New Old Home Angst: It's not you Helga...

 

Yes, Cookie is mad at the dirt. 

For the past couple of days, Cookie has spent a couple hours a day on his knees, not that way, but in the kitchen of this house, deep cleaning the floor. 

As you know, when we moved in here, the previous owners left a hellish mess of dirt and filth, in more ways than one.  

We cleaned what we could, and sterilized everything else.  And while Cookie is no neatnick, some things had to be prioritized, and others set aside.  The bathroom had to be cleaned, the kitchen cupboards, etc and so on.  

The kitchen floor was something else, altogether.  While we had swept, mopped, and swept, and mopped some more, the floor brightened but it wasn't "Mother" clean.    

After the sewer repair, and with the plumbers coming in and out, Cookie finally decided to go all Mommie Dearest clean on the floor. 

Now the kitchen floor is getting removed with the forthcoming remodel. But until then, we have to live with what we have. 

Right now the floor is the same Congolium that was laid down in 1974, so it's about 30 years beyond its life expectancy. So the gloss finish has worn off and now its faux Italian villa tiles just attract dirt.   The problem is that the pattern has these small press lines meant to give it that worn, "Olde World" look when it's all simply worn.  So damp mopping isn't going to cut it. 

Armed with a spray bottle of neutral soap, a small Rubbermaid battery-powered scrub brush, and a floor brush, Cookie has spent hours going faux tile by faux tile scrubbing out the dirt, and then mopping that filthy, dirty water and cleaning up with paper towels. All of this effort has been around the baseboards, under the appliances, and under the cupboard's toe kicks. 

I will not show you what has come up, but I will tell you that the decades-old Mop and Shine had turned black with age, the black goo of built-up old mop water left to dry on its own, and old food and hair, is gone.  I have filled two contractor bags full of paper towels with black, brown, gray and plain old wet paper towels.  And that's only around the baseboards, two "tiles" out from the wall. 

Tomorrow, the GE Floor scrubber, circa 1965 comes out, and the main part of the floor gets it, and gets dried.  THEN a floor sealer gets applied. Its purpose is to keep the daily dirt of life from redepositing back onto the tiles, again. 

The new floor has been chosen. 

We are going back to the cork floors we loved in Columbus.  Lovely to look at and a dream to keep clean, they'll provide insulation, a cushion of softness, and a whole lot less wear and tear on Cookie's knees. 

Then I will attack that bathroom caulk. 

And we all know how Cookie loves to handle caulk.

New Old Home Angst: Don't Look in There Edition

 

So, Cookie and the husband have crossed over the shock, surprise, and expense of the sewer repair, and onto better things. Or are we?

What would Mona Plash say?

The other day, husband was working in the basement when it ventured into the glorified crawl space that is the room under the original kitchen of this house. Moving about, he looked high and low, and then backed into one of these CFL bulbs that everyone hates. 

Well, crash-tinkle the bulb broke and shards of glass went everywhere.   I was able to get the vac with the HEPA filter and vacuum him up, he took off his clothes and I washed them (twice) and sent him up to the bathroom to shower.

Yesterday, the husband went back into the room to clean it up.  And while he was down there he also cleaned out the nasty, filthy garbage left behind by the previous owners who refused to come back to the house after they moved to clean up the mess they left. 

There was a nasty memory foam pillow, bits of broken this, that, and everything, a child's crib mattress, and assorted detritus or life left behind by the nastiest people in the world.  Even Babs Johnson wouldn't want these folks around. 

Then he came across a very nice black zippered bag.  And he opened it. 

Oh, what, WHAT, could this be?

Alas, there were no piles of real cash or even counterfeited cash. Nor was there anything illegal, immoral, or otherwise prohibited by law.  No, it was something else altogether different than anything we ever imagined. 

Now before I go on, Husband is a stand-up guy.  Quiet, and respectful, and this sent him into a state of shock.

"Honey," he called up the stairs, "would you mind coming down here for a minute."

So Cookie went down the stairs, into the Hobbit hut of a room, and there I saw it. 

Now before I tell you what I saw, I will say that even Cookie was a bit taken aback.   Even the husband said "I thought it was a breast pump." No, not that kind of milking.

I have owned four homes, and I never, ever had a previous owner leave something like this before.  

And if I had such a case - and it was very nice - I would pack this first and want to know where it was at all times. 

These were, eh hem, personal items. 

"Was it a dildo," our neighbor asked?

No, not a dildo.  

It was a dildo bonanza. Every color shape and size. 

And yes, I pulled each one out. One at a time. 

And there was more. Much, much more.
Not pictured the rest of the toys in the case.

It was like someone cleared at your local Adult Mart. They were pink and purple - both sparkled - and a couple were silver. There was a very large fleshlight with an anus opening. And it had an extra sleeve, and no, I did not look inside.  There were cheap handcuffs and beginner restraints. And bottles of lube. There was a prostate massager, or two.  There were cock rings, of the silicone variety.  No steel, no real leather.  Oh, yes - a silicone cap to place over the head of one-eyed willy with a cup to receive a big vibrator head. There were purse vibrators as well.  And nipple suction cups, too.  

And that was just the first three-quarters of it. There wasn't enough room to unload the whole case. 

And let's not forget the anal chakra wand.

And Cookie could not stop laughing. 

I mean if it were "their" toys it wouldn't have been in their boudoir? 

But these were hidden. These were tucked away under the castaways of life.  As if one didn't want the other to find them. 

I asked my realtor what was the oddest thing anyone left behind in her personal experience. "A cat.  Which is now our cat.  Why? What did you find?"

When I told her, there was a gasp. "No! Really?"

Yup. 

It looks like the case was originally for a CPAP machine.  There were instructions. Someone just found a better use for the bag.

So now we have to figure out what to do with these.  The husband wanted to toss them, but I said, let's wait. Gawd knows we don't want them, but let's not be too hasty. 

One friend said to ship it to them.  Just box it up and ship it.   No, that's the type of thing that can end up in front of a magistrate for harassment.  

One friend said to toss them. "You do not want to be the real reason why their marriage fails."  A point well taken. Why would I want to break up a marriage? That's their job, not mine.

Another friend suggested, "Call that excuse for a seller's agent and tell her you found this bag with some personal items, and well, do they want it back?"  Now that was delicious. 

But Cookie is taking another tact. I am not going to call them. Because I know that the one who hid the bag, and is missing that bag, is on edge wondering "Where did that bag go?"  He is wondering if we have found the bag, who else knows about the bag, and will his wife find out.  He knows that we know about what he likes, and what he is experimenting with.   And that is driving him bonkers. 

Sometimes the best course of action is to do nothing, and just let them twist in the wind.  Self-doubt for the stunts they pulled on us is the best repayment yet.

Nothing Special Edition: An unexpected snow.

 

We met friends for dinner last night.  

When I got up, yesterday morning, the sky was clear, and it was bright out, a rarity for NE Ohio this time of year.  As we neared noon, the creeping clouds came in from Lake Erie, nothing abnormal.  

But by 4:30, there was a layer of fine snow on the porch roof. 

The husband and I settled for some time with the dogs and the sofa, and by the time we went out at a quarter of six, the car really needed to be cleared off - with about two inches of fine powder snow. 

Now, the east side of Cleveland usually does a great job at clearing the roads, but last night, something was off.  The roads were white, the snow wasn't melting, and it was coming down kind of hard, but still fine, like frozen dust.

So we got to Geraci's on Warrensville Center and enjoyed the company and the catching up, the food came, and a good time was had by one and all. 

Two hours later we left for the parking lot and the streets still hadn't been cleared.  Moreover, now the first layers of snow had become slick, and with powdery snow on top, the lane markings were obscured. 

So we carefully got in the car and started home, and I have to say that 99% of the drivers were great, not hurrying, not driving recklessly, and we only encountered two cars being driven like the roads were clear.  One of them made a left too fast and spun out.  I think he/she/them/they might have learned a lesson, or maybe not, but they weren't going where we were headed. 

We did get home safe and sound, and the dogs had a good romp in the snow.  They were like puppies, wanting us to toss the powder into the air so they could run through it. 

All in all, a pretty perfect evening. 

Still, I find it odd that the roads hadn't been prepped, which was unusual. 

But it was a nice night, without anything happening but a good meal. 

The Nonstop Pie-Hole

 

Even Joan Cusack wouldn't know what to do. 

As a Valentine's date, the Husband took Cookie out for a meal. 

We were seated, the table next to us was empty, and the table to my right was a man, about sixty-something who smiled when we were seated. 

About five minutes later, while we gazed at the menu, his dinner companion arrived. She was well dressed, almost stylish, but once she was seated, her mouth kicked into gear. 

Now, Cookie and the Husband were at a modern, nice dining location. The hum of the people talking was semi-loud because people operating restaurants think that a vibrant atmosphere means that the noise level should be loud enough that when using your inside voice you need to lean forward so the person seat on the other side of the duece top can nearly hear you.

The husband and I were seated next to these two for one hour and twenty minutes, and of that time, her mouth was in gear for an hour and fifteen.  A very LOUD hour and fifteen.

She only stopped talking long enough to throw some food into her piehole or take a quick sip of her Moscow Mule. 

And her constant kvetching wasn't anything worth listening in on.  There was nothing juicy, no complaints about food, politics, not even sex or gossip. 

Nope. Her mouth ran nonstop complaining about employees and coworkers, and their inability to follow or communicate their processing of workplace processes. 

Honest to Gawd people.  It was as if she picked up an abandoned unfunny script for the final episode of Seinfeld.  

And, she was loud.

AND dear reader, I kid you not, this came out of her mouth: 

"I asked her to explain her process for processing the required process to reach the outcome assigned to her, and she couldn't! Can you believe that?"

I leaned into the husband and said "Not explain her process? That takes some nerve."

At one point, her dinner companion took one of the few moments in which is was sipping her drink or chewing her meal and started to say "Well, being Swiss..." and she plugged that leak in the conversational dyke faster than the little Dutch boy in the child's story. 

"Then you know what I know about the importance of established processes..." and with that, she was off to the races again. 

We finished our meals, listening to nagging neh, nehneh, neh, wash rinse and repeat. 

When we waited for the check the piehole was in fine form, with process this, and process that, process, process, blah, blah, blah, process!

When we left, the husband had a rager of a headache.  "How did she even breathe?"

"I would have recommended a career as an auctioneer."

And I swear that while watching Find Your Roots, I started mumbling to the TV demanding that Skip Gates show us his researcher's processes when the husband said "You know those processes better than Dr. Gates."

To clear our minds, the Husband put on an episode of All Creatures Great and Small, which settled us down.  

Instead, our conversation turned to a favorite topic of mine, Helen's massive hair, which deserves its own paycheck and representation. 

No matter how bad something is, Helen's hair can always divert my attention. 

Last night in my dreams I remade the Sandra Bullock film "Speed", only this time, the heroine was told by some malevolent being that if she stopped talking about processes for more than thirty seconds, then bad things would befall her.  

How did the dream end?

I have no idea, I left the theater with Helen's hair before the resolution and then woke up.  

 

Damn hippies

 

We the hole is being filled in.  Thank Jesus Christ almighty. 

And we passed our inspection.  Praise Allah

The plumber hands me the permit and says "You ought to post this in a window."

A little late, slim, ain't it?

Tomorrow we go and buy gypsum for the gash, to try and make the clay they are turning up more porous. 

We did have a "neighbor" come by walking her dog.

Woman: "What's going on here?"

Me: "Draining our savings, it'll flow freely to the water treatment plant."

Woman: "Did you let your neighbors know?"

Me: "Oh, yes."

Woman: "I had no idea."

Me: "Where do you live?"

Woman: "Three blocks that way.  Did you tell the city?"

Me: "The plumber pulled the permit with the city and we passed inspection this morning."

Woman: "If you did this without a permit, I'll need to call and report you."

Me: "Call away, Gladys."

Woman: "My name is Tonya."

Me: "Kravitz did you say?"

Woman: "No, TONYA!"

Me: "Stop by anytime Gladys."

Our neighbor Randi heard this and came over.  

"Tonya has lived over there her whole life. She'll call the city and report you, but she won't remember the address or she thinks you are probably the people who lived here in the 50s."

Shaking her head, Randi said "She's harmless, but a pain in the ass sometimes. Lotta peyote, that one."

Wouldn't doubt it. Damn hippies. 

But what do I care?  I am poorer, and our house's poop pipe is squeaky clean. 

Damn Hippies, indeed.

Sewer stuff

 

Well here is my update: What will be will be.

The sewer repair seems like Mr. Tesander and Mr. Apollonio and digging the trench for Mr. Blandings. 

"Well, we've run into a problem.  You see that blue marking for your waterline?"

Yes.

"Well, the water line doesn't come in there. No.  It comes in here about five feet south of the marking, then travels across your front yard at an angle to the other side of the house.  So we'll have to cut it and hook you up a temporary connection."

What about the gas line?

"Well, it should come in over here, but there is a ledge, or an erratic over there, so it comes up on this other side of the tree."

The up shot is, the price has doubled not because of the sewer line, but the ulitites that aren't where they are supposed to be.

Then the city got involved. 

"You need to display your permits."

But we don't have them.

"Of course, you don't, because they were issued to the plumber and he should have let you know."

Well, he didn't.

"Ignorance of the process is no excuse..."

Would you like to speak with our attorneys? 

"Well, I can let you off this one time, but the next time you have this line replaced, you better have that permit displayed."

UGH.

So we have water from 4pm to 8am.  Then we are on our own. 

Our neighbors have been wonderful in letting us use their bathrooms, and their dogs have been wonderful in giving us all types of love. 

Honestly, if it weren't for the neighbors, both of us would be in a rubber room.

Hot Chicken Sandwich

Vonda, Can I get a third Hot Chicken Sandwich?

The Plain Dealer, Cleveland's main newspaper, ran a story last week that made Cookie's jaw drop.   

Literally. 

I said to myself, "Cookie, this cannot be true." and "What witchery is this?"

It claimed that the Hot Chicken Sandwich - something I grew up with when I visited Marion, and later moved there -  is a very well-known entity in Greater Cleveland.  So well known, it is part of the Cleveland Canon of Foods. 

Why I nearly took to the couch and called out for the husband to "bring me my digitalis."

Dear Reader, having regained my composure, in the first 14 years of my life in Shaker Heights I never encountered a hot chicken sandwich in anywhere in Cleveland. 

Ever. 

My Cleveland family never encountered it.  And my mother would never have made something that would betray her farm girl childhood.  (But if the Marion Fish and Game Club had an ox roast, she'd ask for one.)

So the idea that the sandwich is part of the same food heritage that gave us chopped liver, corned beef, Aurora Spaghetti House spaghetti sauce, Bertman's brown stadium mustard, perogies, the Polish Boy Sausage, Kilbossa, Chicken Paprikash, and a Heck's Rocky River Burger, is like saying that the sun comes up over Fairview Park and sets over Pepper Pike.  Madness I tell you, its just madness.

But you will say, "Cookie, that was in the last century." 

And that would be right. 

You will point out that "surely a chicken breast on a bun is the creation of the 1980s that exists today, usually in fast restaurants." 

Yes, a chicken breast sandwich is a universal thing these days.  A cliche among sandwiches. 

But that isn't what I am talking about. 

I am talking about a HOT CHICKEN SANDWICH, not a chicken breast sandwich.  

The Hot Chicken Sandwich's beauty exists in its simplicity.  

So what is this food unicorn that evokes memories of neighborliness, community, and good eating? 

A Hot Chicken sandwich is shredded white meat chicken, that simmers with a can of cream of chicken soup, salt, pepper, and maybe a crushed cracker filler in a crockpot (Or Nesco Roaster if you are feeding twenty or more) for a few hours and, served on a hot steamed bun and served with a couple Vlassic dill pickle chips.

The Hot Chicken Sandwich.
Look good? I told you it is.

First of all, the only place where you can get a Hot Chicken Sandwich is:

1. At a covered dish fundraiser for the fire department
2. At the county fair from the tent run by the Rotarians, the Lions, Altrusa, or a fundraising tent for a fire department.
3. The Jer-Zee drive-in, or Stewart's Rootbeer Stand, or some other such that is local.
4. A tailgate party at someone's house in the fall - or - 
5. From your mother's kitchen if she says she has a "yen for one."

How do you make it? 

Well, its rather simple:

1. Either bake or parboil your chicken, but don't overcook it, because the chicken is going for a mellow swim in the crock pot.  If you hate baking and it's a million degrees out and you don't want to heat up the kitchen, you can buy shredded, unseasoned cooked chicken at the market.*  
2. Turn on that crock pot for low.  
3. Shred the chicken.  Don't dice it, don't slice it, you want that chicken shredded.  You can use fork, an egg beater, meat claws, or whatever floats your boat.
4. You take shredded chicken - how much is a mystery, and no one knows for sure.  If you are going to make some you might as well make enough for the neighbors, too - and place it in the crockpot. 
5. A can or several cans of a condensed cream of chicken soup.**  (How much?  No one knows for sure how many people you are feeding. It is based on whether or not you are feeding your family, family and friends, family and neighbors, a church group, or several hundred people at the fair, tractor pull, or family reunions.  Generally it's one can for every four to six people, more or less.)  
6. Some salt, some pepper.  How much, enough to season it but not so much that it tastes salty, or too peppery.  When you overseason people think you are trying to cover something up. 
7. Stir it around and cover for a couple hours.  Add just a wee bit-o-water now and then. 
8. After about four hours, serve it on a steamed fresh bun with some dill pickle chips. 

That's it, people. You have mid-Ohio nirvana. 

Now, there are a couple "oh, no you don't" things to keep in mind.

A) Do not add any hot sauce to the batch.  Not everyone thinks Frank's Hot Sauce, Tobasco, or some other overly spicy sauce is ever needed, wanted or desired.

B) If you want hot sauce, as my mother would say "do it alone in the corner of shame." And ask yourself "What in the hell is wrong with me that I need to ruin perfectly good food with that crap."

C) Stop adding crap like ground cauliflower, fresh herbs, and Gawd only knows what else.  You are not above good basic food.

D) Don't overthink this.  Seriously.

e) Just open that pie hole of yours and eat.

Variations:

a) Some people will crush a few Ritz crackers, or saltines, into the mix at the beginning of cooking.  If you do, add a bit of water.  This can extend the recipe if you really are feeding a big group. 

b) Purists will use chicken base instead of soup.  I you do this, add 1/2 cup of water and 1/4 cup of whole milk.  You need the fat from the milk.

c) Some people will use cream of mushroom soup, but Cookie is not a fan.

As for side dishes?  Ballreich's chips are good, so are tater tots, and so is California medley.   Asparagus? I wouldn't, but that's me. 

For dessert? Well if you really want to knock it out of the park, a mock apple pie.  And before you say anything, it is out of this world delicious, and people will want to cook you a chateaubriand and throw you a parade. 

NOW, people tell me that the Hot Chicken Sandwich is a West Side thing and that I get it.  Cleveland is merely a city floating in the middle of a sea of communities. I am an eastside person and only hang on the west side if I have reason.  They feel the same way about the east side. 

So this year, if there is a Fire Department fundraiser in Avon, or a church festival in Parma, I will go and see if someone is serving up Hot Chicken Sandwiches.

But until I find it commonly served, it will remain to be seen if it is a local example of good eating.

_________

*Only you will know if you shred it and put the love into getting it right, or some stranger named Beverly or LaVerne who could be a man, could be a woman - has put their love into prepping the bird.  You'll know too, but you are not telling anyone, because well, it's all part of that aura of yours. We all know it and people will and do talk.  I know I do. 

**Use Campbell's Cream of Chicken because it shows you love the people you are feeding.  Store-brand, or off-brand cream of chicken soup tells everyone what a cheapskate you are because everyone knows it's not as good as Campbell's and people will, and do, talk.