Ida Clare, I Confess

Dear Creative Chicks,

I read this blog post the other day on a blog I had never visited where the woman had a section called, Confession Friday.  Well, you can bet your pope ring, I was all over that.  I admit, she did some confessing and in my mind, I granted her absolution.  The truth is she really didn’t confess anything juicy.

Oh yeah, she was slovenly.  She procrastinated.  She was behind in meeting her goals.  She was over-worked and didn’t take care of herself as she should, bla-bla-bla.  Real gut wrenching confessions. 

It reminded me of one of those tricky questions they try to spring on you in a job interview, “What would you say is one of your negative characteristics?”  And you pop up with the old, “Well, sometimes I work so hard, I fall down and don’t remember to go home at night to my wife and children because I become so obsessed with a project.”  Like your potential employer can’t see through that one.

We can see through your veiled confessions that you really are just tooting the other end of your horn.  So how’s this for some true confessions:

I eat Miracle Whip on crackers.  A lot.
I cut out the size label in all my clothes.  I say it’s because they make my neck itch.
I’ve adjusted the scales in the bathroom to reflect the weight of my denial and my sleep number.
I hide my trashy romance novels in public by wrapping them in a faux King James Version book cover.  I live in fear that someone will ask me to read them a scripture.

See, that’s what I’m talking about.  They say confession is good for the soul.  I say it’s good for the blog.

Here’s one more:  I don’t know what day it is.

Hugs,

Ida Clare, It's Friday. Do you know where your Party Girl is?

It’s Friday. Do you know where your Party Girl is?

If you are a young woman, you probably are in touch with your inner Party Girl. You can’t wait for the weekend. You’ve actually made plans. You’re wondering how you can manipulate your budget to include one more new outfit because you simply can’t go partying without something new to wear.

If (darn it), the rent is due and something new to wear is impossible you hope where you are going will be dark enough so no one will notice that what you are wearing is a tad wrinkled since it has been living under a pile of discarded clothes in the corner of your bedroom for emergencies such as these.

Since it is Friday and you don’t have to work on Saturday, you will surely be able to finally catch up on some sleep you’ve missed because you were out late three nights this week. You figure you will worry about sleep when you are sleeping for eternity. You never hear about there being parties in the afterlife. So your philosophy is to get it while you can.

But really, this question isn’t for the likes of you. I’m going to ask again. It’s Friday. Do you know where your Party Girl is? Do you even have a Party Girl? How about your inner Party Girl? Does she still exist? Do you have weekend plans that include more than flat diet coke, macaroni and cheese, a remote control and the password to a paid up Netflicks account?

Is your idea of a party watching a marathon of HGTV where one after another whinny young couple with a higher credit score than IQ sign the dotted line on a mortgage for three-hundred fifty thousand dollars so their dog Poopsie can have a bigger back yard and the wife’s hands won’t fall off if she has to touch Formica in the kitchen instead of the granite counter tops she has her heart set on? That is not a party people!

I did some insane things when I was a Party-Girl that I survived only because of dumb luck and a lack of funds. I’m not talking about invoking that Party Girl. She’s left the building (read: body) anyway.

Do you find yourself humming, "Turn out the Light's the Party's Over" before going to bed at night and there is still beer left in the fridge and you no longer have a hangover on Saturday morning. If you aren’t sure if you ever had an internal Party Girl or you are pretty sure she has been turned to stone, you might want to invite her back into your life for a little fun. If you don’t she might surprise you some day when you least expect it and you might find yourself creating some high drama just to get yourself out of the boring existence you have come to expect on a Friday night in August.

I am guilty of all of the above and I am here to tell you that there seems to be a no party zone here at Rancho-Wrecko. I get it that life in the slow lane isn’t all bad but what ever happened to having a good time with your inner party animal?

There is going to be a little party here. You are invited to create one too. Here’s what you do:

• Buy party food. You can’t party hungry. Dress the part. Bunny slippers not allowed unless you are having a slumber party and then that’s a whole other story. 
• Do something different! If you are addicted to Netflicks, go to an actual theater and watch something first run. 
• Get creative. Make a plan or be spontaneous. Read your local newspaper for ideas for events where there will be other like minded people.
• If all else fails, call an old friend and have a party on the phone. Google hangouts allows you to see each other online and invite people from far away who you might really want to party with. You can check it out here. www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts 

Well, I‘ve got to go. It’s almost Friday night and I’ve got a party to go to, how about you?  I hope you have fun, isn't that the point?

Ida Clare, Let's Dance!

Hello Friends,

There is a video at the end of this post and I am posting it because today is the birthday of a friend of mine and I won’t be able to be with her today as she is in a land far far away.  

 If she were here sitting across the table from me at our favorite ice house, this is what I would say to her on the anniversary of her birth.

You are fabulous just the way you are.  Don’t let anyone infer, suggest, insinuate or blatantly tell you otherwise, especially someone younger than you.  (You can still listen to me because as you never let me forget I am older than you by fifty-six days.)

It’s ok if you’re bossy.  Men call it “Leadership” and get paid one-and-a-half to a thousand times more than women to be that way.  Lead on, Sista.

Don’t let advertisers or sales-sluts make you feel less beautiful than you are just to sell you something.  You clean up nicely.  

Stop hiding the fact that you are brilliant.  Get up and put on your smarty-pants every day.  In a world of low-wattage intelligence, we need your brain power. 

  

We are not our history.  Whatever has happened in our past is behind us.  And I have the big behind to prove it.

Create for yourself.  You are talented, innovative and often fearless when it comes to a creative project.  Tell all internal and external art critics to go eat worms.

As for gardening, you can throw in the towel or wipe the sweat with it and keep digging.  This applies to other things too.

Let go of crap you can’t control.  Take the very best care of yourself that you can.  Rest, relax, and resist the urge to ruminate.

Whatever you do, always be my friend.

Now, Let's Dance.

Ida Clare, I Can't Stop Complaining

Hello Friends,

I would like to thank all of you who listened to me while I whined relentlessly about the unbelievable amount of canning that Ida Mama made me help her with last week.  Now that a few days have passed since I have had something organic to pick and shell, wash and peel, chop and slop into a hot water bath over a hot stove, I am starting to feel better. 

I finally understand that the reason a person desires to fill the freezer to capacity is that it prevents you from climbing inside to cool off which might seem like a good idea at the time, but would eventually lead to a whole new set of problems, not the least of which would be starving to death surrounded by all that frozen food and you unable to get to the microwave and the defrost button.

Instead of turning into a human Popsicle, I made the decision to get cool by drinking pink lemonade from the one Mason Jar I had left that wasn’t full of jalapeño peppers or plum jelly.  I guess since nobody has made moonshine around here since prohibition, we won’t be cranking up the still, especially since we’ve about run out of jars.

Ida Mama doesn’t believe in going to the store and buying more jars when you’re running low.  Much like looking for change in the couch cushions, we look in the storage room, the garage, under the bed, under the sink, in the pantry and all parts in between for empty jars that we can scald with hot boiling water to make them canning ready again.  Since it has always been the philosophy of anyone in our family to never throw anything away, this seems to work itself out. 

Well, you’ve done it again: Listened to me complain.  I’m sorry, I just can’t seem to stop myself.

I promise the next post will be about something else.
Hugs,

Ida Clare, There's Been Another Outbreak of Canning

Once again, Ida Mama has been bringing home trouble in the form of produce.  Let's all sigh together.

Tomatillos: those green things that look like green tomatoes that have that ominous papery shuck growing around it that live in a pile in the grocery store but never land in my basket or anyone elses evidently, because Ida Mama was given a boatload of them and that boatload now resides on my dinning room floor.  Let's sigh again.

What do you do with them? A sane person might ask. 

A sane person would buy about 10 or 12, shuck them, wash the sticky residue off them with soapy water, gouge out the stem and drop them in a hot boiling Dutch-oven of water on the stove. 

Then she would dip them out into a sieve over the sink because it is too dangerous to pour the cauldron with the little hot piles of floaters and boiling water directly.  This goes on until the sane person begins to wonder what in the heck she was thinking and what had she gotten herself into?

Then as this person is dropping them into the food processor while her hands are burning, she is grateful that she only bought enough of these little green hand grenades to make one batch of salsa verde.  She also has been chopping peppers, garlic, three cups (3!!!!!) of onions and juicing enough limes that she is starting to look at them longingly in the hope that there will be enough left over to make a pitcher of icy, cold margaritas. (After all, it is 102 outside and my air conditioner is operated by gerbils.)

A sane person would pulse the food processor, pour up the newly created salsa in a bowl, find a bag of chips, call in all the neighbors, their relatives and any errant Jehovah's Witness who might be bicycling by to sit and enjoy the fruits of her labors while shooting the non-existent breeze.

We, on the other hand, are insane.  Look it up.  We (two old women should be holding a crate of tomatillos) are under the entry for insane in the dictionary.  We would have looked better in the photograph, but the steam coming off the boiling hot water made our hair frizz and our faces turn red and I am starting to get that glassy-eyed look of the damned.

I  realize that the average person cares not for what happens to two nut-jobs who have lost the ability to "just say no" to crates of produce, but in case you, like us, can't stop yourself, let us all soldier on.

A sane person would be content with feeding her neighbors the batch of green salsa and call it a day.

Not so the insane.  With the volume of tomatillos that are lying about awaiting their fate, the insane are googling, "How to can tomatillos?" which is a misnomer because cans are not involved. What's needed are boxes of jars, lids, and something called a water bath that requires more heat, more boiling, and the steam and stamina of a locomotive.

I am tired just writing about it.  I'm off to make some breakfast tacos and see if the salsa verde makes it all worthwhile.   

Then it will be time to tackle the 50 ears of corn.  Aw shucks.   

Hugs,

Ida Clare, It's Adventures in Canning

On my last post, I mentioned my mother, Ida Mama, but did I mention that we live really close to each other?   Close proximity is a nice way of saying that I recklessly gave my mother a key to the back door of my house when I moved here and she never fails to use it when it suits her and it suits her when the produce wagon comes to town.

I realized the error of my ways when she showed up with the following:

2 cases of Roma tomatoes

1 case of bananas

2 cases of peaches

about 10 whole cabbages

12 gigantic cucumbers

a bucket of string beans

and a partridge in a pear tree (Not really, I made that part up.)

Kill.  Me.  Now.

What I am wondering is why not bring in a case of beer that's already been canned?  That would have made the work week more palatable, if you ask me.

I’m not the only one singing the canning blues.

My birthday was a while back and due to our busy canning schedules, the wild celebrations with my Ida Mama and my Ida Aunts had to be postponed.  I am being taken to the "Tea Room" in Big Thicket. 
I wonder if they have Long Island Iced Tea? And if I could manage to drink several of them while we discuss our respective ailments and canning adventures:

"What's good here?"

"I've heard the basil soup is good, but I hate to order it when I have 26 pints at home."

"What about the spaghetti?  No.  Nobody makes it like the sauce you just put up from that 2 cases of tomatoes.  I'll never eat Ragu again."

"That's why my hands hurt, from peeling all those tomatoes.  I probably won't be able to hold the fork anyway."

"My neighbor says the banana bread here is the best she ever ate, so I might have it instead of the peach pie.  Anybody need a case of peaches?"  Everybody shakes their head no in unison.

"I'd rather eat dirt than eat another banana.  By the time we ate banana pudding, banana smoothies, sliced bananas on our cereal, made and froze 6 double batches of banana bread before all those free bananas turned brown, I am starting to feel like a monkey.  I would have been better off smoking the peel."

"I wondered why you were looking at my scalp for head lice."

Sigh.

"Uh waitress, I'll have The Long Island Iced Tea.  I'm going to drink my lunch."

Have a good week, 
Hugs,

Ida Clare I'm Feeling Snarky!

It has been brought to my attention that I am not being as honest as I could be in this space and that my tone has changed somewhat since I started this blog

“You mean you’ve changed from sarcastic to really sarcastic?”

No, it’s the other way around.

“Really?  You mean you aren’t sarcastic as you used to be?  I find that hard to believe.”

Oh, I hate to admit this, but when I first started this blog, I had planned to hide out here and keep a low profile.  It was easy to make snarky remarks about people I didn’t know.  But the longer I’m here, the more hesitant (read: afraid) I am to make snarky remarks about people who drive around with guns-racks in their pickups and are so religious that they have the ear of God on speed dial.

The real reason I seem to have curbed my enthusiasm for snarky-ism is my mother.  I haven’t talked about Ida Mama because I wanted to respect her privacy and I was afraid that people here might blame her for my audacity to mention that I am not a fan of Duck Dynasty or that the emperor doesn’t have on any clothes. (Here the emperor would be a naked redneck and really, who would want to call attention to that?)

So in deference to Ida Mama, I have toned things down so much that I just don’t write anything snarky and that has got to stop.  I haven’t written much about politics or religion because my mother told me that you don’t talk about them in mixed company.  I guess she meant a mix of Democrats and Republicans or Heathens or Christians.  Here, it can get you thrown out of Golden Corral before you have a chance to swing by the chocolate fountain three or four times. 

However, it is difficult not to speak up with Texas politics being what it is and a prize-winning buffoon of a U.S. Congressman with a last name straight out of Mayberry named: (wait for it) Gohmert. Here is his picture below.   Shazam!

My mother is well-known and well-loved in her community and surely she will be forgiven for her wayward daughter making a few wisecracks about butt-cracks in Wal-mart.  The truth is nobody reads this blog anyway except a few Big Thicket Outcasts who keep their opinions and their butt-cracks to themselves.

Hugs,