Pizza, My Pizza

When I was little, we had pizza for dinner every Saturday evening and we would sit in front of the Frugal Gourmet and This Old House and eat it.  One especially cold days, my mom and I would drive to Little Maria’s to pick up the pizza and she would leave the car running and run in to pick up our order.  I would sit shivering in the passenger seat and when she came back to the car, she would put the hot pizza on my lap, and, if Ipromised to keep it flat, I could keep warm beneath it all the way home.

Today, at lunch, we went to pick up pizzas and I put them on her lap and told her to keep them flat.

And it kind of broke my heart and charmed me so much.

Anyway, we got quite a bit accomplished and not as much as we hoped.  We didn’t get the garden tilled.  We didn’t get electricity running to the pump house.  We couldn’t get the lawnmower working.  The chainsaw is beyond the repair skills of even the guy at the hardware store at the top of the ridge.  The Butcher washed his wallet.  The far end of the clothesline is dead beyond repair.  And I couldn’t find the two frames I needed.

But I did get a good quote on getting the four trees we need to get out, so they’re coming out tomorrow.  And not only did my dad get the part of the lilac that flopped all over pulled out, he said that he thought it had enough roots to make it worth it to replant it and see if it would establish itself.  So, now this year I’ve gone from one mystery bush that ended up being a lilac to what will hopefully be three lilac bushes in my yard!

And the bathroom is clean and the toilet seat replaced.

I’m a little sick to my stomach about taking down the trees, because it feels like so much money, but it is not as much money as stuff falling on the house or electric lines.  Oh, god, I really hope an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  Folks warn you about this part of home ownership–that there will be some big thing.  But I’m very concerned about whether this is the big thing.  What if this is just a medium thing and there’s some big thing still hanging out there?

Hispaniels

Good lord.  “Hispaniels.”

Here’s the thing, my conservative friends.  Just like you are afraid that there are a ton of liberals sitting around reading Marx and pulling statues of Lenin out of our closets at night to drape with flowers and hemp scarves while we blow pot smoke in each others’ mouths in their honor before delving into a great big orgy and then all go marry each other and our dogs, we are afraid that y’all are secretly sitting around nodding along to people who get their inspiration from Stormfront and KKK Today.

It’s not a hard stretch for me to think that, if I were to go to Stormfront’s site, I would find people referring to Hispanics as “Hispaniels.”

So, when Representative Eric Watson calls Hispanics “Hispaniels,” I would like to believe that it’s just a fun slip of the tongue.  But I’ve got to tell you, when he starts talking about “the yellow man” in the same breath, I do start to get concerned that it’s not that he’s an idiot, but that, for a second, he forgot that, though it’s fine to talk like that among friends, he shouldn’t do it in public.

It’s a sad–though hilarious–day when you’re praying that a State Representative is an idiot, because the alternative means that your state policy is being decided by people at home on the CCC.

The Girls Take over My Dad

The tiny cat is head-butting him on the left and the dog is patting him with her paw on the right.  He’s hollering to my mom for help, but she’s ignoring him.  I’m blogging about it, so of course, I cannot help.

Hee.