Annnnndddd....

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn't belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?


I promise not to sing.

So, what do we have here?

A floured stone countertop, nice and cold to roll out dough.
A silicone rolling pin.  (Best invention ever)
A metal ring to protect the pie edge after it's been awhile in the oven.
A pretty pie plate.  (You can't see it but I know it's there.)
All are items I use to make pies.

And....

a Plunger???

Which I DON'T use to make pies, but the garbage disposal clogged up with all of the apple peelings and parts. My husband says that this plunger, which he promises he has thoroughly cleaned and sanitized (uh huh), is exactly what he needs to clear the clog.  

I persuaded him to wait until I was finished and had the pie in the oven.  Phew.

It's a holiday, so of course, something has to go wrong or there would be no stories.

And now, two Thanksgiving stories:

We go to two friends' home each year for Thanksgiving and have been for 25 years. There is always a great gathering of their various friends from various stages in the hosts' lives, and often we visit with "friends" we've known for 25 years, but only see once a year because they don't even live here. But there have been incidents.

One year there was an oven fire caused by some drippings from a dish a prospective daughter-in-law had brought to the future in-laws' home. It would have gone out on its own soon enough, but some people (men) kept opening the oven door to see if the fire was out yet, giving another burst of air to the fire. The host ultimately deployed his fire extinguisher and that was the end of that.

Then there was the year that the police almost arrested a couple of the male guests.  The host mentioned during the dinner that the alarm at a house two doors away had been going off all day.  A couple of the guests went to the house, saw that the front door was open, and from there they could see a dog peeking out of the laundry room from behind a door that was not on the hinges, but was leaning against the doorway. One of the men came back, called 911, and while the others were rescuing the dog and trying to see if anything else looked amiss, the police arrived. The police checked out the rest of the house, but were understandably unhappy that the men had even gone in the front door and said to one of them, "How do I know you haven't taken a Rolex?" 

Wise guy guest replied, "How do I know YOU haven't taken a Rolex?"

Things went downhill from there.

The other men quickly returned to the hosts' home, and wise guy was left to deal with a now angry police officer.


So tomorrow is another Thanksgiving and maybe, but I hope not, another story.



(Song lyrics from Sesame Street) 

As Roseanne Rosannadanna Always Said

We are still in the process of having the kitchen cabinets re-painted.  Yesterday and today's work consisted of spraying the cabinet boxes and front frames with a top coat to protect the finishes.  The painter has used all green products up to now so there have been no fumes at all.  It's been a nice way to get the painting done.

However, the oil-based product used for the topcoat reeks of chemicals and the painter uses a gas mask, the kind you might see in a The World is Being Destroyed by ....  kind of movie.  I don't have such a mask, so I put the cats in the basement where my husband works in his office and ensconce myself upstairs in my knitting/computer/tv room with the window open and the door closed.

Today after the painter left, I opened the front door and the back door so that the fumes could go out and ruin what's left of the atmosphere and I hid in my lair.  After awhile I heard male voices, very LOUD male voices, yelling: Hello? Is anyone here? What is going on?  Things like that.  I peeked over the stair railing to see two armed, uniformed police officers in the front hall.

A neighbor, who was still in our driveway, had called the police after seeing the front door open and not getting a response when she called our names from outside of the house.

We explained everything, the neighbor identified us as the residents who do live in this house, we all laughed and now it's over.

Sweet Baby Cheeses!  Scared me to death!

It will all end on Monday.

And then my heart will go back to its normal rhythm.  I hope.

*******************************************************

Aaannnd.... It's an hour later and I wondered why the house smelled like gas.  Turns out it WAS gas. The painter must have knocked a knob when she was cleaning up and so the stove has been spewing gas for....oh, three hours or so.

I hope we live to see Monday.