Hey, it’s a leetle crazy around here because we have birthdays and houseguests and AGGH. Franny turned ten! When I get to it, I will write a post on Week 520. OR NOT.
She probably enjoyed her Instant Underpants the most.
Author Archives: iasshole
You Can Taste the Resentment in My Cookie
Hello! This is an announcement to say that we have now entered the fourth quarter of The Queen’s Scullery. Woo! Black crepe pom poms! Tuberculosis’d! Etc. Anyway, I would like to cordially invite you or someone you know to contribute an article on some aspect of Victorian culture if you’re so inclined. We get a fair amount of traffic and it’s just good “clean” “fun.” Links back to your site NO CHARGE. Email me and we can rap.
How Many Wonders Can One Cavern Hold?
DEAR MF BUMFACES DIARY,
Since you didn’t ask, I’d like to, you know, be having sex regularly. I sort of feel like Ariel at the bottom of her little treasure hoard, looking up, except instead of combing my hair with a fork, it’s a vibrator. What do hoomans use these mysterious things for? It doesn’t grow shut, does it? Please say no. But if sex happens, I get too distracted to write. For some of us the top of Maslow’s pyramid is very, very VERY far off and minuscule.
Today I printed out all the things I am going to do and make in October. Thirty-nine recipes, ranging from Fricandeau of Beef (whatever that is, right?) to a cherry sauce for pudding. This does not include “normal” workaday meals that have more of a footing in this century, like tacos or Some Stuff I Found. I keep this month’s calendar on the fridge where it acts as an aid to memory and a whip.
Last month and August went well–two calendars all scratched off. I like cooking in this house. I kind of keep to myself, as you do in Seattle, but this street is encroaching on me.
My neighbor called yesterday, not the Recycling Bin Hermit.
“Hey, SJ,” he said. “I would come over and knock but I am still in my pajama pants.” He works from home, too. If he knocked, he would probably get me in my pajama pants too, or possibly in my new latex lederhosen that I just got off layaway. (Don’t ask.)
He invited me to his birthday party, and then later when I was digging up my yard came out in his pajamas anyway. They were blue and fuzzy and covered in moons. While we were talking a little brown dog came over to us and then meandered on.
“That dog sticks its head into my door when I am roasting chickens,” I said.
“Oh, yeah, he belongs across the street. The lady there told me that he’s some kind of breed that’s irretrievable, he can’t be called and he only comes home when he feels like it.”
“Sounds like my first husband,” I said.
His owner crossed the street and came over to me.
“Hello,” she said. “I should have introduced myself to you the other day when you told me my headlamps were on.”
“It’s fine,” I said, and it was.
I’d like to have old Moon Pants and his son over for supper, but they’re vegetarians, and it’s hard for me to find a night when I am not reducing adorable baby animal faces &tc into a nice glaze.
Tonight I make Fowl a la Marengo! The story goes that Napoleon whooped some ass in Italy and then snapped his fingers for a post-battle repast. What could be scrounged up was tomatoes, crawdads, white wine, mushrooms, eggs, and some chicken. Sounds like dinner to me. HOWEVER. Beeton tells us this story in her usual breezy “let’s have a little historical grounding shall we” fashion:
The following is the origin of the well-known dish Poulet la Marengo:—On the evening of the battle the first consul was very hungry after the agitation of the day, and a fowl was ordered with all expedition. The fowl was procured, but there was no butter at hand, and unluckily none could be found in the neighbourhood. There was oil in abundance, however; and the cook having poured a certain quantity into his skillet, put in the fowl, with a clove of garlic and other seasoning, with a little white wine, the best the country afforded; he then garnished it with mushrooms, and served it up hot. This dish proved the second conquest of the day, as the first consul found it most agreeable to his palate, and expressed his satisfaction. Ever since, a fowl la Marengo is a favourite dish with all lovers of good cheer.
Isabella, I am on to you. You explain all this, which sounds like a very nice meal indeed, and then your recipe OMITS the white wine. Really, can you imagine a French dish prepared in Italy without white wine and with only a “very small piece of garlic”? TSK. Even Frances Crawford’s recipe in French Cookery Adapted for English Families [1853] calls for wine in. FRANCES. FUCKING. CRAWFORD. I see. You took this recipe from Alexis Soyer. Well, I will do it your way and omit the tomatoes, eggs, and crawdads, but I will not omit the white wine. I am also suspicious of the need for sugar. It is challenging to rejigger dishes like this one. Presumably Victorians did prepare it this way, because the recipe appears in some of the most popular books of the time. I will find a way to keep it true without being dire.
FOWL A LA MARENGO.
949. INGREDIENTS – 1 large fowl, 4 tablespoonfuls of salad oil, 1 tablespoonful of flour, 1 pint of stock No. 105, or water, about 20 mushroom-buttons, salt and pepper to taste, 1 teaspoonful of powdered sugar, a very small piece of garlic.
Mode.—Cut the fowl into 8 or 10 pieces; put them with the oil into a stewpan, and brown them over a moderate fire; dredge in the above proportion of flour; when that is browned, pour in the stock or water; let it simmer very slowly for rather more than 1/2 hour, and skim off the fat as it rises to the top; add the mushrooms; season with salt, pepper, garlic, and sugar; take out the fowl, which arrange pyramidically on the dish, with the inferior joints at the bottom. Reduce the sauce by boiling it quickly over the fire, keeping it stirred until sufficiently thick to adhere to the back of a spoon; pour over the fowl, and serve.
I should probably crosspost this to The Queen’s Scullery but without the sad sex TMI. DIGNITY. ALWAYS DIGNITY.
“You Might Know Me From Such Films as, ‘I Can’t Sing, But Neither Can You.”
POLL: Awesome book title?
Hors D’œuvres From Chaos
This is the next-next-next book! Next title will be 26 words long, I think. Yes, I do think I am Goddam Fiona Apple, thanks for asking. Next-next is untitled, and I hope will be a picture book starring everyone’s favorite petty criminal and deadbeat dad. No, not HIM. I said “FAVORITE.”
I confess to you now: writing is this thing that I can’t stop doing, even though half the time I feel like my chest is going to cave in or my brain is going to pop or something. I write well sometimes, and terribly often, and I put it all away and do nothing with it and get told off by opinionated people for losing the discs or letting a computer die without a backup. Part of me doesn’t care what happens to it; part of me cares so much I can’t stand to see it ever again.
Can I make that meet in the middle and cough something up? A few years ago I put together a pilot and pitch with some people for television. Hardly anyone saw it, but I think it was a step in the right direction. I did not die from someone else reading my work. It is a funny thing to love something so much and yet feel such anxiety around it.
Happy Birthday to My Self!
Cooking By The Book
I seem to be segueing into some kind of early fall hermity thing. I LIKE IT, BY JOVE. It’s keeping me out of trouble and writing, which is always good. Posts here are going to be kind of kid-heavy for the next little while, I think. I hate to be all cats-and-crystals about things, but I am pretty far into my own head…and at the same time nothing is happening. It’s like the Fat Head of John Travolta in an infinity mirror on some kind of film loop. It doesn’t make sense, and at the same time nothing’s happening. I am reading and writing a lot, and the postcard summary is that I’m Happy and Keeping Busy. I will let you know if I am doing something, or, you know, leave the house to go somewhere besides the grocery store.
Franny asked me to dye her hair, like for real, for real Oprah-Winfrey-whole-segment for real. She cleaned bathrooms for a few weeks in a row to earn the moneys. Are you sure, I asked her. She was really pissed when she was 5 and her father took her in to get her hair bleached to be a flower girl at the wedding of a cousin she barely sees. Is it okay to demand that a human prop in your wedding risk scalp blisters? I will let you decide, gentle reader.
Is it okay to do it now? I will let you decide that as well. I told her it would sting. We did it. Now she sort of looks like that adorable child from Lazytown. I need to snap a pic of her today. No scalp trauma, but I kept a close eye on it. It is pretty.
I am kind of bemused with the layers of weird bureaucracy at the girls’ new school. They get stamped when they leave the bus, so they do not forget their bus number. Strudel wears a badge and a wristband with all of her infos on it. They are not allowed to ask for water with their lunches; their choices are cow, chocolate cow, or soy. “What do kids who cannot have those do?” I asked. “Oh, there is a drinking fountain,” Franny told me.
I was told very sternly that they would not be let off the bus unless I was there, because Strudel is five. I was throwing on my shoes yesterday to come out and pick them up at the bus stop when they walked up to me through the yard, several minutes early.
“Whoa, you girls are home early, eh?”
“Yes,” said Franny, who usually acts as spokesdwarf. “And YOU WEREN’T THERE, so we decided to come home.”
“Okay, good call. No one cared? They did not try to hold you?”
“No,” she said. Well, okay.
Strudel had her first homework assignment this weekend. I know some people (Montessauruses) who would begin spontaneously bleeding from the ears if they heard “kindergartner with homework” but we are in lockdown now, yo. Do your time, don’t let your time do you.
“I don’t feel like doing this right now,” Strudel said. It was Sunday, and I had suggested to her for the 48th time that weekend that she might want to sit down and do her homework.
“The weekend is almost over. Just knock it out, baby,” I said. We read the instructions together. The worksheet said that the child should make a poster summarizing her summer in pictures of the activities with simple words or phrases labeling the activities. Her father suggested she make a list of all the things she remembered from this summer.
Strudel’s response was to get irritated. “THIS IS STUPID. WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?” Franny, the occasionally-frustrated but overall lover of homework and all things school-related, looked at her incredulously from across the table, where she was at work on a drawing.
“What’s wrong with homework?” Franny said. “It’s a drawing, you like drawings.”
“I’M JUST GOING TO SCRIBBLE,” Strudel informed us.
“No, you’re not,” I said. “Do a good job. This is your schoolwork. You have to actually try, okay.”
“I DON’T WANT TO DO THIS? WHY DO I HAVE TO DO THIS?”
“It’s a life lesson,” I said. “You do this now, and then you get to do fun things you want to do later. Most of life is figuring out how to follow the rules so you can find joy in other places, where there are no rules, or only your own rules.”
She looked down and started drawing a picture of a large house that dominated most of the picture, possibly to get me to stop talking, since I had gone into Lecture Mode. She informed us it was her Grandpa’s house, where she had stayed for a weekend. The final cut for the poster was the house, a pool, her lost tooth, and roller skates.
The last thing to do was write the title of the poster: Strudel’s Summer.
“I HATE THIS TITLE, I THINK IT NEEDS A DIFFERENT TITLE.”
“It’s in the directions, dude, give it up.” I wrote it down on a separate piece of paper so she could copy it in her careful cursive.
“Do you think there is a high rate of suicide among teachers?” her father asked me in the kitchen a few minutes later, out of earshot.
“Yeah, these are my genes, sorry,” I said. “Chin up, though, little soldier. Only twelve more years of this.”
Later I was flipping through Alice Waters’ bio when Franny sat down next to me and said that someone besides her teacher was coming into the classroom and having “carpet circle time” with them.
“Oh?” I said. “Some kind of reading thing?”
“No, this lady asks us a bunch of questions about what we like and what our families are like, and we all have to say answers.”
“They are trying to see which of you are mental and which of you, if any, are being burned with cigarettes at home,” I told her.
“Oh,” Franny said.
“There’s really no reason a government agency needs to know any of this about you or us. I have already filled out the forms with your vital stats. All they are there for is to present information to you, hopefully educational. I would advise making answers up.”
Franny began frowning at me.
“See the inherent challenge: How quickly can I get the school to call my mother?”
“MooooooOOOM come ON,” Franny said.
“I’m serious, they want to waste your time, you waste theirs right back, okay, poodle?”
Five-and-a-Half Stories About Being Five-and-a-Half
Hiccups
Strudel’s dad was hiccuping strenuously, as he does.
“What are hiccups FOR,” she said.
“I don’t know,” I said, only half-listening, and making a grocery list.
“I think they are the FRIENDS OF COUGHS,” she declared, and then fell over laughing.
Uncomfortable
I was trying to work and Strudel was in the hallway, parading around front of the full-length mirror that hangs there, just outside the door of my room. I glanced over and saw that she was pulling her pants down and trying to catch a glimpse of herself. Her underwear was bunched up and completely up her butt in the most atomic wedgie that ever detonated.
“MOM is this how you wear your underwear?” she yelled.
“WHAT,” I said.
“This is how you wear your underwear, up your butt!!” she screamed.
“Okay, first of all, they are thongs, and…never mind.”
“This is really uncomfortable, Mom. You are DOING IT WRONG.”
Loose Tooth
“I HAVE TWO LOOSE TOOTHS!!”
Love Letter
“Mom, I am going to write you a note while you are making dinner, okay?”
“Okay!”
A few minutes later I was handed a tiny folded piece of paper. Delighted, I opened it and read it aloud:
“Do…you…know…what…CHICKEN BUTT.”
I looked at her and the excited frozen anticipation on her face cracked into hilarity. Strudel was destroyed and fell onto the floor, kicking her feet and screaming with laughter.
Wow, not just an insult comic, but a PROP insult comic. The grandparents would be so proud. Later I got another note that read, “A bird poopd on yor hed.”
NEHAW
Orientation
Tomorrow Strudel starts kindergarten. She is starting at a completely different school than I thought she was two weeks ago, because this is the year Seattle decided that you should actually, you know, attend the school in your neighborhood, and not choose to bus your kid way the fuck across town. Information on the website lead me to believe that my girls would be grandfathered into Franny’s school for the fourth grade. I was half right.
I got a notice from the transportation department that said Franny’s bus stop would be in front of our old place. She did not need the bus there because it was walkable even in the worst weather, but she would certainly need it from our new house. I called them to see if they could shift it to our new address. I knew they had our new address, which I had diligently sent notice about, because the transportation notice saying the bus stop was 40 blocks south of our new house was sent to the new address.
“Ohh,” said the woman when I finally got her on the line. “Yes, there’s been some kind of mistake. Your older daughter can stay in her old school, but your kindergartener must start school in your new district.”
“Is there no way to keep them together?” I asked.
“Well, you could apply for an exception for your kindergartener for next year,” she said.
“Oh. Well, my older daughter will be on to middle school by then.”
So we learned we had a new school for both girls, and yes, they would send the cheese on over for them to ride. Except I had to drive my kindergartener on the first day, but the older one HAD to be at the bus stop, or it would mess up the bus driver’s headcounts, okay? Okay.
I called the school itself, now that they were placed.
“Can you tell me their teachers’ names?” I asked.
“Oh, let’s see…you have a kindergartener!”
“I do.”
“Can you come to orientation today? It’s at 3:15 to 4.”
So I went to orientation, which completely overflowed the library. There were three kindergartens and three teachers standing in a clump, and one was pregnant. Please please please let her not get the pregnant one, to whom she will get all attached and sad when a harried, indifferent sub comes in in the spring.
The teachers were introduced and Strudel’s teacher looked thin, happy, and well-rested, so not pregnant at all. The librarian and music teachers seem cool as fuck, and there is a heavy emphasis on English Language Learner education, which is good, because Strudel is fluent in Feral Snarl and less so in the art of gentlewomanly behavior and speech. The principal talked at us.
“Wow! We are really excited this year! This is the largest enrollment our school has ever seen!” He said some more things, but what I got out of that was, now that you cannot choose where your child goes, you are stuck here, ha ha!
Tomorrow is it, and I can go back to working from home without having to dump a bucket of ice water over fisticuffs by 10 a.m. Also, there will be running and continued stuffing of animal parts into other animals, etc. Woot!
Oy with the Poodles Already.
Since we moved in 3 weeks ago, the neighbors or someone has been putting their recycling cart in our yard and driveway. I have not met or seen this person who lives next door, all I know this that they have a tiny and loud dog. It happens about three times a week. I have been patiently and perplexedly moving it back. It seems they think we are very stupid, because they keep moving it in closer and closer until today…
Someone knocked on my door a few minutes ago, which I could not answer, because I was on the phone with Seattle Public Schools, but when I opened the door to see if there was a package, there was the neighbor’s bin, right on my doorstep. What kind of wacky sitcom-like misunderstanding is this? I walked back over and knocked on their door: no answer, only yap dog.
I had to resort to The Note.
“Hello, We are your new neighbors. We thought you should know someone keeps moving your recycling bin with your address on it into our yard. This is becoming a nuisance, so could you make sure your bin stays out of our yard? Thanks.”
Update! 8/27: The note seems to have done it. The recycling bin is now over on the other other side of their gate, about as far as it can get from our yard. Let’s see if it stays there. I cannot believe I had to explain to my neighbor that it was their bin. So now they will either hate us or hide from us forever, I reckon. Good times.
When I’m Alone I Count Myself
Whoa ho ho last night a person who I will not name to protect their innocence and their reputation took me to see Rufus Wainwright. Do you know who that is? I did not. What I heard was, “Evening out with fun friend, ok.” Holy shit. It became much, much, much more than that, unfortunately.
At the door there was a sign that said something to the effect of “Rufus Wainwright asks that you do not clap during the first act.” We were told again at the door by some poor ticket-scanning man who had to keep a straight face. “Mr. Rufus asks…” Okay, I don’t think he called him Mr. Rufus, but I like the way that sounds.
When it was time for Mr. Rufus to start, the auditorium went dark. An employee of the theater took to the stage to remind us to STFU for the third time, “Including as Mr. Rufus enters and leaves the stage, as that is part of the song cycle.” We were told that there would be some art happening behind Mr. Rufus as he played, which was part of the show.
Mr. Rufus ENTERED, stage left. What was this, two heads? No, some kind of elaborate ruffle-goiter thing behind his head and a…was that a cape? flowing behind? All the stage needed now was a candelabra and some bats to count. Was the cape still going on? Did it even enter the stage fully? The cape was so frilly and wow, it was kind of like Edward and Bella fused into one body or something. A couple of small spots were dramatically trained on Mr. Rufus as he sat at the piano and began.
The screen started up behind him, with his playing. It was eyeballs. Actually, it was one eyeball, a grey eye that opened and closed slowly and was gobbed with makeup. Sometimes there were lots, sometimes just one, just like Whack-a-Mole. After the first song people began wooting and clapping, and then stopped abruptly. Mr. Rufus asks that you refrain from making any noise, ok.
The lyrics–I dunno, I tried to follow them, I really did. Sometimes they seemed to not be in English, or in any other language really. Mr. Rufus didn’t seem to have much of a range, he just kept droning on and on very soulfully about something. At one point when things got especially cacophonous, I felt little headaches develop and kind of crackle around across the front of my forehead, which has never ever happened before. An actual music-induced headache.
Finally after an hour or four, he stopped playing. Whack-an-Eye stopped. He rose DRAMATICALLY and begin lurching out the way he came, like Nosferatu, possibly treading on his neverending cape. Finally, once he left the stage, people began whooping and clapping wildly.
“Are people buying this?” I asked my friend.
We fled and I offered to buy drinks, since I put the kibosh on things. As we left there was a man leaving whose front was completely covered in vomit. We took a picture of the sign on the way out.
“Are You a Killer?” “I Don’t Like Labels.”
Sooo, the honeymoon is over here with this new house. I am not sure there was ever really a honeymoon in the first place. Moving into the 80s split level is like marrying a person you find really plain and who has kind of a boring sense of humor and spends a lot of time agreeing with you.
HOWEVER you can take his metaphor to its tragic conclusion and split your boring spouse like a tauntaun and decorate their innards with GLITTER!!
Let’s make a LIST LIKE NERDS, after which will will argue about how we organize our books, ok??
Pros:
Everything is BIGGER. House, yard, storage space, even the dishwasher is bigger. I cannot think of one thing in this house that is smaller. Nietzsche looks smaller in it, but that is an illusion, I suppose.
No neighbors! Our duplex neighbors weren’t bad, in fact, they were very nice, but we always worried about noise. Let me tell you my girls spent 17 minutes singing selected duets from the beautiful modern operetta “NO U” and I did not shoosh them once.
Cons:
There’s a couple of things going on here. We will not mention the complete lack of hot water, which is temporary, of course.
The fridge is kind of a menace. It’s one of those modern side-by-sides with the glass shelves. You would think glass shelves might be a good thing, but using it is kind of like the experience of driving a PT Cruiser.
You don’t have the top down/angle view of the food like you do in the traditional fridge. This has lead me to conclude that I am just not finding things because it is hiding behind the melon or something. I spent ten minutes looking for the leftover chicken the other day.
P. came home as I was rootling.
“Whatcha doin?” he said.
“Looking for the chicken I cannot find fucking anything in the fridge EVER.”
“Ah…I ate it,” he said.
“AHA!” I said. “I CANNOT SEE IT BECAUSE YOU ARE OPAQUE.”
Otherwise the kitchen has a lot of storage and though the stove is electric like the last one, but it works a LOT better than the one at the old place, which was one of those flat top Star Trek bullshit ones where only half the burner got warm sometimes.
Also, something bad happened in this house with animals. Now that the initial carpet-cleaning goodness is wearing off, the small of animal urine is being revealed. I am taking steps with Febreze and whatnot. Now I know what probably everyone else in the universe knows. When an ad says “No Large Animals” this may be a sign that the owner has had a bad experience with large animals.
As a renter, and as the owner of a place where some past dog let it go on the wooden floor whenever and wherever it felt like, and it was often apparently allowed to completely dry in situ, creating giant blackened lakes that are probably great if you think your dog is like the second coming of Helen Frankenthaler or something. And to this point, Nietzsche has not ever once ever gone potty in the corner ANYWHERE. She is being a complete champ here in this medium-stinky house as well, and goes outside or uses the litterbox every single time, so at least there is a finite end to the smells.
One of my favorite things about my room, besides the fact that it adjoins the loo, keeps Imelda and the Bandito together, overlooks the pear tree in the front yard, and has a giant porny closet door mirror, is my SURPRISE VIRGIN!!! hiding behind my two doors in my room.