Of Muffins and Men

After an exhausting week, I decided to wear myself out at home as well. (I never said I was particularly smart.)

Yesterday being an unbearably rare gorgeous day, I resolved to do some work around our yard and try to make it look a little less like the junkyard where Fat Albert & his friends hung out.


I emptied our compost barrel & spread the goodness over what will be my vegetable garden once I dare put my tomato seedlings and seeds in the ground. I cleared 4 wheelbarrows-full of dead leaves & crap off this weird patio we have out behind our garage. We think it may be the foundation to the original house on this property. Anyway, it's like a little concrete stage out back, surrounded by trees and I'd like to make something nice of it, as it's the only shade we have. I also washed our sheets & comforter and put them out on the line to dry in the sun and breeze. Heaven must smell like line-dried blankies, I think. (Wow, this is an exciting post. Jeez.)

I also played with the Hipstamatic app on my phone. You can download different films & lenses to get different effects, and I tell you, the pictures turn out better than they do on my pseudo-DSLR. Here's some I've done, playing around with the different components.

This morning, I wanted to make something different for breakfast, and as I took a slug of coffee out of the beagle mug my friend Gary made, I thought of his many creative muffin recipes he posts on his blog so I made Cheddar Apple Corn Muffins.


They also make a great bread substitute in egg, cheese & sausage breakfast sammiches.

Cemeteries, part II

So I happened to be in my hometown this past weekend and got some pictures of the things I mentioned in my last post.

entrance to the cemetery in my hometown- statue with anchor at center

Yup- this is the on the back of a headstone

Okay, I feel a little bad putting this up and basically mocking it, but it's absolutely astounding. Note the can of Skoal, the confederate flag, the owl (?), wolves howling at the moon, and I'm not sure what's to the left of the guitar. Some kind of crane drinking from a stream? I shudder to think of how much money these people put into this headstone.

An unfortunate last name, but even worse all by itself on your grave.

And the piece de resistance- practically a tie with "Ready":

I swear on my grandma's grave. Or Mr. Ready's. Whichever.

Oy. Things have been un peu of a whirlwind lately. I've been horribly delinquent in posting, not to mention reading & commenting on other blogs, so forgive me, please. I have two enormous events and two huge projects to finish at work this next week, then I'm finally taking some time off, telling some choice folks to go to hell and doing whatever I want.

Last weekend was supposed to be another family girls' weekend, this time in memory of my grandma who passed away five years ago last month. Well, that got cancelled due to some family members' health issues, but since we planned on being away all weekend, my sister and I did our own little tribute. We went to this fabulous diner called Chef's in Montour Falls. It was one of my uncle's favorite places to eat. We always had breakfast there when we went to his camp on Cayuta Lake. We realized it had been 15 years since he passed away, so we went in his honor. And for the biscuits.

Please note my sister posed in front of the very suggestive sign for the Town of Dix, in which we apparently had been visiting. Please! Come again!

We then drove over to Waverly, the teeny town where my both my parents grew up. There's a great Italian market there where we picked up some goodies and to our great surprise, saw they were selling FourLoko. Yup, that evil caffeine & alcohol beverage that was banned and (allegedly) pulled from shelves in New York. Not quite sure how this place got away with three shelves' worth, but we thought it was worth it to give it a try. (Note- tasted like chewable vitamins & made our heads spin.)

We were also stymied by the cryptic message on the market's sign. Seriously- can anyone tell me what that first abbreviation means? Sh!t ham? Sheet ham? Short ham? Short ham best friends? Sheet ham boyfriends? What the hell would that mean? The visuals it brings to mind are just staggering.


We did our duty and put flowers on the graves of all our family who are buried in the little cemetery a block away from my grandma's old house. It's odd to think that most of my relatives are buried here, 90 miles from where I grew up and 45 miles from where I live now. My great-grandfather is buried here- he was the first in our family to come to the States from Ireland. Kate took me to another cemetery across town where my grandfather's parents were buried- I never even knew about the other cemetery. (She only found it because she remembered the pizza place across the street, which made me feel better about my ignorance.)

Alice, John & Genevieve Murphy
(Genevieve was my grandma)

Denis Colman Murphy

It may sound kinda morbid, but I like cemeteries. They're peaceful, quiet, and I like seeing what people thought was important enough to put on their headstones to commemorate their lives. My great-grandfather, the one mentioned above, was a marble-cutter and obviously did a great deal of work in cemeteries, so maybe that's where it came from. He carved these beautiful stone gates outside a cemetery in Towanda, PA that I have to go see in person sometime. He died very early of marble-cutters' lung- the result of having inhaled years of tiny particles of stone. My grandma, her brother and sister were orphans before they were ten years old. While sad, I love this picture of the three of them, shortly after they lost their father. They're wearing sweaters someone made for them and the girls are holding dolls that were given to them and my great-uncle John has a kitten in his arms. My grandma Genevieve named her doll Martha and had it until she died. My aunt had Martha refurbished and she's kept safely at her house now.

Anyway, so I find gravemarkers very interesting. Some are terribly sad, some are in horribly bad taste. In the cemetery in my hometown, there's a kid who died in car accident has a can of chewing tobacco engraved on his headstone. It also has a line from his favorite song. Now, usually, one chooses to quote a song lyric that is meaningful or expressive. The one on this gentleman's grave reads,"Fly high, Free Bird, Yeah." Ahem. (I had a picture of this but it appears my conscience won out and I don't have it anymore. Sorry.) My favorite headstone, however, belongs to an acquaintance of my parents who was such a foodie that he had a plate of spaghetti and meatballs engraved on the back of his marker.

There's also interesting statuary. Not the religious stuff- yeah, I get your jesuses, your virgin marys, your st. francises. It's the statues that don't seem to correlate with a saint that I find so fascinating. There's one in that cemetery in my hometown that has nautical imagery- it's a woman with a star on her head and an anchor in her hand. What does that mean?

See the anchor in her left hand?

What's the meaning of the star on her head?

I don't get this one, either. Who is this?

Is this modeled after the person who died?

There are a lot of interesting headstones in my current town of Ithaca. Mt. Olivet cemetery is a fascinating place to go. It's the final resting place of the first Irish settlers to this region.
The headstones list the county in Ireland they came from, as well as birth & death dates, which I find pretty interesting.

Mr. Casey was from County Meath

But this one headstone just needs a question mark, I think.

Are you?

Suddenly, Last Easter

In which Walter encounters some devil-peeps and their evil leader ...

Meow-y Monday

Okay, I have this weird thing about cats singing.
Or people singing like cats.

It all started with the Jingle Cats. My mom bought it as a joke one Christmas, but it absolutely cracked me the hell up. No kidding. I was laughing till I cried. Particularly their What Child Is This/ Hava Nagila medley. Check out this stellar video put together by who-knows-what savant:

IT DOES NOT GET ANY MORE EFFIN' BIZARRE!!!!

So when I recently ran across this tweet from one of my favorite people on Twitter, MarylandMudflap, I had to check it out and then share it with alls y'all.

MarylandMudflap Scotty L. 

The catholic church is upset about Lady Gaga's "Judas" but THIS song is totally God approved and appropriate.

(Consider yourselves warned- you CANNOT wash this out of your ears once you've heard it.)

Easter!

Since Easter's around the corner ...

My mom always wrote ON photos- drives me nuts.

Here's a shot from Easter morning, 1976.
We were at my grandma's house with all my cousins. That's my dad to my right (labelled "dad") and my brother Kevin. My sister was still two years away.
That's my cousin Patrick trying to get my attention.
There were nine of us kids there that year, along with my Gram and six adults. In a house with one bathroom. At the back end of the first floor. With only a claw-foot tub, no shower. I don't know how they did it. Must've sent the boys outside to pee.
We would dye eggs the night before Easter- the youngest child inevitably would drink a cup of dye- and then get our baskets the next morning, followed by an egg hunt outside. And then Sunday dinner which, according to my memory, always consisted of ham, scalloped potatoes and asparagus. All of which I hated, so fond memories of Easter dinner, I do not have.
In addition to the usual jellybeans and chocolate bunnies and peeps, we would usually get balsa gliders or kites in our baskets to encourage us to play outside and give the adults a moment of peace, for the love of crap. They always broke immediately.

Wait, don't sit there yet. Here's a handi-wipe. Is that Snooki? What are we doing here?

Whew. Been a busy couple of days here in my little world.

Friday, my sister graduated from the Finger Lakes School of Massage- she is now a certified massage therapist! Yay Katie! It was a lovely ceremony and I was just so proud of her. She's finally found something she really loves, she's really good at, and that she can actually make a career out of.

My mom and dad came up for the ceremony and after a good amount of convincing, went along with my plans for dinner. See, there was this conference over at Ithaca College up the street from my house that had 3,300 registered attendants. Yeah, you read that right. It was also Gallery Night, which means a whole influx of folks downtown. Both of these are good things for our local economy, but in a town where nearly no restaurant takes reservations, it makes a poop sandwich out of trying to get a table somewhere for dinner.

I ended up making us reservations at a place nearly on the outskirts of town that still takes reservations. The Antlers is great- cozy, fireplace, the menu and prices really haven't changed all that much since the mid-90s and they have things on their menu that you cannot find anywhere else in Ithaca, which is really remarkable. Like New England Indian pudding. This is the best dessert anywhere. You can have your death-by-chocolates and ice cream flambes, this stuff is rich, thick, molasses-y and tastes like it takes hours to make, which it does, as I have made it myself.
Then we went back to my house and sat on the deck and looked down at the city lights for as long we could stand it, then drank wine & champagne in the kitchen. Everyone was delightfully mellow and agreeable and it was just so lovely.

Then on Saturday, after an exceptionally tiring hike on the rec trail with Minchy, we went over to the wonderful Gary & Maude Rith's for his birthday party where we ate delicious snacks (oh my, those cookies) and met many other cool people. Gary has a knack for bringing together cool folks.

Saturday night, my friend Eric had a bunch of us over to his house for chili, then we headed out to hear our friend Christen's brother's band play.  It was at this place called Corks & More which has these super-cool wine-dispensing machines.

However, we did NOT know that the band was playing for a fraternity dance. I must say, it was disheartening. EVERY GIRL THERE LOOKED EXACTLY THE SAME. Strapless black dress that barely covered her butt. Enormously high heels that were 1. too high for her to walk in, 2. too big for her (literally, some of these girls were falling out of their shoes), or 3. both. Hair ironed straight, even the same length! What the hell??? Now, I know that the more diverse, personable, creative, individualistic girls are not the types to cling to some dude at a frat dance, but holy criminey, it was a sad state of things for womankind. We walked in to the sight of a girl perched up on a barstool showing everyone in the entrance way that she had decided to go commando this fine eve. I refused to sit down the entire night. At least not without disinfecting the seat vigorously first.

Okay, there was one girl there wearing a tank-style dress, silver with sparklies. Her hair was wavy and I think she may have had bangs. SHE WAS THE ONLY GIRL WHO LOOKED LIKE SHE WAS HAVING FUN. Does this tell you anything? Even when they were being bumped & ground and slobbered on by the boys they were there to entrap, they all had this 1,000 yard stare, scanning the room for something better. Only the girl in the silver dress was dancing, whooping it up. (Of course, her dress made it easier for her to dance around and not worry about accidentally flashing the crowd, be it top or bottom. And she was wearing matching silver sparkly heels that were also quite sensible.) I wanted to go up to her and congratulate her for having a personality, but I thought that might be kinda creepy.

My friends, Christen & Lindsay didn't need a whore-dress and hooker heels to have fun.

And if that wasn't enough, yesterday was finally nice enough for us to have the first cookout of the season, yay! We also lit a fire in our new chiminea, and even though we needed lap blankets and eventually it started raining and drove us inside, it was good to know warmer weather is on its way.