes trying to get the picture I actually wanted. But no matter how hard I tried, it was just in a place where I couldn't stop the car and get out and snap, and I had to give up on The Perfect Picture and settle for The Next Best Thing.

You know how, on the TV news, when the water gets way up in any given place, they're fond of showing some huge expanse of water covering automobiles, and you always see at least one car, about a foot of its hood sticking up out of a big swirl of water? Well, on this little road I was traveling, down below there was a swirl of swollen creek, and sticking up out of the swirl, about a foot or so - was the roof of a Little Tykes Cozy Coupe. It was perfect. I wanted that picture more than I wanted just about anything I can name, but it was not to be.

However, some poor soul did seem to lose his riding lawn mower in the swirl of flooded creeks. Hope it wasn't some poor Mowing Boy, who depends on the vehicle for his livelihood.



I know. Doesn't even compare to the roof of a Cozy Coupe, does it? (The Cozy Coupe has always made me laugh, btw. When Taytie was just a tot, he used to drive his in front of the TV to sit in while he watched. He didn't even know what a drive-in was, and yet recreated the whole drive-in experience while watching TV every night.)

And finally, here's why I was celebrating, here's why I'm just the tiniest bit inebriated, and here's why I'm so tired I can only move my fingers to type, and nothing above them.

This weekend, I hung blinds!

Yep, this involved, of course, removing the blinds that were already there, and hanging all the new ones, some of which were very large indeed and not intended to be hung by one person, then doing all the cleaning afterwards, and - well, I'm pooped, OK? I'm just friggin' pooped.

And so today when the second room, the sixth window, was completed, I made a large batch of martinis, drew myself a nice hot bath, and got right decadent, bathing and drinking. Anyway, I know I just printed a picture of the Mantrap a few weeks ago, when I bought my new fat pillows, but check out this new photo. No old, dirty, outdated, off-white blinds. New, clean, modern, stark-white blinds!



And it's not like that just in the Mantrap, my friends! All of my windows in the living room are adorned with the same lovely new white blinds. A very long job, a very tiring job, but a very satisfying job. Especially now that it's over and I'm drunk.

And now on to the recipe du jour.

And what a fine recipe we have for you tonight. Unfortunately, the picture doesn't even begin to do justice to the recipe itself. Tonight's recipe comes from the old "Fun Requests" file at Recipeland. And this request comes from Mike, who suggested that I might want to try to make Ice Cream Lasagna. And, by gum, I gave it a shot.



Now first of all let's get to the recipe. Ice cream lasagna consists of lasagna noodles layered alternately with one's favorite ice cream. In this case it's vanilla ice cream mixed with oregano. Then once the lasagna is built, it's covered with spaghetti sauce, then topped with whipped cream, parmesan cheese sprinkles, and topped with a cherry tomato. And if one is especially adventurous, one could have a side salad dressed with whipped cream and topped with an olive.

However, here is the problem one may have with ice cream lasagna. It melts. So no matter how hard one tries to try to freeze the ice cream and cool the noodles, by the time one gets one's camera out, things have gotten very messy indeed. Who knows, maybe the oregano is a natural melting agent to the ice cream. Anyway, the picture just doesn't tell you how beautiful the recipe itself was. In real life, this recipe looks good enough to eat, well, good enough to eat if one is quite odd indeed. And let's face it, Mike is.

By the way, if anyone has a recipe suggestion, let me know. I can't promise anything, but I'll certainly take all suggestions into consideration.

Happy week.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Lawrence Welk is an entertaining program. I watch it occasionally and laugh like crazy. Last night was a case in point. Bobby and Cissy danced to "Love Will Keep Us Together" while wearing lime green jumpsuits. Bobby and Cissy are just hoots.