Daily Thoughts · Uncategorized

Company Is A Comin

Wives, pay attention! I have found the secret weapon to getting your husband to do all those little things done around the house without chasing him around with a rolling pin or withholding desserts for a week. You invite company which your husband knows that their house is always in tip top shape and seems to have everything in perfect working order.
For two years I have been yelling…opps, I mean graciously asking my sweet husband to either replace the bathroom faucets or have a whole new bathroom put in. Since yesterday, Mr. Honey Do has installed 3 new faucets, spot cleaned the carpet, patched holes in the sheetrock (and the holes were not made by me throwing things at him, but because I rearrange furniture so much, thus having to rehang pictures) cleaned ceiling fans, painted the front door and this is the best one yet….pulled out the stove and cleaned behind it. Yes, that’s right, my floor underneath the stove is, well, you could eat off of it if you really wanted to pull the stove out and do that. But I have a nice shiny clean table that you might rather eat from. Since grandkids won’t be here until Sunday night when we have a sleep over with the 8 yr old, the breakfast table will be fingerprint free. But after Sunday night, I can’t promise what the kitchen or bathroom will look like. Do all little boys take the opportunity to look around the bathroom when they are standing up peeing or is it just my little darlings? it is almost like, “why bother lifting the lid, hardly any of the pee goes into the toilet anyway!” But back to my story…

So after a few months when things are getting back to needing a little extra attention, I’m going to invite more company. He tells me that he will be cleaning the carpets on Monday, washing the car on Tuesday and then Wednesday, he will change the oil. All this because of a couple we haven’t seen in 2 years. Plus, the couple don’t even get on social media often, so probably won’t share what a beautiful clean house they arrived at. After all this, I would at least hope to get about 50 “likes” of all the cleaning and baking I have done for their arrival. There is now cream cheese pound cake and carrot cake and chocolate chip cookies in the freezer. (not so many cookies are left, as I had to reward Mr. HD for finishing the faucets in record time and not making me go in the backyard to use the hose to shower)

All I have left to do is clean the shutter’s, change the sheets in the guest room, find places for holiday decor that is hidden under the bed and in the guest closet and get a pedicure. I want to appear as if the house just stays like this and make them think that no matter when they would arrive, the house would look this clean and both Randy and I stay dressed in our best summer outfits. Which reminds me, I ironed this week. I do NOT like to iron. Actually that is putting it mildly. I HATE ironing. When Randy kept bringing me shirts to iron, I reminded him that there was a dry cleaners around the corner and that he didn’t marry me for my ironing skills. He spoke up and said as he was rounding the corner, “I’m still trying to find the skills I married you for” If I hadn’t been so tired from ironing his shirts, I would have thrown the iron at him, but then it might have made a hole in the wall and then we would have more chores of patching the hole and paint. We are running out of time before company arrives. He lucked out this time. So if you are needing some company to prod your husband into cleaning and doing house repairs, Randy and I are available to be hired as “company is a comin”. Oh my goodness, I think I just thought of a new career, Company For Hire, literally! Will bring our own baked goods!

Daily Thoughts

Blue Goose Visit

Last night, we were treated to Mexican food at Blue Goose by our son-in-law, who is in town from Phoenix for a conference. Since Eric stays with us and had told us that one night while he was here, he wanted to go have Tex-Mex, which he doesn’t get in Arizona. So last night, off we went to his favorite Mexican food place. Randy and I had never been to Blue Goose, as we always wondered how good could Tex-Mex food be, cooked by a blue goose, but we are always up for an adventure, (and knowing that Randy wasn’t going to have to pay, which always makes him agreeable to go anywhere) so off we went.

Please do not get me wrong, we so enjoyed our time with Eric and the 2 hours, that it took to get our food delivered correctly and straighten out the check, well…all I can say is that maybe they might want to think about hiring some people of Hispanic descent, instead of blue geese to cook their food.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but this one story I have to relay. We saw that on the menu was printed instructions of putting a goofy picture which you take, while there, and posting it on Facebook or Twitter, will get you a free order of sopapilla’s. Well, I am certainly game for anything if it gets me a free dessert. So I whip out the ole phone and start shooting pictures of Eric and post them. I got one bite, white Eric and Randy devoured the whole plate, while I was busy posting. But the best story of the night was that when the young man delivered the sopapillas to us, he also brought a side order of guacamole and set it down beside the dessert. We all looked at him and looked back down at the bowl of dip. At first we thought it must be a bowl of fudge sauce to dip the little sopapillas.  But we looked closer and sure enough it was a small bowl of guacamole. When we ask why he was bringing guac to us, he replied, “well, I noticed on the ticket that you had ordered a side dish of guacamole, so here you go.”

We started laughing and Eric told him that, no we never ordered that and even if we had, it was over an hour too late, as it should have been delivered with the meal.

I came home and had a piece of key lime pie. Which brings me to a second thought today. It has come to my attention that it really isn’t my fault that I have a weight problem. It is all the company that we have. Each set of company which comes to visit always has different requests for me to make, and because I am such a great host, I certainly don’t want to serve anything without first trying it out. So this week, I have HAD to sample, “pork roast, mashed potatoes, deviled eggs and key lime pie. And it is only Tues. We have more company coming in Fri, which will MAKE me have to eat the chocolate cake and chocolate chip cookies that they have requested. Eric also reminded me that just in case his plane gets delayed and he is stuck out on the tarmac for hours, he needs to take snacks with him. Just took out more butter to make extra cookies, but will certainly need to sample them, heaven forbid he eat a bad cookie and get sick on the plane. Two of our grandkids have birthday parties this weekend, which means that I do NOT want to hurt their feelings by turning down birthday cake from them. What kind of grandmother would I be? We also promised our kids coming in Friday that we will have homemade peach ice cream. My daughter-in-law, Mandy requested that I make potato salad for 30 for the birthday party for the one year old. I LOVE POTATO salad. How could I not eat a huge plate of it when I am stirring in the pickle relish and chopped egg?

Randy and I figure that by the time our lease is up here in Texas in early spring, we are moving to Italy where we know no one. Our plans, Lord willing, will be to stay over there a few months so we can eventually fit into something other than our bathrobes.

We aren’t going to invite anyone to go with us or tell anyone where we are staying. No company, means no sampling. No sampling means that maybe, just maybe, I will get my cholesterol under 400. Ok, just one more complaint today.

Randy goes to get his yearly check up last week. I’m not saying that I am glad his “numbers” are all well within the normal range, but how, when we eat the same food day in and day out can his cholesterol be 207 and mine is always way above 300? When I told him that I was mad that he was so healthy, he told me that he is sorry that he is in such good shape…I’m glad we agree on something!

I just don’t understand why men don’t have cellulite or as I like to call it, “angel dimples”. How can he still wear the clothes he wore when we married and the only thing that I still fit in is my earrings?
When I get some answers to all of these “life questions” I will share them with you…until then, I have to go sample some of the cookie dough to make sure it is ok before baking it into cookies. I wouldn’t want Eric to come back after a hard day at his conference to a house with no dessert. All this sampling and cooking is wearing me out, think I will just sit for a minute with a piece of key lime pie before going to bake. You know what they say, “sugar gives you energy”, why am I not the most energetic person around?