The Gawd Awful

My version of The Gawd Awful

On the occasional Saturday morning when I lived in Salt Lake, I'd go out to breakfast at this tiny, quaint... urrrrrrr ok, you got me.  It was a nasty dive bar.  But they served a full breakfast-lunch-dinner menu so it didn't seem quite so bad. Catering to college student's desire for cheap food and beer, Big Ed's was right across from President's Circle at the U of U.  By the time I was frequenting the joint, Ed was long gone having sold it to a very animated and often angry Asian woman and her shy and sullen son. One of their breakfast specials was a dish they named 'The Gawd Awful.' And that's usually what I ordered... a plate of cheesy hashbrowns smothered in a big scoop of chili and topped with 2 eggs, sour cream and (usually) chopped green onion.  And then I settled in to watch the show.

A visit to Big Ed's was always entertaining.  Another friend remembers going there with her class under the auspices that they were "studying,' i.e. talking social theory until the professor was too tipsy to speak coherently.  And that's usually when someone would provoke the Asian lady and she'd start cussing and lapsing in and out of very broken English and what I think might have been Vietnamese.  Soaking wet bar towels would go flying across the room making a loud thwap when they found a target, either intentional or an unfortunate casualty.  At least once, I saw her use one to smack her son side of the head.  And then almost as quickly as it started the whirlwind calmed and she was playing the dysfunctional mom/friend to anyone who looked like they needed a bit of motherly care or bad advice.

I'm not quite sure what brought that memory up but today I made my version of The Gawd Awful for breakfast.  There's a few ingredients and steps but it's really pretty easy.  Start with a large portion of crisply cooked hashbrowns.  They can be shredded or the country-style cubes like I used, whatever you prefer.  When they are ready and all plated up, cover with grated cheese and dip a ladle of chili con carne over the top.  Next, add an egg cooked as you like.  I scrambled mine (and mixed them right into the potatoes at the beginning) this time but in the cafe, I usually asked for them over medium.  Finally, garnish with a dollop of sour cream and, if you like them and have some handy, a sprinkle of chopped green onion.  And there you have it:  The Gawd Awful in all it's dive bar glory!

Christmas Eggs

Colored or painted hard-boiled eggs are more common at Easter, so these six eggs I received for Christmas this year came as a surprise.  I think the story behind them is so sweet, though, that I'm going to adopt the tradition and make it my own!

Each of these eggs carries not just a primitive seasonal illustration but a virtue that when practiced help one to become a more Christ-like person.  It's a not-so-pushy reminder to carry the spirit of the Christmas season into the new year and strive for more peace, love, hope, faith, contentment, and gratitude in your life.

That was enough for me to decide it needed to be my new tradition...

Looking for a little more 'meat' for the story, I wondered if there was any special meaning that eggs might hold.  According to the authors of the Symbolism Project at the University of Michigan, an egg "symbolizes a primeval embryonic form from which the world later emerged... an image of totality enclosed within a shell."  Cool... but pretty deep.  I also learned that eggs have a more mainstream religious significance.  Depending on the path you follow they could symbolize fertility, eternity, or Jesus' emergence from the tomb triumphant over death. Interesting, but kind of a stretch for Christmas.

Tonight's Hallmark movie told me "Traditions are the stories a family tells together."  And there is more to this story!

PEACE

I called to thank the elderly couple who gave them to me and learned that when their children were small, they had a hard time slowing them down for breakfast on Christmas morning so they started putting breakfast in their stockings.  Along with the expected small toys and candy, they found mini boxes of cereal or granola bars, fresh fruit, hot chocolate packets, and boiled eggs. 

LOVE

It got their kids to slow down just a little and eat breakfast in the midst of the present opening frenzy.  

Then one year they had a guest stay with them over the holiday season... a man from India who'd converted to Christianity. 

HOPE

On Christmas Eve, he crept down after the family had gone to sleep and fished out all the eggs and painted beautiful images of the Christmas season on them.  That was the gift he could afford to give them for sharing their hospitality.  She said he was quite the talented artist and they'd tried to keep the painted parts of the shells but they were too fragile. 

FAITH

The man fell ill and passed away and, while not nearly as artistically talented as he had been, they decided to keep the practice of painting the eggs in their Christmas stockings alive in his honor. 

CONTENTMENT

Now their kids are grown and moved away and have grown children of their own so they are sharing this wonderful legacy and tradition with others.

GRATITUDE

I was lucky enough to be a recipient this year!  And next year I will be passing it on!!

The horrible, awful, terrible year...

2019 was the most horrible, awful, terrible year of my life and I have some doozies of bad years in my history.  I can hardly wait to be done with it and start fresh again with January's clean slate.  2020 is going to be a year of starting from scratch.

The first fresh start is a new place to live.  I've secured an apartment for me and Lightning and Gizmo.  We get to start moving in on December 27.  I don't have much to furnish or decorate with so the look is likely to be an ever-changing version of "Secondhand Chic" as I can upgrade our stuff.

One of the most exciting things about being fully on my own again is cooking my own food.  I've pretty much decided that my first meal in the new place is going to be soup.  But I keep changing my mind about what kind of soup it will be... Chicken Noodle?  Creamy Potato?  Navy Beans with Ham (and some cornbread)?

I'm also interviewing for a job that I'm really excited about.  It would be a huge departure from both my previous work experience and education but I KNOW I would make a heck of a good General Manager at a local Co-op that focuses on locally produced food and other goods.  The variety of foods being made close to home is pretty amazing with gourmet cheeses, maple syrup, lunchmeats, and honey topping my personal favorites.  It's so fun to discover more!

And I'm taking another stab at school... SNHU has a Master's of Counseling that I can enroll in for the quickly upcoming January semester and in 3-5 years have the credentials for LCSW licensure.  The distance between Maryland and New Hampshire presents some challenges but I'm hopeful they can be worked out.

My health also remains a focus area that carries over from the old year into the new.  There's still lots of fallout from the big PE (pulmonary embolism) event in November I'm thankful to have scored what's by far the best health insurance I've ever had in my whole life.  And I plan on taking advantage of that for as long as I can!

As if all that isn't enough... I really want 2020 to be a year filled with fun and adventure!  I want to see new places and try new things.  Things I've wanted to do for years but could never quite get done like learning to fly fish are at the top of my list.  If I can get the knees into shape I'd also like to bicycle the 15 miles of the GAP Trail that runs between Frostburg, MD, and Meyersdale, PA.  GAP means Great Allegheny (or Allegany since we spell it differently in Maryland than they do in Pennsylvania) Passage where it crosses the Eastern Continental Divide.  And I want to take a mushroom foraging class, crochet the temperature afghan that I worked so hard to track daily temperatures for all of 2018 and get my finances situated to buy a house in 2021.

Please help me stay on track by asking about these things throughout the year!

Tooth of the Dog

Seriously... don't his teeth look good?

Jack's been feeling a little rough the last few weeks with mysterious swollen glands and a bit of a fever so when he rolled over on his back for a belly rub and flashed me a toothy grin, I had to get a picture!  I'm so glad he's getting better!!  And he's acting more like his normal goofy self every day now.

Along the same timeline, I've been thinking that Lightning, Jack, and Gizmo all have pretty decent smelling breath and their teeth are looking a lot cleaner and whiter.  Gazing at Jack's picture got me thinking about it and wondering why.  That makes it sound like I think it's a bad thing...  And nothing could be less true.  Clean teeth are wonderful!  Just a bit of a surprise because they were getting kind of gunked up and I've been dreading the lecture next time we get to a vet.  Turns out I'm accidentally doing something right - the boys' favorite bedtime treat.

Just about every night before turning the lights out we share an APPLE.

Sometimes two.

The fleshy part of an apple contains a good bit of malic acid that helps dissolve the plaque and tartar on their teeth.  (Pick the seeds out or cut away the core - the seeds have an arsenic-like toxin in them that you shouldn't give to your dog.)  Other fresh fruits and vegetables help them have pretty smiles, too.  Carrots and celery were especially noted.  Carrots for the scraping crunch and celery because the strings act a bit like dental floss.  Well, who loves their fruits and veggies?  Yup.  That'd be my boys!

Gizmo isn't as much a fan of green vegetables or big pieces of carrot, but Lightning and Jack will eat anything I hold down for them.  So they get fresh carrots and chunks of celery now and then.  And pears, melon, corn on the cob (I hold it, they bite the kernels off), green beans, snow peas, cabbage, broccoli, cucumbers, peaches, plums, blueberries, strawberries, bananas... Lightning even likes lettuce, oranges, and tomatoes.  I'm thinking he'll be hard on that future garden and orchard!

Weird things for a dog to eat, huh?

But so healthy!

News From the Facebook Break

Overall, I think taking a break from Facebook has been a good thing.  Clarifying.

I had to login last night to find something and I found one friend in the midst of a cryptic meltdown, another left us hanging saying he'd gone to the ER with chest pains, and another had lost her sweet little dog.  I left sad.  I was sad that these horrible things are happening but even more I was sad that Facebook is the only way I know anything that's going on in their lives.  It made me wonder if we are really friends or something lesser with that label on it for lack of anything else to call it.  And if that's the case, it's just not good enough.

Time away has been educational.  The class I was dreading, I actually like.  And the one I had been looking forward to with some excitement, I really despise.  At least this term is half over now.  I'm still set to graduate at the end of August.  It only took 5 schools and 30+ years...

I've been doing some other than school reading, too.  And I think if you'll read these articles you'll walk away a bit smarter citizen of the world.  They might challenge your views and make you mad but sometimes truth comes to you in weird places.

• Yes, he says “magical” way too often.  Yes, it's an insult he directs at the liberal viewpoint in this piece about the Parkland shooting.  And if you are conservative, especially in deep on the right, you can wipe that smug smirk off your face.  Your side does the same damned thing.  And this kind of exploitation is morally corrupt.  Y’all need to just stop it!
• I would put a $5 bet that a majority of naturopaths and every traditional Chinese medical practioner on the planet is smacking their head and saying “Duh… ya think?” about this discovery of a new bodily organ.  
• The unintended consequences of getting it wrong run really deep.  You do need to read about China's former one-child policy.  If you're at all like me, what you think you know isn’t even scratching the surface of the political and social ramifications.

Jacky has been sick for about a week.  His sublingual lymph glands are hard and swollen, he's been packing on the pounds lately, and he feels so hot when I touch him.  Sometimes it seems like he wheezes but it's hard to call that a new symptom because he's always been breathy and melodramatic.  When he really needs to go potty, he's the one that will get right in my face and do a full body wiggle while he vocalizes "hhhhhoooooooouuuuuuutttt" like he's trying to say "out."  It's pretty hilarious but when he's such a goofball it also makes it hard to pick out behaviors that say this is what makes me think he's sick.  And the internet is no help.  The swollen glands could be anything from an allergy (we already have trees pollinating) to an injury (like from chewing on a stick outside) to a random bacterial infection to a thyroid problem like mine to cancer that would leave him about 6 weeks to live.  Sadly, I don't have unlimited funds to spend at the vet...  And he's eating, drinking, going potty, and sometimes playing with the other guys so I'm giving him a couple of baby aspirin night and morning to help with pain and inflammation and just trying to keep him active and comfortable in hopes it will work itself out.  And like chicken soup helps us feel better, chicken broth slurped from my big cup seems to do him good.

Reading about dog thyroid problems, which is somewhat prevalent in Dobermans, I learned they are treated with the exact same drugs I am.  But vets recommend breaking the pill in half and giving in two doses, morning and night, to keep blood levels more consistent. Makes sense.  And once again, veterinary medicine seems more advanced and patient-centered that people medicine.  I always said about our vet in Georgia, if he'd see me I'd go to him over my own doctor!

I’ve learned some new words, too.  Here’s a couple of them:

Pes (say w/long “a”) is a pretentious way to say foot, like that part you have running from ankle to toe.

Prepuce is the skin that covers your boy dog’s winkie.  (BTW if your groomer leaves a styled little frond of hair at the tip, and calls a Merkin, make them trim it off! It can cause all sorts of health problems like getting “it” stuck “out” which is a very bad thing and will require action from you that’s potentially quite disturbing. A Merkin is really a thing, a weird thing but… a thing, for people. If you want to know more, you’ll have to Google it for yourself. )

And I learned a couple of kitchen tricks!

If you are roasting cherry tomatoes, like for a salad, a very very slight dusting of powdered sugar preserves their bright red color and keeps the dish pretty.  Thanks for that tip, Alex Guarnaschelli!

Keep your plastic wrap in the freezer and it will come off the roll without sticking to itself.  You can actually get it to cover the dish just like Valerie Bertinelli did on her TV show.