FAT TUESDAY & KING CAKE

One of the places I’ve always wanted to visit has been New Orleans. But for one reason or another I have never been able to go. The last time I entertained the notion of a visit there, it got sideswiped by Hurricane Katrina and the trip never happened. Imagine Emeril cooking. Harry singing. The place has always held a special allure to me for so many reasons. Participating in CARNIVAL. Jazz. All that JAZZ. Voodoo magic, Musical sendoffs into the great beyond, fascinating cemeteries and as a FOODIE... delectable seafood dishes and pastries, to make your mouth water. I can only imagine eating like that every day. Such a thing it should happen to me. Here in the Midwest we’re lucky if we have CAJUN cooking once a year. Ingredients are hard to come by in these parts. So, in the past a local restaurant would break out the flashy beads, put on the zydeco music and fill up the buffet trays with crawfish, jambalaya, gumbo and delectable desserts, they had flown all the way here from Louisiana. But it got too expensive and they stopped the annual tradition. So… when Mardi Gras rolls around I’m usually a sad sack. No celebration. So imagine my surprise when I sauntered into a local bakery and saw a KING CAKE. I quickly regained my composure and claimed it as my own. Paczkis I see everywhere, but a KING CAKE never before in our neighborhood. Some WISE men (or women) made FAT TUESDAY a priority here this week. Imagine that. It’s the little things that mean a lot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mardi_Gras

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CATCHING MY ZZZ'S

I envy my husband. He has the ability to do something,
I can only dream about. He can fall asleep at the drop of a hat, while I struggle with bouts of insomnia. Nothing fazes him. Lights on or off... television blaring, radio playing, once he makes up his mind to rendezvous with the sandman, off to dreamland he goes! Eyes shut and he's out, just as simple as that. Week after week, night after night, I JEALOUSLY lay, wide-awake, listening while he snores. I toss and turn. I get up, lay back down. I get online. I read a book. I throw fake mice at the cats and play, drink a cup of cinnamon tea until it happens. When I manage to drift off, nothing aggravates me more, than being rudely ripped from sleep, once I finally manage to doze off! Yet it happens over and over again. Cats still think it’s playtime and interrupt my sleeping more often than not, in bed. So I post an imaginary DO NOT DISTURB SIGN on my bedroom door and telephone between 7-10 am. After racking up those countless, sleepless hours, at night... I can finally  catch my ZZZZZ's, retreating into a heavenly slumber while my husband keeps the cats busy chasing him around. Thank goodness. Survival of the species requires a certain amount of down time...so I take mine WHEN I can get it! Do you fall asleep easily? And do you stay asleep. 

HEARTS & FAUCETS

Romantic gestures aside... our Valentine’s Day gift to one another is... running water in the kitchen sink. Our plumbing to that spot... has been broken for about a week and a half... due to a leaky faucet... that stopped working altogether. Not to mention... it had been corroded for a while... on the outside spigot arch, making it UGLY too. (But in all fairness it was fifteen years old.) The inconvenience of NO WATER has been intolerable for the most part. Who doesn’t operate without their kitchen sink in working order?  My husband called the Price Pfister people to get instructions on how to fix it and they surprised him by offering to send out a new faucet, FREE OF CHARGE. Who can resist a deal like that? This product is warranted for life to be free of leaks, so they wanted a NEW one in place, not a repaired one. It was a $200 item replaced totally FREE. Imagine that? BRAND NEW and fancier than we had. A bargain for sure. Fixing it was one thing, but putting a new one in is quite another. The next problem was... my husband is no spring chicken, not agile in the least… so he worried about installation and getting in all the positions needed to connect it without hurting his back or making himself sick. (He has COPD and SPINAL STENOSIS) I finally convinced him now that his Social Security check came in, to call the plumber and see how cheaply he could do it for us and how quickly? I know hiring a professional cuts into the FREE part, but still we were given a gift.  So for the cost of a dozen roses, and box of chocolates… everything was back in working order with new hardware in place, in time for Valentine’s Day. Now... I’m feeling the love, aren’t you? 

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HOW DO YOU APOLOGIZE?

Remember the cartoon Dagwood and Blondie? It often made me smile. Poor misunderstood Dagwood. Seems no matter what he did he was always in the doghouse over something. I do not remember him buying flowers or cards, candy or jewelry to apologize? Do you? He just had lots of excuses why it happened and why it wouldn’t happen again. Truth is in real life when somebody does something to HURT you… whether intentional or not… do they owe you an apology and what kind? Sometimes the hurt runs so deep that mere words alone do not let somebody off the hook, do they? Or is something more needed? Particularly between husbands and wives?  If your spouse flippantly told you to buy yourself something at Jared or Kay after getting caught doing something naughty? What would you do? Is that enough of an effort put forth to erase the bad and allow you to forgive them? Do monetary gestures tackle the problem or make it worse in your opinion? The greeting card companies have hundreds of cards lining the store aisles that address the problem and say  I’m sorry for you. Have you honestly ever bought one? Or more importantly received one? Maybe a different approach works. Have you ever given somebody the SILENT treatment when they do not appear to capitulate in some form to acknowledge the trouble they caused and the hurt they inflicted?  To forgive is often easier said than done, isn’t it? But in the long run, when you love someone what choice do you have?  This too shall pass. Or does it? Do you hold a grudge? My husband seldom if ever says he’s sorry. Yet, I always do, for even minor infractions, guilty or not. Are we mismatched or what? How do you apologize?