Today, my oldest biological daughter turns 56! (Thanks to Colleen for reminding me; otherwise, it will be another Monday!) It’s hard to believe she’s officially a “classic.” I haven’t seen her in years (and I have NO idea why; she just got mad one day and, poof, disappeared), but I hope she’s enjoying her life, probably contemplating how to take on the world while trying to remember where she left her glasses. Here’s to her having more fun today than a cat on a Roomba!
I am blessed with my other kids: Robin, Joe, Colleen, and Michele. They are all parents (or grandparents) now, and watching them take on the world is fun.
It’s T-1 for my angiogram, and all is well except for my sore muscles from the gymnastic exercises I was forced to perform. Standing on my single index finger and doing upside-down scissors with my legs tied to 100-pound weights was a little much.
It wasn’t clear which arteries were blocked, but two were blocked by roughly 70%. We hope they can reach the blockage without having to “open me up” like last time!
It looks like the LA Freeway map!!
At 10:00 am, we managed to escape and fled for the safety of Ralph’s Market, where we dodged the workout people by acting like normal humans doing their grocery shopping. We departed Ralph’s with eight bags full of goodies and three twelve-packs of soft drinks. With one eye looking forward, one eye looking back, and one eye making sure the bags did not fall, I crept across the parking lot and deposited everything in the trunk of The Silver Fox.
We hurried down like a pair of hoods, barely able to see over the dashboard.
We gunned the engine, and with a mighty roar, the six cylinders, the battery, the wind-up spring, the squirrel cage, and the rockets came to life, spitting us out of the parking lot at breakneck speeds—well, breakneck for a herd of turtles! If the car had any more enthusiasm, it would have tried to grow wings and take off! I think we left a few bewildered pigeons in our dust, wondering if they needed a flight plan or just a good laugh!
At 11:00 am sharp, our masseuse arrived to mess with my body even more! I told him that I was going to the hospital in the morning, and he asked if I was going to get a head transplant. I know I am ugly, but that wasn’t nice! To get even with him, we invited him to Thanksgiving dinner.
Careful of your eyes! I fell asleep almost instantly.
In the afternoon, we cleaned up Irene’s room as she is coming over tonight to go to the hospital with us in the morning and keep Mary company. I found my two shotguns, a large box of Sue’s jewelry and scarves, two pairs of Patton-leather shoes, and some other shoes in the box, which were too long!! I also removed three old computers and two TVs; people can now use the guest closet!!
Later in the afternoon, Mary went to the loft to work on a roasted turkey. I played with my new laptop and listened to Mantovani on our studio Alexa. Life is good!
Mary is working on her latest creation!
It got dark, and it was time for dinner. Before tomorrow’s procedure, I had to stop eating by 11:00 p.m., so I decided to be a little early. We did it right! I prepared two onion-and-mushroom-smothered steaks while Mary prepared a small salad and a sweet potato!
The New York’s were on sale at Ralph’s, so I grabbed a couple for dinner.
The package jumped into my shopping cart yesterday!
I slathered them with Worcestershire and A-1 and let them marinate with salt and pepper for an hour. Then, I set the heat high to seal them, lowered the heat, and let them cook for about 4 minutes per side! I love my steak pan!
Oh boy, where is the splatter guard?
I cut up an entire onion and a handful of mushrooms and simmered them in a sauce for about ten minutes until they were soft and almost indistinguishable.
They are beginning to sizzle.
Meanwhile Mademoiselle Marionnette was fixing salad from our garden and supervising the finishing touches on a beautiful sweet potato! I taught Mary a new trick about sweet potatoes: freeze them before cooking them!
Did You Happen To Know? Freezing a sweet potato before cooking it can result in a softer, fluffier, and sweeter potato:
Texture: The water inside the potato crystallizes without breaking the skin, which results in a soft and fluffy texture. The trapped steam also separates the skin from the flesh.
Flavor: The sugars in the potato bump up, and the cellular structure breaks down, resulting in a more concentrated and refined flavor.
Caramelization: The sugars caramelize as the potato roasts, but the skin protects them from burning.
Cooking: Roasting a frozen sweet potato from a lower initial temperature gives the starches time to convert into sugars.
We did not have time to roast them, so we nuked them in the microwave for almost eight minutes since they were at -1 degrees Fahrenheit when we started.
Mama works on the salad.
My job was easy. I prepared the steaks without getting oil everywhere using splatter guards, which worked well.
Papa whips the snakes into shape!
What to see the final result? Too bad! It smelled so good, and we were so hungry that the results disappeared before I could grab a camera. We did have some steak left over, so that will go into a salad later in the week!
Irene came in at about 6:00 pm, and we talked to her. While she was there, we called Colleen, Dianne, and a few others before hitting the sack! We must be up and moving at 4:00 am because I have check-in at St. Joseph Hospital at 6:30 am!
“St. Joseph Hospital is a values-based Catholic health care provider with a tradition of and commitment to excellence, based on the vision of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange. The hospital’s strong belief in the intrinsic dignity of each person commits it to be a just employer to its 3,800 employees, to provide health care for the whole person – body, mind, and spirit; and to collaborate with the 1,000-member medical staff and other health care providers to increase access to quality health care.”
