What I Didn't Do This Weekend
Ah. What a weekend.

Friday, woke up with the bright eyes, the bushy tail. Did a vigorous yoga practice and then pooped out. Cleaned my recipe file while watching all my shows.

Saturday went to Farmer's Market with Bob and ate pelemini and some wonderful Pecan Breakfast Ring that some nice people visiting from New Jersey shared with us. We bought some flowers for Priscilla and not enough rhubarb for the two pies I expected to make. Also asparagus, carrots (poopy quality) and I picked up something that probably isn't going to work as a birthday gift.

When we got home I saw a guy a few houses down going door-to-door with a clipboard and felt that the best thing to do was take my Margaret Atwood book, Oryx and Crake, to the backyard and read it sitting in the sun so I wouldn't hear the doorbell and be forced to ignore it while feeling a twinge guilty, as if not wanting to answer the door to random strangers who ask you for money makes me the bad guy. Turns out, reading in the backyard is splendid. The air was cool, the sun warm and sounds of insects and birds. I had to sit there until I finished the entire book.

The book is tough to put down. It's set in the future shortly after a global bio-disaster. Between this book and the recent movie about bird flu that I didn't watch but heard about and saw clips of and other media flame-fanning flu-disaster stories, I've decided that if there is a global pandemic: I want to be one of the first 10 people who dies. When there are still hospitals and opiates and they can keep me comfortable while my lungs melt and there will still be time for funerals and mourning. I don't want to die in the middle, when the infrastructure has collapsed and people are keeling over on the street corners and no one cares. And I certainly don't want to survive with no electricity and food and roving Lord of the Flies gangs. (If you're a young person, say under 15, and you're reading this and you're scared, keep in mind that I'm crazy and totally just kidding.)

In the afternoon we saw a movie called Art School Confidential by the same team who did Ghost World a movie we both loved. Art School was a wee bit disappointing. It had classic, hilarious moments and is worth seeing but over all the movie didn't hang together.

We saw a trailer for movie that I fell in love with on the spot called Little Miss Sunshine. It stars Toni Collette, Steve Carrell, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin and looks like one of those movies that is simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking. I can't wait.

If you've been reading very carefully, you'll notice that what I haven't mentioned is the old Home Improvement Project. With incredible athleticism, I completely ignored it for two days. This is not how projects get done.

Sunday, I had to act. I peeled more wisps of wallpaper off the walls for hours until my arms felt like they were going to fall off. (Yay, I'm just over halfway done.)(That's a sarcastic yay, if you didn't get it.) I tore the moldings off -- what are the moldings that go in the middle of the wall? Do they have a name? I don't like them and tore them off. I also took the closet door infrastructure off because I decided I didn't want a closet door. At first I thought: I shouldn't do this, what if later someone wants a door? Fek someone, this is my room!

Also I finished clearing out about 99% of the stuff in there so I can work around it. Now I can't find anything and we have piles of books and crap stashed all over the house. Do you think I won the lottery? There's no way to tell since I can't find the ticket. (Actually, I saw the billboard on the way to work and the jackpot amount indicates a rollover, but what if I won 2nd?) More importantly I can't find the list of questions about the Home Improvement Project for Auntie and Uncle and Aileen when I see them tomorrow.

Once I got good and dirty and tired, then it was time to make the strawberry rhubarb pie for Mother's Day. I thought about having a beer but for once had the foresight to realize that wasn't going to help anything. The last 2 times I made strawberry-rhubarb pie, I had oodles of rhubarb leftover. Plus I have a giant patch in my yard. So I only bought a few supplemental stalks.

I went to my patch and although I have robust leaves, once I started groping around the stalks I realized they were like pencils. There was never going to be enough for 2 pies. (The second pie was for the visit tomorrow). Once I started chopping, I realized there was barely enough for one pie.

I re-dubbed the project strawberry pie flecked with rhubarb, wrestled with the crust as per usual and decided that for the visit tomorrow I'll make a pound cake, slice the rest of the strawberries and we'll have that instead.

We took dinner over to Priscilla, including some yummy halibut and roast asparagus with bleu cheese and balsamic vinegar and had a nice dinner. Priscilla liked the pie because she likes strawberry and but rhubarb not so much, perfect. And, no doubt like zillions of other sons and daughters all over the country, Bob helped Priscilla enroll in her Medicare drug plan. Deadline: today.