I had a dream last night that I refused to wear something because if I did, I just knew that I'd end up on Go Fug Yourself as a bad example.

Do you think I'm spending too much time on my computer?
This is for my sistergirlfriendgirl and her good dog Oliver. This is Levi, a blue marl Pembroke Welsh Corgi that I saw at the dog show. He has baby blue eyes and he is just beautiful.

This past weekend was busy here at the House of Shoes.

We took JoJo to her first show, and although it wasn't for points, it was an AKC show. She took second in her breed. For puppies. Against her twin sister. Here she is in the car, ready to head off to the land of "Best In Show."


It was scary. It was exactly like the movie. Some butch bitch complained that I was sitting too close to her (crated) chihuahuas. My friend Doug says that if you have to bend over to pet it, it isn't a dog. I'm there.

But she did so well, and seemed to enjoy herself so much (after the initial butterflies) that we're going to show her again.

On Sunday, we made a repeat foray to the farmers' market. It may still be winter in other parts of the country, but it is summer here, folks. I bought more fresh corn, the tiniest of cherry tomatoes and baby eggplant.

Sunday night I made a salad with the corn, tomatoes, scallions, radishes and pasta. It's from an old issue of Gourmet, a summer issue, if you please, that talks about the necessity of the freshest, ripest fruits and veggies. I took it to the Marquis de Steve on Monday, and he was so enchanted with my cooking that he made me hurt worse than usual and promised to bring new devises to the gym on Wednesday.

Here's a shot of the chopped veggies:



And here is one of the finished pasta salad:



And just because I've been absent for a few days, I love you all, and someday there will be fresh veggies where you live, I give you the recipe, too. Note: Not only can it be doubled, it can be quadrupled with no ill effect. I also added finely sliced radishes. And since I didn't have fusilli in the pantry, I used bowties. No problem.


FUSILLI WITH CORN AND UNCOOKED TOMATO SAUCE

Can be prepared in 45 minutes or less.

1 1/2 tablespoons red-wine vinegar
3 tablespoons olive oil, or to taste
1/2 cup cooked corn kernels (cut from about 1 ear of corn)
1 pound tomatoes, seeded and chopped [the secret of this recipe is to use the ripest, most flavorful ones]
1/4 cup thinly sliced scallion
1/2 pound fusilli or other spiral-shaped pasta

In a large bowl whisk together the vinegar, the oil, and salt and pepper to taste and stir in the corn, the tomatoes, and the scallion. In a kettle of boiling salted water cook the fusilli for 8 to 10 minutes, or until it is al dente, and drain it well. Transfer the fusilli to the bowl and toss the mixture well.

Serves 2 (This recipe can be doubled to serve 4).
Gourmet
August 1993

Although I'm not working for the man anymore, I am still working at my computer, trying to write code for this website.

Last week, when I was buying fabric for the two commissions I have, I started talking to the owner of the fabric shop. One thing led to another, as it always does, especially when I'm one half of the converstion, and he offered to put my business cards out.
Which is all very well and good, but this is hardly the place to send nice Pinecrest Princesses looking for tallitsim for their princelings and princessettes. I need to create a new site, or at least a new look and feel for this site, and move some things around, or hide them or just jetison them completely.

All of which means that I need to redesign this site. In DreamWeaver. And MT. Using all sorts of crap that I never needed to know when I was working for the hospital.

I have spent the past week and a half buried in tech books, cruising how-to websites and forums, going back and forth with my pages. I add something, it doesn't work. I research and redo until I get the thing (whatever that thing is) to work, and then I move on to the next part. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

I am learning more than I ever did before and I knew that there was a problem when I walked into Borders looking for more references and the clerk in the computer section asked me if I needed help and I said "Well, I have a problem and I don't know if it's an IIS issue or a JavaScript problem so I'm looking for information." And she gave me a deer in the headlights look and I said "I know. Pathetic, itsn't it? I actually knew what I meant by that sentence."

I am the uber-geek. And I can't take my cards and sample to the fabric store until I get all of this sorted out and working right.

Ugh. I need a drink, a bath and a meal, and not necessarily in that order. I think a martini in the bathtub is on tonight's schedule. A martini the size of the tub is what I want, and what that previous statement sounded like I meant, but it really. No. Just a long, hot bath and a long, cold drink.

If you've read this far, then let me ask one last question:

Is it just me, or do you think that the judge should have requested a drug test today for Michael Jackson instead of threatening to have him arrested for showing up late. In his pajamas. He's gone from his sartorial delusions of kinghood to an almost normal suit to his pjs.

And it's the first one we've had without him here. I remember so much about my father every day. Today is special, though.
The first story is about my father, his friend and my brother. It was the summer of 1966 and my mother and I were abroad, my brother had just graduated high school. One afternoon, Daddy and his friend started talking about great food, and one thing led to another, and the upshot was that they all took a road trip to Miami for scrambled eggs with kosher salami at Pumpernick's up on 63rd and Collins.

Except, remember that this was 1966, and a 100-plus mile road trip for scrambled eggs was hardly a thing to be embarked upon on a whim. But that's just what they did.

When I came home from Europe and heard that story, I would have given it all up for having been able to be home for that. What a lark it must have been. Mr. Rickmann and my old man gassing away in the front seat, and smoking nasty pipes or cigars. I don't know what they drove, I imagine it was Daddy's '53 two-tone Chevy. Powder blue on the bottom and white on top. Sigh.

And then there's the one about the time Daddy was at a party and calmly swallowed a tablespoon of Tabasco Sauce on a five buck bet. Didn't turn a hair, either.

Of course there are the other stories, too. The ones that are too personal even for me to relate. The ones that make me cry and miss the old fart so much. There is nothing in the world, I always told my male college friends as they became fathers to daughters, as deep and as pure and as everlasting as a little girl's love of a good father: they will worship the water you walk on until the day that they die. Don't fuck it up.

My father didn't.

Oh, I do love the farmers' market. The RLA and I took a road trip down to the market on Saturday, and I came home with the most wonderful treats.

I bought cherry tomatoes for a dollar a pound, and they even taste like tomatoes. For three dollars I got 15 eggs; big, double-yolked, brown ones, fresh from the hens.
And there were fresh garbanzo beans. Fresh, people, not dried. I'm going to roast them and make hummus. There was a guy with a machete and a pile of green coconuts on ice. Yesh. I had a coco frio and loved every second of it. There were heaps of tiny finger bananas, and we bought a hand. Fresh green beans, radishes complete with greens, giant green tomatoes, mysterious greens that I had no idea what they were, acres of dried peppers in a variety of shapes and shades of red. There were baby red potatoes, smaller than shooter marbles, and I roasted them last night, to go with a steak and fresh spinach. I bought a bag of fresh chicarrones and ate half of them before I came to my senses and buried the rest under some particularly stinky garbage, thus preventing myself from retrieving them.

If you have never eaten chicarrones, what can I say? In redneck America they are called fried pork rinds, but that hardly does them justice. They are fatty and crunchy at the same time. They taste of pure essence of pig. Earthy, primal. Greasy. Cholesterol on the half shell. And I love them. Once every five years or so I allow myself the pleasure of such forbidden food. The RLA merely looks on in horror and won't touch them. Good for him.

Tonight I'll make a casserole with the fresh green beans, a can of condensed tomato soup and ground beef, topped with a crust of corn bread. This was one of my mother's recipes from the 50s and one of my childhood favorites. It isn't hard, it isn't haute and it is so very, very warm and filling. She made it with canned green beans, and I use fresh, so it's a little different, but here it is:

Mom's Hamburger Corn Crust Pie

1/2 cup chopped onion
1 lb ground beef
1 lb can cut green beans, drained
1 can condensed tomato soup
1/2 tsp salt (optional)
1 box corn muffin mix

Pre-heat oven to 375

Saute onion until tender and slightly golden. Add salt (if using) and meat. Brown lightly. Add beans and soup and heat through. Pour into greased 10x6 baking dish. Top with corn crust. Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes.

Mix crust according to directions using half the liquid. Spoon in pencil thin lines over filling like a lattice.

I woke up to the bleeping of the heavy machinery's warning thingy.

Things went downhill from there.
The tiny, one-lane road in front of my house is being double laned because of the new construction in the empty lot across from me. They are building what I like to refer to as "Strip Mansions". This would be townhouses, but two- to three-thousand square foot townhouses going for more than $200 a square foot. Do the math. It's still only got windows on two sides, people. And less than six feet of grass between your back door and the wall that keeps the riff-raff like the neighbors out.

So, this being Florida, that meant that they had to dump crushed coral rock onto the road bed and then steam roller it into submission. Five or six times. Until there was a foot of substrata.

My house was rattling like there was an earthquake. I had to move all the glassware around. Then I walked past my miniature cabinet. Those items not previously shattered by falls were dancing around on the shelves like water on a hot griddle.

I trotted outside and asked the very nice driver if he would cease and desist for five minutes so I could empty the cabinet and make my tiny treasures safe. He said to come and get him when I was done.

It wasn't even lunchtime, yet.

I spent the rest of the day working on redesigning the rest of Girlyshoes. It amazes me how much I can forget about computers when I'm not writing code all day long.

I tried to watch De-Lovely. I've been trying to watch it for four days. No sooner do I drop it in the DVD then the phone rings, or an errand needs to be run, or the dogs need to go out, or the cat throws up. I finally saw the end. I should have stayed with Cole in Paris, because life definitely took a down turn after the horse fell on him.

Finally sat down to eat dinner, and the Drunk Neighbor came over with a dog he'd found in the street. Said dog had a collar with a phone number on it, but the Drunk Neighbor couldn't be bothered to call it himself. It would be more fun to drag the little dog over to our house so the Noble Dog Nails and Miss JoJo could work themselves into a tumultuous uproar over the sight and smell of a stranger in their yard. Besides, the Drunk Neighbor said that he couldn't call because his wife was drunk.*

So the RLA and I called the number. It turned out to be the people who live on the corner--next door to the Drunk Neighbor (and his mortal enemies). Of course, they couldn't be bothered to actually come and get the little dog. No. They left him with us, and my dogs barking non-stop for another hour. Until I called again (third time) and said if they didn't come get him, I'd walk him down to them. RIGHT. NOW.

Another ten minutes and they DROVE!!! out of their driveway, and two doors down. Except they are too lame for words, and parked in the driveway of the house between us. Lame. Lame. Lame.

Then there was the obligatory complaints about the construction, and the notes of who's selling now that the construction has started, and the damned woman would have stood in the neighbor's driveway all night and chatted except the RLA and I insisted that dinner was getting cold and left.

And that was life in Miz Shoes neighborhood.

* His wife is ALWAYS drunk. Ugly, stinking, screaming, channeling-the-snake-god drunk. She's not allowed in my house, anymore.