Melodrama Mondays - Que Sera Sera

Days like today remind me of one of my favorite songs: Que Sera Sera. I first heard the song when I watched Doris Day sing it in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. See I'm a pretty huge Hitchcock fan, and even though The Man Who Knew Too Much is not my favorite of his movies (even though it has my all-time favorite actor Jimmy Stewart in it), it stands out because of this song. I think it's the message behind the song that makes me love it so much. Well, that and the fact that Doris Day sings it so perfectly...there's just something fabulous about Doris Day.

via

But I digress. As a champion worrier, the thought that "whatever will be, will be" is a beautiful and calming one. For real I could win a gold medal in worrying, and today something came up that would normally make me worry like crazy. But I've decided I'm not going to fall into the old pattern today. I'm going to let things happen however they are going to happen and live with it. Worrying doesn't get me anywhere. It doesn't do anything for me, except give me gray hairs and stomach ulcers. I have to have faith that things work out how they are meant to and stop the worrying insanity. Because whatever will be, will be, and as long as I know I'm living my life right and doing the best I can, I have to trust that it'll all work out in the end.

Que Sera Sera

by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans

When I was just a little girl
I asked my mother, what will I be
Will I be pretty, will I be rich
Here's what she said to me.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

When I was young, I fell in love
I asked my sweetheart what lies ahead
Will we have rainbows, day after day
Here's what my sweetheart said.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Now I have children of my own
They ask their mother, what will I be
Will I be handsome, will I be rich
I tell them tenderly.

Que Sera, Sera,
Whatever will be, will be
The future's not ours, to see
Que Sera, Sera
What will be, will be.

Melodrama Mondays - The Iron Versus Me

Something occurred to me last night as I was ironing my husband's shirts for another work week. I had actually ironed twice within the last month or so. Twice! A miracle! I yelled this fact to Jeremy, who was in the kitchen preparing our gourmet dinner of sautéed onions with polska kielbasa and our favorite: out of the box Mac 'n Cheese.


"You must love me a lot" was his reply. And I do, because I hate ironing. I hate ironing like I hate people who have pets and don't spend time with them. I hate ironing like I hate corrupt politicians and nasty English peas. I. Hate. Ironing. I do everything in my power to avoid ironing at all costs. At any cost. I specifically buy clothes that are iron-proof, i.e. silky fabrics which somehow dry with no wrinkles. These blouses and dresses are my saviour. They keep me away from the dreaded iron and ironing board with ease, and I love them for it.


Jeremy's clothes don't get by as easily without ironing. For some reason they don't make a lot of men's clothes in that rayon/whatever blend that makes my shirts so fundamentally fabulous. Guess it's not a very "masculine" kind of fabric. Whatever. In an effort to avoid having to iron Jeremy's clothes, I hang up as much as possible. OR I hop on the dryer as SOON as it's done so I can whip out his pants and shirts before they have a chance to wrinkle up. Trust me, I'm the queen of avoiding the iron.

Evil Iron of Doom

Unfortunately, last night, the iron and I had to meet again. The shirt that I needed to wear for an event at work today was wadded up in the bottom of one of my dresser drawers. Yesterday afternoon, I rummaged through the drawers and pulled it out. I shook it thinking that somehow, miraculously, the shaking motion would make all of those set-in, old-as-hell wrinkles just magically disappear. Yeah, not so much. I would have to face my old nemesis.


Whenever I do have to iron, I try to make it as productive an ironing session as possible so that I won't have to iron again for awhile. I pulled out some of Jeremy's shirts that weren't saved from the dryer in time to avoid wrinkling. I ironed. And ironed. And ironed some more. I ironed THREE whole shirts. I hated every minute of it.


But anyway, back to loving Jeremy. The last time I ironed within the last month was for his recent job interview. I spent what seemed like hours getting his shirt and pants perfectly creased and crisp. I was so proud of his interview outfit that I was tempted to take a picture (not of it on him but on the hangers looking perfectly unwrinkled), but I managed to refrain. That might have been a little weird.


To be perfectly honest, I would probably never iron if it weren't for Jeremy (even though the rare occasion does come up when I need to iron for myself). I don't want to be sappy, because I hate sappy, but I do a lot of things (like: eat Subway, watch hours worth of video game-playing, listen to Japanese rock music) just because I love Jeremy. So I suppose I should add ironing to that list, too. But all of it is worth it, because he's a pretty dorky loveable dorkily loveable great guy, and I'm so thankful that:


1) We met on the internet.
2) He moved across the country for me, from California to Georgia with little more than a picture of me to go by.
3) We got married. (Some stuff happened in between these of course but that's the gist of it.)


All of that trumps ironing any day of the week. Even on Mondays.


PS - Do any of you actually enjoy ironing? If so, can I mail my wrinkled clothes to you?


PPS - Because I feel that I cannot truly express to you in words how much I hate ironing, I will leave you with this picture. When I iron, I similarly hold the back of my hand to my face in complete exasperation. It is a pitiful thing indeed.

Woe is us all.
source

   

Melodrama Mondays - When the Wife's Away, the mice get pie

There are Mondays and there are Mondays. Sometimes, the events of the Monday have to be transcribed by someone else. This is such a Monday.

Katie's had a rough one, so here I am in her place. Really, it started last week. She's been fighting hard against the last remains of this cold all week. The sniffles continue, but they've mostly stopped. The headache phase is a real wonder, though. Making things worse, Katie gets migraines sometimes to begin with, so any normal headaches can trigger whatever it is that triggers a migraine. 

The weekend itself was pretty good, I think; we celebrated her birthday both Saturday (with just us) and Sunday (with the rest of her family) - her actual birthday is tomorrow, but the weekend was more convenient for celebration. Still, she had a headache most of that Sunday, though, and by that evening I think it had crossed into Migraineopolis city limits. She still had it this morning, too - and you know what else she had this morning? A much-dreaded inservice meeting an hour away, due to go all morning, followed by an afternoon answering phones. Phones - yay!

But my Katie's not the sort to call in sick just for the simple fact that she is indeed sick. She went on in, what a trooper. In a weird twist, half of her office didn't go to the inservice meeting, so she managed to avoid that at least. But the phones, the phones were still waiting. And her headache never got any better, and did I mention that she's still got sniffles and phlem?

Her boss generously sent her home early this afternoon. She's had a nice nap, seems to be a little better. She's even thinking about making chicken pot pie! There's no way to convince her that she's still sick, so she'll probably end up getting sick again before it's all done with. In the mean time, I get pie. The way I see it, we all win.

Chicken. Pie. In a pot.
(Courtesy Google Image Search)

We will now return you to your regularly scheduled food blog.

Melodrama Mondays - The Sniffles

Disclaimer: This is a very snotty post, and I don't mean in the high-falutin rich person way.

Not all Mondays are bad. It would be foolish and cynical of me to pretend otherwise, and while I am both foolish and cynical, today was a not-so-bad day, even if it was a Monday and even with all the snot.

I may have mentioned that over the weekend I came down with a bit of a cold. Not a bad cold, just a cold. Sure, I had a trail of tissues all over the house marking where I'd been, but still no big deal. No big deal until I had to sit at the front desk at work and somehow keep my snotty, reddened, draining relentlessly runny nose to myself. Student after student came in. I would sniffle, snort, casually wipe it with a finger anything to keep the student from seeing that my nose had turned into a faucet for snot. Gross much? Yes, believe me, I grossed myself out plenty today.

There's really no subtle way to have a cold. The red-nose and the scraps of tissue in your pockets and desk drawers give you away pretty quickly to your co-workers. Not to mention the fact that you suddenly sound like a fourteen-year old boy with a retainer. With a cold, I swear I sound just like Urkel. Did I do that? I really, really wanted (and tried) to hide my affliction, because right now I know I'm just one of millions with sinus/allergy problems. Hell, the entire state of Georgia is yellow with pollen. But I didn't do a very good job. Co-worker after co-worked asked, "Do you have a cold, Katie?" What gave me away? The snot dripping from my nose or my sexy voice?

source

I'm sure everyone (co-workers and students included) would cringe every time I had to hand them something. Oh, great, snot girl just got her germs all over me. Woohoo! But it wasn't the kind of stay-at-home-from-work cold, and I couldn't really justify not going in for vanity sake. I can just see explaining to my boss that the reason I was out was that I didn't want to drip snot on anyone. Yeah, right. So, I bravely faced the day with wadded up tissue in hand! Tonight, I'm beginning to feel better, but there's still a pile of tissues on the seat beside me. I fear that tomorrow may be another snotty day...

In other news, I'm toying with idea of having a Featured Blog day at Chicken Noodle Gravy. I would create a questionnaire for bloggers to answer that relates to all things food. I kind of think it would be fun to find out what everyone loves to eat and what their region of the world considers a specialty. And of course, that person's blog would be featured as well with a write-up describing its flavor. I could create a button for people to use and everything. If I can fully flesh out the idea, look for a featured blog day to be popping up soon. And I may call on some of you to participate!

Happy Monday! 

Melodrama Mondays - A Phone in the Refrigerator

Today, I put my phone in the refrigerator. Yes, it was that kind of day. I got fussed out by more people than I can name, including one right at the last minute of the day, and THEN on our way home, my husband and I and the car in front of us both got passed on a double yellow line on a curvy, hilly road. I'd just like to know what's so dang important that you have to take your life, my life, my husband's life, and the lives of all the passengers of an SUV into your own stupid hands? But whatever.

Back to the phone story.

We were getting ready for dinner, and I grabbed a bottle of...something that needed to be put in the fridge (how the heck am I supposed to remember exactly what it was? Remember, I'm the girl who puts her phone in the refrigerator)...and put it in the pantry cabinet, and my phone in the fridge. Now, this kind of thing has happened to me before believe it or not. I sometimes transform into a whirlwind of cleaning/straightening up magical-ness and may lose sight of what goes where in my hurry to get it all done. This happens a lot when we bring home groceries.

The putting away of groceries is nearly an athletic event for me. It starts with getting the bags out of the car. I carry as many as humanly possible without cutting off the circulation to my hands from the sheer weight of it all. I hate making more than one trip. Hate it. So I grab as many bags as possible, as does the hubby, and we make the trek up the garage stairs into the kitchen. By the time I get to the top of the stairs, I won't lie, I feel like I've run a marathon. Heavy breathing and wheezing ensues. A thin film of sweat has broken out on my forehead, but my task isn't near complete. After neatly carelessly dropping the grocery bags on the kitchen table in a heap, I race to begin unloading them. Curse the bag boy for his poor organizational skills (dry goods and meat in the same bag, really?!)! Everything is typically in jumbled order and disarray, so I just start grabbing. Yes, sometimes the milk ends up in the pantry, or the mac-n-cheese will somehow find its way into the fridge, but in the end, everything gets straightened out and finds its place. 

Which is just what happened to my phone tonight. As we were bringing everything into the living room to eat, because the table in the kitchen is solely for looks, I remembered that I still needed to fix our lemonade. I went back in, opened up the fridge, and ta-da! There my phone sat. For a moment, I imagine I was a little puzzled but that only lasted a moment. Jeremy trailed into the kitchen as I was lifting out the lemonade pitcher. "Do we have everything?"

I got down two glasses and filled them with ice. "Yep, everything but my phone. Can you grab it out of the fridge?"

Poor Jeremy. He just stood there looking at me. I imagine he wonders what the heck he's gotten himself into...a lot. I assured him I had a  perfectly good reason for keeping my phone in the fridge. He raised an eyebrow at me. "Oh really? And what was that?"

With as straight of a face as I could muster, I replied, "Because the bacon needed to make a call."

Yeah, I'm corny. We're two corny kids in corny love. 

Post Script - As I was writing this, my neighbor had their car radio turned up so loud that our house was shaking. I had to fight the uncontrollable urge to open my screen door and yell out "Hey, you crazy kids! Turn your damn music down!" I am officially old. 

 

Melodrama Mondays - The Pork Chop Scapegoat

Today's post brought to you by: my hatred for Mondays.

Since my Mondays (and probably everyone else's) are typically filled with lots of angst and drama, I've decided to start a series called "Melodrama Mondays," which will document the trials and tribulations of my encounters with this most dreaded of all dreaded days of the week. 

Today's Monday started out drama-free enough, but by the end of the day, I was ready to punch somebody, so I came home and took my frustration out on four boneless pork chops. I can safely attest to the fact that they are dead now. I made Pork Schnitzel, recipe courtesy of Deep South Dish. The recipe called for me to trim the fat and then pound the heck out of my pork chops. I used a saucepan and cleaver to do the deed, and while I imagined certain peoples' faces on the pork chops, I pulverized them to a pulp. Boy were they tender!

Here they are good and dead. Bet they'll never talk back to me again!

While I was preparing the pork chops, my kitchen sounded more like a construction zone, and my cats were convinced that I was going to turn my cleaver onto them next. They still haven't emerged from their various hiding spots. I've surely now traumatized everyone in the household and, accordingly, feel much better myself. I wonder if I'll ever get to the point when I don't have lousy Mondays? Nah.