Browsing Archives for January 2008

A few nights ago we received a very special visit from the Oracle Known as Steve.  If you didn’t know this already, the Oracle Known as Steve has an amazing breadth and depth of knowledge that surpasses the average human such as myself in both intensity and fervor by about seventeen football fields. In our early married days, the Country Doctor consulted The Oracle Known as Steve with a regularity that makes Metamucil look like white flour. The Oracle advised us on everything from furniture placement to produce selection. I still don’t know how we ever could have limped through our first years of marriage without him.

As we visited with The Oracle and his beautiful family, I prepared a fabulous dinner including fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and some broccoli and cauliflower sauteed in garlic, wine and olive oil. Yeah, I know the broccoli and cauliflower in wine and garlic wasn’t really what you were expecting – but it was all I had!

Just as I was about to finish up the potatoes and put this lovely meal on the table, The Oracle Known as Steve stopped me dead in my tracks with one of those life altering questions that makes you regret everything you have ever done and want to start completely over…from scratch…from the beginning… from the dawn of time. He asked me…

“Are you going to make any gravy?”

To the average family member I would have probably responded by saying,

“Get out of my kitchen now!”

or…

“No! I’m not, you gotta problem with that?”

or…

“Do you want to do all the cooking from now on?”

But since it was the Oracle – I fell prostrate on the floor in front of him and said, “Um… no… I wasn’t – w-w-w-would you like to make some…?”

And he commanded me saying, “Wherest is thy flour?”

As you may know, The Oracle Known as Steve and The Country Doctor are both from a large rambling family of nine siblings raised on the rugged Kansas Prairie in a tiny farmhouse where they thrived on activities such as “Knife Trife” a game involving a butter knife, a living room and three wrestling brothers (The CD, THE OKAS, and Mr. Panties). They also learned how to make massive meals – emphasis on the word MASSIVE to feed this family. As the family grew up and got married and had kids – the meals got more and more MASSIVE. During the making of these massive meals, The Oracle Known as Steve can often be found, behind the stove or manning the grill or stirring the soup. His favorite cooking utensils are – king sized black plastic garbage bags – for mixing salads… Industrial sized vats for making soup and sauces… and evidently he needs the back-end of a pick up truck in order to make his gravy.

I did not have the back-end of a pick up truck to offer him, so I gave him my largest frying pan – the one I use to make entire meals for my family of six and watched in growing fear and panic as he started to make his gravy.

I won’t describe the entire process, but I will tell you that he started with a gallon of milk and this is how much was left when he was done.

At some point he made the sad mistake of jumping from making gravy to instructing me as to how to make gravy and that is where I sort of started making a few very small and very discreet faces.

I made this one when he demanded a whisk… no, not that one… a better whisk. Do you have a better whisk? I will need a better one than that one…

Then… he asked for some starchy water from the potatoes I was still boiling.

I said, “Can I just dip some out for you as my potatoes are still cooking?”

He said, “No, I want the dregs at the bottom with the little chunks of potatoes…”

He went on and on about how the dregs from the bottom of the potato water make much better gravy and blah blah blah blah!

My face sort of started to melt into this…

Oh is that right Mr. Oracle?

Tell me more about your potato water Mr. Oracle, and your dregs and your expertise at making gravy because HELLO – I am the mother of four boys and you are not the mother of ANY boys and my guess is that I have made about sixteen industrial sized vats of gravy compared to your single super large frying pan full!

The Oracle Known as Steve never even flinched.

Finally – the potatoes were mashed – the Oracle Known as Steve got his dreggy water, and finished making his gravy and he summoned unto me saying, “Fetcheth me a large containereth big enough to hold his vast ocean of gravy.”

“And Lo – I did fetch unto him a plastic pitcher for ice tea and he did filleth it uppeth to the toppeth and then we filled another smaller pitcher uppeth to the toppeth and then the gravy ceased and there was no more.

While topping off the large pitcher of gravy, I came to an new understanding of the term “gravy boat” as clearly, that is what we really needed…an actual boat… no wait… we really needed a gravy ark.

I placed the smaller gravy pitcher and the rest of the food on the table and dinner was served.

The food was great. The company was fine. We laughed, we talked, we hemmed and hawed, we chortled, we gasped, we heaved, we hoed, we looked at the large pitcher of gravy in awe and wonder, and then we heaved some more, we ate and ate and ate. After a piece of pie and some ice cream we cleared the table. This is what was left…

One piece of my delicious fried chicken.

One half pitcher of gravy.

Ahem…

As soon as the Oracle Known as Steve left, his precious dreggy potato water left-over gravy went straight into the trash.

Hey – everyone knows that gravy is never as good the second day!

It’s not easy being the caregiver to one of the most beautiful creatures on God’s green earth.

Dear Readers,

Over Thanksgiving we had a house full of company. The Country Doctor’s large rambling family of eight siblings descended on our new house along with all their spouses, children, and varying political persuasions. We had sleeping bags on top of sleeping bags, on top of sleeping bags. Children were squashed so closely together on the floor that it was difficult to tell where one sleeping child ended and another began. In fact their dreams all bled together into one long nightmare where they were trapped in an endless game of twister with their cousins, while their parents argued over presidential candidates. During their wakeful hours, one of the activities that greatly entertained this large pulsating mass of sweaty childhood was our cats.

Here we have Arod

and the limp shaggy blonde is Cookie.

Of course, I am not giving you their real names. I am much too protective of my cats to post their real names on the internet for all the world to see! Plus, they have too many real names and I can’t really keep track of them all. Jack – my real son and maybe that is his real name and maybe it is not, all I know is that is what we call him around here – but JACK – likes to re-name the cats just about everyday.

ANYWAY – the point of this story is that these cats were very popular over Thanksgiving. They were carried and coddled, and hugged, and snuggled, and placed under blankets, and inside of sleeping bags and on top of teetering pillow piles and then the cats would make a break for it and try to escape to find some peace, only to be searched for with great anxiety until they were found and carried and snuggled and dropped and snatched back up and chased and hugged until they meowed for mercy.

Fortunately they are very mild cats. They are also somewhat striking cats. They were also free cats – given to us by a local couple that has a pickle court! Have you ever played pickle? Very fun game. Anyway – we got these little kittens and they grew and grew and got fuzzier and fuzzier and more and more beautiful – so when my brother-in law (Mr. Panties) saw them, he was so awestruck by their fluffy loveliness, that he dubbed them the “Show Cats”. And they have been our “Show Cats” ever since.

My sister, April loves our “Show Cats” and so does her daughter Bellers so whenever they visit, they always try get me to give them one. At which point I tell April the entire “Show Cats” story and then she says, “Rechelle – You’ve told me that same story a hundred times! “

And I Say, “But it is sooo funny.”

And April says – “Not really – not anymore…”

And then I say – “Show Cats Show Cats Show Cats…”

And then she says – “Actually, I don’t think it was that funny to start with…”

And then I say – “SHOW CATS!!”

And then April says something really, really, super, mean or she imitates my laughter making a horrible screeching noise while puckering her face into a wizened old hag as if I look like that while I am laughing!

And then I say – “It is still funny – because I say so! Show cats! Show Cats! Show Cats!”

The point of this story?… I have SHOW CATS! And they are better than April’s old boring NOT “Show Cats”! The end.

We have a policy at the garden center that states that if a tree or shrub dies in the first year after purchase, we will replace it for free.   

But the guarantee does not cover quite everything…

Sometimes customers at the garden center are so determined that the problems with their plants are absolutely, impossibly, absurdly, difficult to diagnose – that you have to get a little inventive to give them a solution.

Here we have the Hyannis Port Kennedy Compound. Note the sweeping lawn, the white house, the porch and the multiple pointy roofs.

And now my house – note the sweeping lawn, the porch, the white house, the multiple pointy roofs.

Here we have a bunch of Kennedys lined up in matching bathing suits with matching parts in their matching heads.

Here we have a bunch of my family lined up with matching uh…matching um… matching arms akimbo.

Here is the famous photo of Robert and Ethel Kennedy’s family stretched out in front of a Italian Villa type mansion.

And here is the famous photo where we are sort of lined up and sort of in front of an Italian villa. Okay not really – but maybe… if you squint… really hard.

And now Jack goes for a touchdown pass in front of yet another Kennedyesque gorgeous, timeless, classic American dream house posed beautifully amidst majestic oaks on a sprawling lawn.

And here are several photos of my family doing the exact same thing.

Except it is colder.

And muddier.

And a little rougher.

I am not sure the Kennedys could handle it.

Oh and um… we have a bulldozer parked in the background and we don’t know if the bulldozer guy is ever going to come back and get it. Other than that….

The same…

The Country Doctor and I worked at the same place for about a year and during that time he asked me out once, but I was involved with someone else at the time. In fact, when he asked me out, this is how I responded.

“Gosh – I would really love to go out with you, but I am dating someone else.”

So we continued seeing each other at work and occasionally having brief stilted, embarrassed conversations. Eventually my work schedule changed and I stopped running into him.

A few months later, my boyfriend broke up with me, which was a very good thing as about the only thing that was healthy in that particular relationship was how much I loved his mother. She was a girl after my own heart. She was always buying crazy things at thrift stores and garage sales, hauling them home where her family would ridicule her for her strange purchases while I looked over her tarnished treasures and thought they were marvelous. Old woven rugs, vintage hats, corroded silver spoons – sometimes she would just hand her finds over to me, glad to know someone who appreciated her taste for strange old stuff. I knew that if I ended up marrying Don, I would have a miserable marriage, but a fabulous mother-in-law, and that really didn’t seem like a good foundation for marital bliss. Nonetheless, our break-up sent me into a tailspin from which I did not readily recover.

Shortly thereafter, I took a new job at a health food cooperative and also took a part-time teaching job at a private school. My sister and I moved into a new apartment with her disease ridden puppy Nick. April was engaged to Clay and I rarely saw her, but one day she came home and noticed that I had moved my mattress out onto the balcony of our apartment.

“What are you doing with your mattress out there?” she asked.

“Well… uh… um… I just wanted to sleep outside…you know get some fresh air.”

April just sort of stared at me…

There was a long pause…

Followed by a sideways glance…

Accompanied by a heavy sigh…

Finally she spoke, “Whatever happened to that guy that asked you out last year?”

“Oh… that guy?”

“Yeah him. Have you seen him around lately?”

“No.”

“I think I am going to give him a call.”

“What!”

“I think I am going to call him and beg him to take you out before you move into the woods, start wildcrafting herbal tea blends, while meditating and talking to trees!.”

So she called him. I had to leave for work and was not able to listen in, but I called her as soon as I got to work and made her recount every detail of the conversation. She had talked him into calling me and later that evening… he did.

Me – “Hello?”

CD – “Hello – is this Rechelle?”

Me – “Um…yeah…”

CD – “Well, hi…this is the notyeta Country Doctor.”

Me – “The what?”

CD – “The nothyeta Country Doctor.”

Me – “What are you talking about?”

CD – “Someday it will all be clear to you…until then would you like to go out and do something?”

Me – “Um…okay…”

CD – “Well… what would you like to do?”

ME – “I don’t know…what would you like to do?”

CD – “Well I would like to do what you would like to do.”

Me – “Um… well… I don’t know what to do – what do you want to do?”

CD – “Whatever you want to do…”

And so on and so forth – yeah it was riveting – anyway he finally pulled out of me what I wanted to do…

Me – “Do you still have that motorcycle?”

CD – “Yes”

Me – “Could we go for a ride on that motorcycle?”

CD – “Sure – that sounds great.”

And so that is what we did. We drove all over the countryside yelling tidbits of conversation into each other’s ears, stopping occasionally at a pretty view to talk. After a while we decided to get something to eat and this is where he took me.

The Yello Sub and guess what…

We both ordered the exact same sandwich!

A green turkey – which is a fabulous concoction consisting of turkey, guacamole, salsa, sprouts, cream cheese, on freshly baked and oven toasted whole wheat bread.

They have a lot of different sandwiches at the Yello Sub.

It is kind of a miracle that we would both love the exact same sandwich.

Do you want to know what happened next? Do ya? Well, do ya? Okay – They give you a card at the Yello Sub to let you know when your order is up. So while we were waiting, I asked the notyeta Country Doctor a question.

A question from which he has never really recovered…

A question that made him fall instantly in love with me.

And dream of having four boys with me. And of building a house with me. And of stapling our son’s head together while I watched in horror.

Do you want to know what the question was? Do ya? Well do ya?

The question was…..

What do you think about Ross Perot?

That’s right! Turns out I was the perfect date. First, I suggested a motorcycle ride, then we ordered the same sandwich and to top it off, I asked a politically minded question. The Country Doctor loves politics and even though I could really care less – I appeared to care and that is all that matters.

After that he was putty in my hands. And we lived happily ever after.