Beets

Beets beets good for your heart

the more you eat

the more you can be sure that my mother did not make them for you. Ever.

Know how I know? Because last weekend (if you sense a small story coming, change your legal name to Sylvia Browne) Humanling and I had gone to the farmer's market. We were virginal shoppers. That's right folk - WERE.

When we go this weekend, we'll be strutting like peacocks. We don't need help thanks, we know our way around.

Something about checking out the local dirt just makes you feel like trying new things. I should speak for myself only on this because Humanling only feels like trying new things that involve high fructose syrup, ice cream or markers. However, she was pretty into being there. That is, until I spotted a bundle of green leaves that trailed down to these dirt clumps that were labelled, Beets.

I had already gotten us enough stuff for the week, careful not to overindulge and have to waste the end result of the amazing process of planting, caring, growing, plucking and hauling. It's bad enough if HL or I ever waste an egg, I feel terribly guilty about the hen that went through the whole process, including the people who made sure the unbroken egg got from her feathered tush to truck, to store, to my fridge. Long story even longer, I saw the beets.

I like beets as far as I know. They're good out of a can. But that was the only way you'd get me to recognize them - sliced in juice the color of my hair last August. Being a 16 year vegetarian, I am quite the disappointment to have never made them myself. I pulled up a bundle and surveyed the painfully long line. Humanling did not survey how loud she shouted out "DON'T GET THE BEETS!!!! THE LINE IS TOO LONG!"

This was good though - she is a child and not far removed from the Law of Attraction. She knew what she wanted - to get the hell out of there NOW with or without whatever I was buying - and attracted it. A new line immediately was formed for people who had things that were flat fee, no weighing. That would be the beets.

Sometimes I suck at follow through. Not this time. I would be disgracing nature herself if I let them rot in the fridge. Googling a basic instructional paragraph, I found out how easy they are to make.

Way easier than a Close Encounters mashed potato mountain. Way easier than those horrible lumps of matter that my mom cooks on Thanksgiving - the evil Turnip.

I had one beet left and I'm working - and apparently blogging - from home today. I cooked it up and just nearly cried tears of gratitude for the beet.

I decided to call my mom and demand to know the truth. Did she ever make us beets. Oh I remember the clams that I bit into and it tasted like a mini buttered rubber tooth pillow. I remember the headache that I got from the one time that I had veal. And I remember dancing around the table for hours, eventually in the dim light because I couldn't get the liver down.

I called her at work. I haven't spoken to her in a few days. As soon as she answered, I verbally descended on her.

"Did you ever make us beets?"

"[noise in the background] What?"

"Did you ever make us beets when we were little? You know.... BEETS?"

"What? I can't hear what you're saying." Yeah. I BET you can't. Go ahead and try and think up a good excuse while buying time with the whole 'can't hear you' game.

"{sighing and laughing} BEEEEETS!"

"Is this important? Let me call you back!" I knew it.

My mom runs a carousel. That's her job. Pffffff. Cushy isn't it? Yeah well, should someone in her state of vegetatation abomination HAVE such a sweet job....smiling at parents, cooing to babies, bringing joy to the world when SHE FED US ALL SORTS OF PUTRID FLESH BUT NO BEETS?

That's right, she called me back to find out what I was trying to say. Now I have the truth dear reader. She did not make the beets. She's never made the beets.

I believe at the tender age of Sixty Something, I am going to, to quote Tom Cruise in Interview With a Vampire, give her the choice, I never had. I will buy her some.

And then I will inform her that I am no longer going to marry the Gas X commercial or Borders. I have ordered a new gown in purple.

**Check out how good they are for you Here - and by the way, they also come in White. It's like Christmas!!!!

I am a asset. I swear.

I managed to live off $40 for two weeks in CT. AND I have a car that has not changed its ways to food for fuel.

*Disclaimer - I know so many others have it way worse than me so this is not intended as a poor me stint. You'll know when I'm doing a Poor Me. It'll be the title of the blog.*

OK I cheated a little. I had to stare at the clear purple piggy bank. And it stared right back. It's so cheap that its mouth isn't defined very well...the eyes, at least they have some color but the mouth is facial wallpaper. But I definitely heard it say that Deese is hard times Girl. Go ahead, do whatcha gotta do. HOWEVER, let the burden of Mommy Guilt hang over your head until you pay every cent back.

OKAY ALRIGHT. It was Humanling's Piggy bank...Ohhhh the SHAME! But we had to get by.

We are also very gluten and dairy sensitive. If you want to eat nothing but a piece of broccoli at our home for dinner, swing on by, we're also vegetarian.

What do we eat? Candy of course! And vegetables so that she doesn't tell the authorities how much fun I am and I get arrested. I back that up with a threat of her having to go live with strangers if 'they' come and get me. Strangers will force you to eat meat.

So here we are all kinds of *food sensitive* and being broke asses. Ok, not her really. It isn't her fault that she can't charm the income out of her deadbeat dad, Cavey.

So we go back to life as it was when I was young and on da welfare. Cheap white bread, peanut butter, jelly, cream cheese sandwiches and lots of toast. But no Government Cheese in sight. I still can't believe my mom used to freeze that stuff. For those not having the pleasure of knowing what I'm talking about, Government cheese is what they used to issue to low income households. It was this long, narrow rectangle of orange American or Cheddar. If you left it on the floor, someone would fall over it. If you break it in half, you have book ends. If you can't find your baseball bat, Government Cheese will step in for you.

I sound like a food snob, but well, we kind of have to be for the allergies. The veg thing is a choice - me since 1992, her since birth. When she gets older she will probably date a hunter and start betting on the dog fights. Not only that but the circle of choice becomes only noticable with a spy glass because I try to keep us fairly organic, non GMO da dee da dah.

So as soon as I got paid we spent $1.44 on crickets at Petco. We don't have anything that eats crickets, however, the pre-packaged bundle of slowly suffocating little beings were sitting there at 11 cents a piece. Humanling and I thought of it as a rescue. Now I know what the president must feel like once a year, surveying a gang of turkeys and finding just that one to pardon (who is probably thrown back into the mix to be slaughtered a year later.) Although really, I know it merely is perpetuating a supply and demand streak - on a small scale of course. So we brought them home and opened the bag between the gas station and our home and bid them adieu. I saw one walking around under some sort of plant life and that actually felt pretty cool. I know its the food chain, but it doesn't have to be all sorts of reality tv where its right up in my face. One of them merely flopped out of the bag belly up and really, I want my 11 cents back for that unfreed soul.

So we made it through the broke broke weeks and life went on. Of course I do have my Organic friend who is just the sweetest breaking and entrying person that I could have in my life. She knows how to get into my house, for various reasons, and I have received text messages from her sorta like this:

Her: What r u doing

Me: At park with Humanling What U Doing

Her: In ur bedroom petting cat & guinea pig

Me: Ok. Help Urself to whatever U want

So I come home during our time sensitive Depression to find a note on my door that she got in and put some awesome farmer's market organic veggies in my fridge. Is she not the best Ladies & Gentleman? (Applause would be fine here - standing, even better).

FYI - the last post - Rant - about Cavey, Humanling's loosely termed 'father' - update. He called the day after to 'apologize profusely'. He must have been visited the night before by three ghosts - all of them from AA and predicting a modern day prohibition in his near future if he didn't suck up and call me. I took the opportunity to say umkay, thanks but....now that you're on the other end of the kite, here's the deal....sort of talk. I told him he needs to give some financial support toward Humanling's growing needs. He then proceeded to ask the guy who's cell phone minutes he was burning, if he could borrow $20 to give to me. {Smacks forehead....No no no!!!! YOU have to earn it! Not BORROW it from some other person that you won't pay back!} Then I mentioned that he needed to get his furry ass (that's right. Visual. I brought you all there) here to see her and he said his friend will drive him over (but he can walk fairies through the forest at midnight. Now THAT's chivalry folks - taking care that your 18 year old friend doesn't fall over a branch but allowing your kid to fester a severe daddy complex). So stay tuned....

Ok, not really. Because nothing is going to happen. I swear I will be on the up and up and totally publicly acknowledge if Cavey does anything remotely Parental anytime soon. I can't be held responsible for forgetting though if he finally does something in like 6 months.

Well now that I've had my shot of raw apple cider vinegar, I should get ready to take Humanling out for some coffee shop beverage. I sit and make jewelry, she aggravates me by playing chess where every rule involves further doom for my pieces and anything that I do to gain is cheating.

That's right people, I got paid. I'm hot stuff now. I can buy a beverage at the coffee house and even Borders - Without using my Borders reward card!!! High five - Awwwwww yeah!

Crime on a Plate

I read somewhere that the Dalai Lama said of a plate of shrimp, "Too many lives lost". I tried to tell my brother this at the Olive Garden but I'm pretty sure he didn't apply it to his plate full of mussels. Is comsuming shellfish really nothing more than breaking and entering?

It was alluded to in a sermon last weekend, with total respect to Memorial Day and those who have had to suffer, that in a very Mr. Rogerish way, if we all could just play in the sandbox together, there'd be no Memorial Day. Going forward into the world today, how can we push ourselves to share the pail and shovel?