Remember when Donald Trump kept the Queen waiting for tea?
https://bergensia.com/someone-asked-why-do-some-british-people-not-like-donald-trump/
Click either photo to enlarge both
I had a marathon cooking day yesterday. I’d been shopping, and bought a kilo of hamburger, four Italian sausages and two huge chicken breasts. In addition, I had 1/2 a roasted chicken I’d bought the day before along with vegetables that needed to be used, a bag of pearl barley and a variety of condiments. If I’m going to mess up the kitchen, I’d just as soon cook as much as possible and freeze it, so in about 4 hours, I made a Chinese sweet and sour chicken/peanut casserole, the beef and sausage tomato sauce for a lasagna to be made later, stuffed green peppers, a big pot of cooked barley and a heavenly chicken salad. Most of these I froze. The unfrozen stuffed pepper I intend to have for dinner tonight, but there was a little bowl of chicken salad—just enough to make into a sandwich, and although I’m trying to cut down on Diet Coke, a large open liter bottle that would just go flat if I didn’t drink it soon.
It wasn’t until I’d eaten two bites of the sandwich and was about to have my first drink of Coke that I remembered a happening from the day before. Yolanda was mopping the floor in another part of the house and I was sorting out kitchen drawers yet another time, trying to put the things I used most in the top drawer, removing to the outside bodega some seldom-used implements, and consigning the rest to a lower drawer. When I got to the plastic bag of saved wine corks, bottle tops and the rubber plugs to reseal wine bottles, I picked out a little flapped pourer to put in the top of a wine bottle, wondering if I’d ever use it. Then I noticed the fixture at the bottom that indicated it was meant to be screwed into something and suddenly remembered that it was actually the top to a long aluminum finger filled with liquid that was meant to be kept in the freezer, then when needed, to be screwed into the capped pourer part and put in an opened bottle of white wine to keep it cold between pourings! It had been a gift from a friend and I kept the bottom part in the door compartment of my fridge freezer, but unscrewed the top and put it in the drawer because it didn’t fit in the compartment.
Then I suddenly remembered that three days before, I’d put just the metal part into a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke that I was taking to a pot luck dinner! And remembered I’d thrown that empty bottle away when I got home! And the trash can was empty! I called out to Yolanda and asked if the garbage truck had come yet. She said no and as we started to rush out to see if the vital element of my wine cooler was in the trash bag she put on the curb, it suddenly occurred to me that surely I would have noticed the long metal rod in the empty bottle. I then remembered pouring the remains of a 1/2 empty bottle into another bottle, opened the fridge and found a full bottle of Diet Coke. I shook it and heard a clunk!!! When I poured the bottle out into a pitcher, I could see the comforting flash of aluminum and recovered what I had thought was lost! RELIEF. I funneled the Diet Coke back into the bottle, cleaned the aluminum shaft and restored it to it’s compartment in the freezer. All was right with the world.
So it was that when I made my sandwich today and spied the opened Diet Coke in the door of the fridge, that I decided I’d better drink it before it went flat. And so it was that I filled a glass, added ice, grabbed my sandwich and made off to my desk and computer. Bite of sandwich. Check a few blogs. Another bite of sandwich. Long pull on that glass of Diet Coke. Surprise!!! Only then did I remember that before I left for the potluck, I had laced the bottle of Diet Coke with anejo rum!! Easier than taking two bottles and mixing them there.
And that is how I came, at 1 p.m. on June 5, to be an early drinker. Tasted pretty good with the chicken salad. I wonder how it will taste with one of the chocolate chip cookie brownies I made last night?
Concerted: contrived or arranged by agreement; planned or devised together. A concerted effort: done or performed together or in cooperation.
Planning Meeting at the Senior Citizens Center
Has anyone else noticed that it is much harder to make a concerted effort after the age of 65? Plans somehow get skewed, no matter how much harder we try. One person forgets the meeting. Another is ill or merely having an “off day” and can’t get out of the house. Yet another shows up but has forgotten to do the tasks they have agreed to do. Once at the meeting, one or two people can’t hear. Another is dealing with a phone call that has just come in on her cell phone. Two others ignore their calls but either can’t figure out how to turn off their phones or actually don’t hear the drone.
The leader of the meeting keeps forgetting the last word of her sentences, but luckily her friends are accustomed to this and they take turns filling them in for her. When she switches to a power point demonstration, the pictures seem to have turned themselves upside down and the man switching to each new photo has problems coordinating them with the vocal cues.
Several who can’t see move forward to a seat closer to the screen. A man in the front row falls asleep and everyone is distracted watching him as his head bends lower and lower. His next door neighbor wonders at what point she should put an arm out to catch him lest he pitch forward onto the floor.
The meeting seems to go on for longer than usual and at five minute intervals, women work their ways from wherever they are situated in the rows of seats, past the stiff legs of those they must pass on their way to the aisle, trying not to stumble over feet whose owners seem unable to shift them far enough out of the way. Their panicked eyes and the speed with which they move reveal that they have waited a bit too long to begin their journey. This serves as a lesson to several other women who rise and work their way out behind them. As each in the group returns, at least one other audience member stands to work her way out in the same direction. Occasionally, a man just leaves for a short stroll out into the garden. Everyone finds this suspicious.
Neighbors ask neighbors to repeat what was just said. Questions are asked that have already been answered minutes before. Men make suggestions that are widely agreed with, to the chagrin of the women who have made the exact same suggestion earlier in the discussion with no response.
There is a disagreement and one of the participants remembers that it is time to go home to feed her dog. Another person wants to get home before dark. Another has arranged for a taxi that will be there in five minutes.
Meeting adjourned.
If you are looking for a daily prompt, try this one. It posts daily, is easy to post your answer on and stays active for a month. The Daily Addictions prompt today is “concerted.”
I woke up with the lyrics, “Hey, good lookin’, whatcha got cookin’? How’s about cookin’ something up with me?” going through my head. Later in the morning, Yolanda caught me holding the paws of Diego, sort of dancing back and forth with him and singing the same lyrics to him, giving him a kiss on either side of his jaw between each line. I must admit, this went on for longer that just one repetition of the entire song. As a matter of fact I think I recall singing it at least three times. He was a willing recipient of all this attention and entertainment.
When Yolanda finally could stand it no more and had to exit out to the patio, smiling broadly and laughing at my antics, it brought an end to the silliness. I restored Diego’s paws to their rightful resting place on the stone floor of the terrace and went back to whatever normal activity I was engaged in before the lapse into the Busby Berkeley imaginative actings-out of my youth.
But, around ten o’clock last night, those lyrics staged a return engagement in my brain with the result that I just had to bake a cake. Now, I must admit that I haven’t baked a cake in at least 15 years—probably longer, but since I had grated carrots as well as eggs in the fridge, carrot cake seemed a reasonable goal. Further checking of ingredients revealed that I lacked four of the key ingredients: crushed pineapple, butter, raisins and agave nectar. In addition, I’m sure the flour in my freezer was at least a couple of years old if not, in fact, 15 years old. My nutmeg was sadly out of date, but luckily I’d been prescribed cinnamon in capsule form to combat cholesterol, so I merely broke open a few capsules for the required tsp. and a half.
By now, it was firm in my mind that carrot cake was indeed what I should be cookin’, and so I figured out the proper substitutions. The solid canola-oil low-calorie spread would sub for butter. Cranberries would be better than raisins, and a mixture of low-calorie maple syrup, honey and sugar would do in lieu of the agave nectar. The closest I could come to crushed pineapple was a can of mandarin oranges which I cut into tiny pieces. I cut up a cup and a half of nuts, creamed the sugary products and eggs, poured spices, getting at least half on the floor, mixed ingredients and filled the cake pan.
Two hours after I had started, I pulled an almost-perfectly cooked carrot cake out of the oven–– Perhaps just a tad too dark around the edges, but firm in the middle and not really burned. Success! Now for the powdered sugar glaze. I tried three versions. The one mixed with pina colada soy milk tasted soapy. The one with orange juice and vanilla was too acid, the one with the juice of mandarin oranges too metallic. Finally I settled on green apple soy milk, a splash of vanilla and powdered sugar. By now I was almost out of powdered sugar due to my former testing of flavors, so I just sorta drizzled it over the top of the cake before cutting a section out of one corner. Hmm. It tasted not sweet enough, too light in texture and rather dry. The solution? I sprinkled the rest of the box of green apple soy milk over the top and popped it into the fridge to cool down and sog up a bit.
Well, yes, of course I cut a piece to taste first. Then another. I’m not sure, but perhaps later I came back for a third. Each time it tasted a bit better. I had a sinking sensation that instead of 1.5 tsps. of cinnamon that I’d added 1.5 Tbsp., but all-in-all, it wasn’t the worst cake I’d ever eaten. There was something about it that reminded me of the rather strongly odd-tasting cakes my 90ish year old grandmother used to bake. Once she had mistakenly substituted liniment for vanilla, but I think that was not her usual practice.
Yolanda had been in earlier and this is what the kitchen looked like after she had cleaned:
And this is how it looked after I finished “cookin’ something up with me . . . “
Actually, it looked even worse than this, but I had already cleaned up half the mess before okcforgottenman demanded that I take a photo. You know okcfm? He’s the one who a minimum of two times a day tells me, “That would make a good blog post. Did you take pictures?” Well, sometimes I take his suggestion, and this is one of those times.
Here, by the way, is the cake:
okcfm says the words carrot and cake just do not go together in his mind. Has he ever actually tasted carrot cake, I ask him and he says no, and he never will. His loss, I think, but actually I’m not too sure I’d want to break him in on this one anyway.
Here’s my inspiration. Have a listen. It may make you want to bake a cake. Or dance with a dog.
In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Take It From Me.” What’s the best piece of advice you’ve given someone else that you’ve failed to follow yourself?
I’ve had several friends who have moved to Mexico after I did, and to them all, I offered this sage advice: “If you want to live in Mexico, don’t expect it to be the same as living in the states and don’t expect it to change just because you want it to. We all move here for the charm and the fact that it is laid back and less concerned with running everyone’s lives, but you also need to realize that the reason this is so is often a matter of disorganization and inefficiency. Mexico is a wonderful place, but if you are expecting practicality, reason and expediency, move to Germany instead. If someone had given me this advice before I fell in love with Mexico and let my husband talk me into buying a house here—would I have offered more resistance? Probably not. Herein, I offer than well-known advice: Do as I say, not as I do.
If you’ve been reading my blog for at least a year, you probably already know that I’ve been living in Mexico since 2001 and in that time I thought I’d encountered every illogical thing that could possibly happen, but silly me. When will I learn? A case in point. Three days ago, my doorbell rang. I called out to ask who it was and a male voice replied, “Correos de Mexico.“ The postman? In all my years here, I’d never seen one, at least on my street, let alone my house. Sure, I’d seen them buzzing around on motorcycles with their hot pink and chartreuse logos on their jackets, but it was only in the past 2 years that they’d started delivering mail to my house, and in that time, the only evidence of them I’d ever seen was a bill or two thrown over the top of my garage door—usually with tire tracks on them.
In April, I’d received a Christmas card that had been mailed from Australia on December 25; and on June 10, I’d received two more from the U.S.—six months after their posting dates! So, as you may imagine, I don’t have much confidence in the postal service in Mexico. Anyway, back to the matter at hand. I threw a jacket over my nightgown and cracked my front gate door. “Identification?” the postman asked. I got my driver’s license, presented it, gave him two signatures and received in return—a speeding ticket for an infraction on April 15 of this year.
It seems that the government has decided that its a good idea to install cameras in certain vital and much-trafficked places such as the road to the airport and that I’d been caught on camera going 101 kph in an 80 kph zone. This is roughly equivalent to going 63 mph in a 50 mph zone. The resulting fine was 351 pesos, which would be halved if I paid before June 5, but increased to 500 pesos if I didn’t. I could pay at any of a number of given banks, Oxxo convenience stores or 7-11’s. So, I quickly jumped in my car and sped (oops) to my closest Oxxo, only to be told I couldn’t pay there because I hadn’t paid before June 5. But I hadn’t even received the ticket in the mail until June 23, I protested! Where was I to go now? He didn’t know. Perhaps Guadalajara? It had no further information on the bill.
I drove home in frustration and consulted the local online bulletin board. It seems a number of people had received similar tickets in the mail, all were late and they didn’t know where to pay them. Some said the municipal building in Chapala. Others said Guadalajara. The dread Guad!!! The only times I’d driven there lately, I’d gotten hopelessly lost. I mean three to six hours lost. All the improvements and all of the signs added in the past few years seem to have only added to the confusion. ( It can’t be me, can it?)
Then today, the doorbell rang again. Once more, I threw a coat on over my nightgown. (It was nearly 10 a.m., but I was snoozing late, due to the fact that I hadn’t gone to bed until 3:30 a.m.) Who was it? Correos de Mexico. This time I grabbed my i.d. before I answered the door. Sure enough, another speeding ticket!!!! It was for May 6, 2015 and unlike the other one, it had been marked as mailed on June 15—but hadn’t been delivered until today, June 26. Its due date? June 24—two days ago. Then to thicken the plot, I realized I wasn’t even in Mexico on June 15!! My house sitter had been using my car and I believe this was the day she was going to pick up her boyfriend at the airport. Of course, I railed on to the postman who looked at me blankly. Still not his problem, I gathered. He drove away. I stormed into the house, dressed in 5 minutes and took off to Chapala to try to resolve the matter.
Due to the heavy Friday traffic of Guadalajarans trying to get an early start on weekend revelries lakeside, it took me about half an hour to drive the 10 miles or so to Chapala. I then stood in line at the municipal building, having a chat with a Mexican gentleman who held documents in his hand similar to mine. Were they traffic tickets? I asked in my unique form of Spanish. Yes, they were, he answered in perfect English. Aha! A sympathetic soul, plus one who understood English!!!
I started in on my story, trying to give the short and efficient version and ending with asking if his, too, were overdue. He didn’t know, he said, they were not his. Many ex-pats smarter than me or wealthier than me or lazier than me (or all three) hire locals to do their “official” business for them: paying taxes, registering cars—and evidently, paying traffic tickets. We chatted on until finally, it was my turn at the cashier’s cage. I tried to explain my problem in Spanish. The cashier tried to explain something to me in Spanish but I didn’t quite understand. It seemed as though she was telling me what I already knew—that I needed to have paid by June 5 and June 24, respectively, to get the 50 percent discount and to be able to pay at any bank or Oxxo or 7-11 store. Yes, but I didn’t even know a ticket had been issued on those dates, I protested—and, and–.
We could have gone on in this manner for some time if a gentleman had not popped out of a nearby office and explained to me that they were aware of the problem and that two more tickets would be issued for me to pay and these could be paid at any Oxxo, 7-11 or bank. Could I rip up these tickets? Yes I could. And I wouldn’t be fined even more? No. I wouldn’t.
I am home now, sitting and speculating about the efficiency of having to issue and mail new tickets rather than just letting me pay for the old one and giving me the prompt payment discount instead of the penalty. I am also considering the probability that the new tickets will also arrive after the cutoff date for payment. Another thing to consider is the trip my house sitter took to the airport to pick me up on June 8! Is another ticket having a little tour around Mexico before reaching its intended place of harassment? Will all three arrive at once? Will the postman know me well enough not to demand identification?
This long story is meant to illustrate two things. #1. That societies not based on efficiency, timeliness and logical process should not really institute a traffic fine system such as this. I don’t believe I need to discuss this further. #2. That if you have found it incredibly frustrating just to read about this little go-around, then Mexico is probably not for you. Sure, come to the beach for a week and sip pina coladas and margaritas. Go parasailing. Eat tacos. But, don’t drink the water and don’t actually move here unless you have the patience of a saint, the sense of humor of a late night political commentator and better Spanish than I do!!!
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 