Return of the fat bastard - Yes we have no Banana colored bananas today!

July 6th 2016

Oh Yeah baby!

      I woke to a slate-gray sky for the 4th day in a row. I'm alright with that, it keeps people from moving here. Some people can't deal with the grey. Me, no problem. I once owned a car that was 50% grey. Okay, that was the primer. The rest of the car was black. Black and grey kind of go together. It had black upholstery that tied it all together nicely. It didn't matter, I owned it for 2 weeks before a slight mishap on a logging road. There was not enough Bondo in the world to put that baby back together. That's neither here nor there so let's move on.
     All day long I've been adding a sentence here, a word there, making note of a thought that enters my head in the hopes of speeding up the writing process. I had quite a day. and I wrote about it with elegance and style. And I never saved one God damn word of it! So now I get to start all over. I'm doing this entire posting on my phone. I refuse to let my smart phone be smarter than me! So if the spelling and  punctuation are not right, too bad! Why? Because I had strung together such beautiful prose. My description of the sky turning from Battleship Gray to Robin's egg blue in a matter of minutes, brought a tear to the eye.

Blue skies, nothing but Blue skies, over me.

 Okay, maybe not. But I am pissed off! I lost like 5 or 6 hundred words. I thought I was going to come home do the spell check and the punctuation toss in a couple of the pictures I took and Bob's your uncle. But nooooooo. Now its 12:30 and I'm starting over. They say " fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me"  what do you say when you've been fooled 437 times?! That's approximately how many times I have lost work because I didn't save it. If it wasn't for that stupidity I actually had a pretty good day.

       I was up at 8 sitting out on the deck with a Cuppa Joe and a beautiful ripe avocado.

Sunny morning cuppa Jo

Michele came up and joined me on the deck. Her grandson Evan was being dropped off at 10:30 or so. At 9:30 with the sun shining the phone started ringing. It was Bella. I had told her and Christo yesterday that the next sunny day I would have them over and we would have a pool party. That was 4 days ago. How long do kids remember this crap? "Are you on your way yet Papa?" Bella asked. I told her that I would be by around 11 o'clock I had some errands to run. No sooner had I hung up then I was in my car and driving over to pick them up. To hell with it, they can come shopping with me.
      First stop was the pharmacy at Safeway so I could pick up my meds. They have me on a non Statin cholesterol medication. I seem to be tolerating it quite well. Just a little muscle stiffness. I won't know for another month when I do my cholesterol again but I'm trying. While we were there Christo sat down at the blood pressure machine. His arms are so skinny it wouldn't work. Hey, he's only 5.
      From there we went virtually across the street to Rona where I returned the lock I had bought for  Michele that didn't fit. From there it was straight down the hill to Walmart. I was on a quest, a quest inspired by Chef Boy R Lisa. " Get me disposable piping bags and 2 days worth of bananas" well inspired may have been a bit of a misnomer, ordered is a better word. They had no piping bags and no banana colored bananas! A litre of milk and a pair of rubber gloves later, (Don't get your hopes up) and we were on our way to Casa Lisa for an extended Papa Squatch Dayscare Session.
      As tends to happen around Casa Lisa everything happens at once. Michele's daughter Krista pulled up with Evan and Ivy, who is so new this is the first time I've met her and Lilu their Border Collie cross that never stops moving. Evan is 2 years old, about the same age that Krista was when I first met her. While Payton was being dropped off with Tamara. 5 kids, 5 adults and 3 dogs. That's a yard full. Michele has a silk carpet that got wet. She had it set up on the rail and I convinced her it would dry faster on the clothes line. Then I started mowing.

I am Lawnboy hear me Mow!

It was on my third or fourth pass that I realised the rug seemed to be getting closer to the ground. Upon further inspection I discovered the weight of the rug had pulled the fence apart.

Scene of the crime.

Wouldn't that be ironic, my fence survived being hit by a 35 foot length of tree blown down during a wind storm only to be taken out by a Persian Rug. This was a job for Next Door Gord! Well, at least for his come along. We had one end wrapped around the tree and the other around the post. We ratcheted that post back into position faster than you can say Skookumchuck! Then I put the screws to it. 8 to be exact, on the new top plate.

Well screwed and back in business

It took about 30 minutes  to repair and it's now solid as a rock again. Or at least a clothesline.
      It's 3 o'clock in the morning Y'all  Oh, I'm biding my time. I can't keep my eyes open so, time to go to bed.
       Good morning Coquitlam!!! That's better I'm feeling all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed until I walked outside that is. Once again the rain he is back!
      At any rate back to yesterday. After fixing the clothesline and the gate I continued mowing the lawn.

What a poser!

I actually got it finished. Of course the lawn is so big it's time to start mowing the part I mowed a week ago Monday.
      It was absolute pandemonium here. And loud! Lilu, a Collie cross never stopped moving. Elvis hates that. Every time Lilu would run by with a stick Elvis would bark his freaking head off . He never chased him. Just a couple of steps and go nuts. With his tiny little legs he never could have caught him anyway. Also, me yelling at Elvis did nothing to reduce the volume!
      Christo took Evan under his arm right from the start.  It's funny, the more things change the more they stay the same. It was only a few years ago that Christo was following Matty around with that same adoring look in his eyes. They were in and out of the pool, up and down on the trampoline, in the sandbox, inseparable Buddies.
      Bella on the other hand is dog crazy. And now there was an actual dog that would do things. You know, chase a ball or a stick. Not just stand around barking at imaginary squirrels like our guys do. Using a stick as bait she taught Lilu to jump through a hoop.
     Hotdogs for lunch. Michele told me that Evan likes hot dogs but only plain no bun no ketchup. That was until he saw Christo eating his hot dog with a bun and ketchup.

Hot Diggity Dog!

 Now that's how Evan eats his hot dog, or not. In a Grandmotherly mistake of biblical proportions Grandma Michele told them there was cake! Rookie mistake! Evan immediately stopped eating, Bella started slipping her hotdog to Lilu, Nutmeg and Elvis. A two year olds vocabulary is not very extensive. Trust me on this, he knows the word cake. I heard it several hundred times. You never have to worry about Christo, he's a good eater. Probably because he's a not so little mini Squatch. He is quite tall, about the same size as an 8 year old. He just turned 6. It takes a lot of fuel to run a big motor!
      Krista came back from shopping with Ivy as we were having lunch just in time for a nice Squatch salad. We don't see Krista nearly as often as we would like. Crazy, she only lives 15 minutes away. I get it. I didn't want to hang out with my parents friends when I was her age. It was nice to catch up. She packed up her babies just before 2 and then like Gorillas in the Mist, she was gone.
      I had 4 racks of back ribs that I was going to make for dinner. When it comes to making ribs I'm a purist. I put together my dry rub. Salt, pepper, paprika, garlic, onion powder and Chinese five spice. I let my meat come to room temperature. Then I massage my dry rub into my waiting meat. It makes my meat very happy. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Place your ribs on a rack  on top of a parchment paper covered baking sheet. The parchment paper just makes it easier to clean up. Put the ribs in the oven turn it down to 300 degrees and set the timer for 2 hours.
      It seems like an appropriate time to work on my blog while I was waiting for the ribs. And that's what I did. And then somehow I erased / lost everything that I wrote, as I was whining about earlier. Michele was home so I asked her if she would turn the oven off when the timer went. And I would finish off the ribs when I got home from my quest for 21 inch disposable piping bags and bananas for two days. That's about 12 pounds of bananas or 6 bunches. I know all this because as a general layabout I often go and do Chef boy R Lisa's shopping with her.
      The only piping bags I could find where 12 inches. Not very useful when you're piping 500 tarts.  After striking out at several stores my dream of finding Chef boy R Lisa the Piping Bags she wanted thereby currying favor and perhaps reducing the beatings, were dashed! To compound my dilemma there was not a banana colored banana in Coquitlam

Yes we have no Banana colored bananas

or Port Coquitlam for that matter.

We have no banana colored bananas today

 Wait a minute I was in Burnaby too. The number of bananas Chef boy R Lisa goes through you think they were shooting Planet of the Apes!
      It was 8:30 by the time I got home empty handed. But not for long. I had my hands on my meat as soon as I walked through the door. I was starving! I was going a little bit on the spicy side with my barbecue sauce. Ketchup, mustard, Worcestershire sauce and a couple of tablespoons of Jamaican Jerk. I don't actually have any recipes I follow. I kind of just taste as I go. I like my food to be flavorful and well spiced. I do not like it to remove layers of skin from my tongue. I'm looking for flavor not heat! I preheated the oven to 450 degrees slathered barbecue sauce on my meat, then I did the ribs! Bada Bing! I never could pass up a dick joke! Put them on the lower rack for 15 minutes or until you see the barbecue sauce bubbling on top of the ribs.
      Michelle withdrawn by the smell of the ribs like a moth to a flame. But has it all culinary experiments the proof is in the pudding. We loaded our plates with a fabulous Squatch salad with my homemade salad dressing and ribs. If I do say so myself they were perfect! The meat pulled off the bone so easily yet still retained The Firm texture that I was looking for. It's the first time Michele has had my ribs. She was suitably impressed. I think it is one of my best barbecue sauce efforts. The Jamaican jerk sauce added just a touch of heat without overpowering the other flavors. yum yum. I should have taken some pictures but I was too busy eating ribs!
      The lovely Lisa got home just as we were finishing up the dishes and in time to enjoy the ribs. Chef boy R Lisa is back For Season 6 on Once Upon a Time. She wanted to be there on first day which is why she's working 5 days this week. That's crazy. She could put in 90 hours this week. Insane!
      It was at this point I discovered that everything I wrote yesterday, was gone. Somewhere in cyberspace floats a semi humorous, self indulgent, could have been hilarious if I could remember it story.

That's all I've got
Till next time
Peace out y'all