(no subject)

So I stopped in at Grandma's last night after work and she presented the other side of the woodpile thing. I was not there to talk about the woodpile thing. I was there to drop off her winter clothes, which I did. Grandma offered me the "I think you're being too hard on Jon" talk, gratis, while I was there. I'm sure that I don't have to describe how thrilled I was about this.

Cousin Jon apparently doesn't want to cut my woodpile in half. Wow, big surprise there. I'd never have guessed that myself.

He also says that there's no time limit on it and therefore he'll get it done when he gets it done. Grandma does not see this as bullshit waffling. She refuses to grasp that this clearly says "If I leave it alone long enough, she'll do it herself." Righty-ho.

Dora feels (apparently) that she OFFERED to pay me cash money and since I turned that down, she doesn't owe me anything. Grandma feels that this is apparently the proper view of things.

I told Dora, when she offered money, that there was no amount of cash money she could pay me that would get my ass out of bed to drive her boy to school. Cash money wasn't an option because the service she wanted could not be bought that way. She begged anyway. I figured that meant she understood what it would cost.

Apparently I figured wrong. Dora apparently failed to grasp that if I felt there was not enough money on the planet to get me to do it, it was going to be expensive as hell to pay back. *sigh* I didn't think that my family was this stupid. Honestly.

Grandma doesn't think I'm being fair. I think they begged and promised when I was the only ticket to what they wanted... and when I'd delivered and they didn't need me anymore, them thar beggings and promises vaporized when I went to cash 'em in. Hrm. I cannot imagine that ANYONE thinks I wanted to drive the boy to school out of the goodness of my heart.

Now, it took half an hour, three times a week, to get the boy to school, for fifteen weeks of the spring semester. Figure hour and a half per week, for fifteen weeks. To my way of thinking, that comes out to about 22 hours that the boy owes me. Those are 22 hours I will never see again, and I want to be compensated for my time. It will not take anyone 22 hours to cut the woodpile in half. The boy, if he'd used his time wisely instead of fucking whining about it, would have been done sawing the woodpile in half in about twelve hours of work -- three solid days of effort. I don't think I was making an excessive demand.

Not only that, but I am very pissed that the boy, instead of saying that he didn't want to do it in the first place and giving me an honest, flat-out denial, has done the dicking-around dance of "yes, yes, I'll get to it directly" all fucking summer and fall so that now, when it's wet and cold and miserable and I don't really WANT to cut my woodpile in half, there is no other option. He squandered my summer and early-fall weekends when I might actually have had some fucking interest in doing my own woodpile because he was too goddamn useless to give me a straight answer.

I am not thrilled about being related to this worthless piece of shit. He should have done what he owed me. Failing that, he should have said he wasn't gonna do it. This bullshit evasive happy-ass dithering because he's NOT MAN ENOUGH to either pony up the work or give me a straight-out denial does not impress me one bit. Fucking useless waste of space.

Needless to say, Grandma and I did not reach an agreement on the woodpile issue. *sigh* I also need to give Dora an answer for Thanksgiving and I'm not real sure I can be civil for that because of the woodpile mess... it's probably best if I don't go, but then Grandma might be stranded here with nobody to drive her out to Harrisburg for Thanksgiving. She's really too frail to stay over at Dora's, so she will need to be driven there and back on Thanksgiving Day. I think perhaps I will see what SJ's plans are in that direction and, if there is no driver for Grandma, I will drive her and do my very best to be civil and polite and stuff. If Grandma has a driving option, though, I will have other plans... I'm not sure what those plans will be, but I will retroactively generate a previous engagement.

Did horses today, which was nice if a bit damp. Liss mentioned that she didn't like Mezcal as a name for a horse. I told her that it was La's fault because I didn't name her that and would have been perfectly happy calling the horse "Lexy's Baby" for her entire life, that name making up in clarity what it lacked in brevity. With the name Mezcal, I have to explain to most people that the name refers to Lexy's Baby because only La and I know the horse as Mezcal.

(no subject)

I am certain that there are people in this world whose menu planning goes rather beyond I do not want to grocery shop today but I probably don't have what it takes to be one of those people.

This evening, dinner at my house was generated by the above menu planning. I wound up with chicken (or possibly turkey) stock (frozen -- I made it myself some months ago) to which I added celery, onion, carrot, a bay leaf, salt, pepper, and one egg of freshly-made egg noodles which I whipped up while the mirepoix (the veggies) cooked. (I don't like store-bought egg noodles for soup. I don't like store-bought pie crust. I don't like store-bought jelly. I don't like Jell-O box fake cheesecake pudding stuff, canned cherry pie filling, or Eggo waffles. I don't like a huge and stunning variety of store-bought food items, mostly the result of food prejudices handed down to me from my elder female relatives like heirloom jewelry, only less hockable.)

Anyway. The chickenless noodle soup stuff that I had for dinner this evening was quite tasty and really rather filling, as 'chickenless noodle soup' goes. Now, in your imagining of this soup, note that I am not a big fan of broth. Broth exists to fill up the spaces between the noodles and veggies and whatnot in a properly-made non-cream soup. Nothing should float in a properly-made soup. Properly-made soups (cream and non-cream) congeal to form a solid when they are below room temperature -- if they do not, you have stinted on either the stock or the non-water ingredients.

For the folks at home, Egg Noodles:

1 egg
2/3 cup flour
a pinch of salt
(This may be doubled, tripled, etc. as you see fit. One egg makes a lot of noodles.)

Mix all ingredients to form a dough. Knead dough, adding a small amount of flour, until smooth-textured and springy. Let rest maybe five minutes. Roll out to desired thickness. For chicken-noodle-soup noodles, this would be about 1/8" thick. Cut with sharp knife in desired shape (strands for chicken noodle, 1.5" squares for PA Dutch chicken pot pie) and drop pieces, a few at a time, into rolling-boil broth, stirring between batches. Cook until done, usually about eight or ten minutes... more if you like them soggy.

These are NOT AS GOOD cooked in canned chicken broth. They are also nowhere near as good if cooked in plain water. Use real chicken stock from a real bird. You won't be sorry.