Wednesday, November 18, 2015

More Videos, A Recipe, A Confession, And A Medical Fact

I believe I may go into the Meyer's Lemon meringue pie business. Last night Vergil and Jessie brought over three lemons from their tree and I've now made two pies. Big pies. These lemons are the size of a baby's head. I make the pies the same way I make key lime pie.
Thusly:
I make a graham cracker crust and bake that a little bit and then I beat three egg yolks and add a can of sweetened condensed milk. I mix that all up and then add about a half to three-quarters of a cup of the lemon juice. I mix that up, pour it into the crust and make the meringue with the egg whites and about a third of a cup of sugar. Maybe a half. I put that on the pie and bake all of it for about ten minutes at 425 degrees.
You can't beat it. No pun intended because actually, beating is involved. The whole darn thing doesn't take more than half an hour to make, especially if you have a lemon the size of a Volkswagen so you only have to squeeze one.

The one I made last night was for us and the one I made just now is for Mr. Moon to take to work tomorrow for the bank's potluck Thanksgiving dinner.

Anyway, I am feeling better now and once again, who knows why? not me, etc.
Maybe it was the sweetness of having the baby in the house again last night and feeling slightly or at least adequately competent at making a supper from leftovers and garden greens and giant lemons. That August is the best baby. He is not cranky at all and when he's awake he likes to look around, talk, smile, and nurse. If his diaper needs changing he does let the world know about it and when he's hungry, he doesn't hide it. But hey- he's a baby.
Also, it was a wonder, as it always is, to be able to talk to my daughter woman-to-woman, mother-to-mother, and yes, still mother-to-daughter. I mean, it's just a joy.
I had a wonderful text conversation with May today wherein she reminded me of the time that we heard an old recording of Helen Keller on NPR and how we couldn't stop laughing because we are SO mean. I should be ashamed of this but fuck it. May said I laughed the hardest. And that we said things like people telling her, "No, Helen Keller! Seriously! You sound good!"
Oh god. I really should be ashamed to tell you this. But it's sort of like that thing where you get into these totally inappropriate laughing jags like in church or at funerals or Catholic weddings or...well, wherever you get into them and you KNOW it's so wrong and if you so much as take a breath, the laughter is going to come out of you in great whoops and cries, and tears start falling from your eyes and usually, someone else is there and since this is a contagious thing, they're about to die too and you can't look at each other because seriously, you'll laugh so hard you'll crack a rib and the priest will throw you out.
So that was a different sort of mother-daughter conversation which was also mean-woman-to-mean-woman conversation and I am proud of the fact that May is as evil as I am. She got that from me.

And please let me say that Helen Keller was one of my main childhood heros and I still can do the alphabet of the deaf or whatever you call that thing. This.


My grandma was deaf and I memorized it so that maybe I could speak to her more easily but somehow, that never happened. Maybe she didn't know it. But that chart was in the back of my beloved biography of Helen Keller that I bought in the fourth grade from the Scholastic book fair so see- I wasn't always so mean.

Anyway, here's the funny thing Owen said to me today. We were talking about school and he said that he'd gotten a stomach ache when they went to Special Area. I asked him if he didn't like Special Area or something but he said no, he loved it but maybe he was getting a tummy bug.
"You know," he said. "When the tummy bug moves into your stomach, it takes four or five days for it to unpack."

And actually? This is medically sound.

So then we got to talking about music and singing and I told him I still remembered some of the songs I sang in elementary school and he asked me to sing some although usually, my singing also causes him to have a stomach ache and so I sang several songs I remembered from childhood ranging from a sea chanty (Cape Cod Boys) to a cowboy song (Streets of Laredo) and then, since he encouraged me to sing more, that famous elementary school round of Zulu Warrior and finished up with a rousing rendition of Mares Eat Oats.
"That one was old when I was a child," I told him.
"Wow!" he said. I can only imagine that he was envisioning me as a small child in a one-room classroom with dinosaurs grazing outside the windows.

Okay. God love youtube.

They call it Cape Cod Girls but whatever.




And unbelievably, this.




Oh my goodness.
It is raining a little bit and supper must be made.

Love...Ms. Moon

17 comments:

  1. What a fun post -- all of it. A big relief from the turmoil inside and outside of me.

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  2. Elizabeth- Sometimes you just have to back the fuck up and make a pie.

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  3. Ha ha, yes! Delightful. Catchy tunes. I think we've all had our mean-girl moments. I've never seen a lemon as large as you describe, nor made a lemon pie from scratch. Your recipe looks solid (i.e. like something that would work for me!) and simple, but I suppose I'd need 10 lemons!

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  4. I think smelling lemons, seeing a pie the color of sunlight and sea shanties should be a regular prescription. Eating pie is good too.

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  5. When I was a kid, Helen Keller jokes were all the rage. Here's one I remember all these years later:

    How did Helen Keller burn her ear?
    She answered the iron.
    How did she burn the other one?
    They called back.

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  6. So, my second sister is profoundly Deaf, so I've been mostly fluent in sign language most of my life. Also? I was once cast as Helen Keller in a play because I knew sign language. Except, Helen Keller was also BLIND so she couldn't see any sign language (she communicated, I believe, through touch but maybe I'm making that up. At any rate, modern day sign language as we know it, including that alphabet that you posted, wouldn't have made a whit of difference with ol' HK). So the entire play (which was the WORST PLAY EVER WRITTEN AND HAD APPROXIMATELY 700 CHARACTERS) I signed things like "fuck you sausage boy" and long diatribes about vaginas and the director's tiny wang and whatever else came into my mind. The college had a pair of sign interpreters at every performance, and I made it my goal to make them laugh so hard they would cry, as they were the only people, excluding the one or two Deaf people who came to the plays, who understood what the fuck I was saying. The director thought I did a smashup job.

    Also, my secret party trick, and my way of making sales people go away from me is to act Deaf at the mall. Or, you know, wherever. Rob gets super embarrassed when I do it (usually, I'm drunk. Okay, sometimes I'm just being an asshole.) Though I would also (and have) kick the ass of the person who made real fun of my sister, or the kids whom I taught at special needs camp in high school (talking to you, Jim Soler and your broken nose for calling my sister the R word and telling me she was probably just a monkey). Anyhoo, if you want to know how to say things like "fuck you sausage boy" or "my tongue is a fish" in sign language, let me know.

    Or, you know, sign to those babies. Because they can respond and talk in sign before they can speak. My third sister refused to speak orally for a while because signing was a lot easier.

    xoxo,

    Sara, the signing asshole

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  7. That Zulu Warrior video is whacked out.

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  8. Yes, you and May are officially Bad People. I judge you.

    Mares Eat Oats! I didn't know it was a song, just knew the original rhyme. Looking forward to looking that up later, I might used it in class.

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  9. I also had the Helen Keller biography when I was a kid.... was one of my favourite books

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  10. LOL -- you sang some CRAZY songs in school. I had to make due with "Free To Be, You And Me" and The Carpenters. (Both of which I love.) Bravo for pie-making! That sounds like an incredible pie and I wish I could have a piece. Mail me one, OK?

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  11. I love those lemons my neighbor has a tree and brings me some when they are ripe. Why is it that things are funnier when we are not supposed to laugh? No judgement here, I have laughed at inappropriate things at inappropriate times. I have a friend that we can't look at each other sometimes like you described. Gail

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  12. Oh my, I forgot to say my Mom used to sing Mares eat oats, does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy. Gail

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  13. Stubblejumpin Gal- Well, it is easy. As pie! Haha! But yes, it definitely helps if you have giant lemons.

    Denise- It works for me and whatever works...

    Jennifer- God. I know. I remember those too. Humans are so cruel. I'm so human.

    Ramona- You are a woman after my own heart. I adore these stories. I do not know any signing. I'm not sure they'd even invented it when I was a child. And trust me- I never would have made fun of your sister. Ever. Oh- they did use that hand alphabet for the deaf. They made the signs in the palm of the other person's hand. I can't even imagine how that worked.

    Hank- I knew you'd like that one. It is truly bizarre. Even I haven't had dreams like THAT!

    Jo- I stand judged. I deserve it.

    Kate- She was a saint and so was Annie! I wonder if they were lovers.

    Steve Reed- Check your transporter pod.

    Gail- Those friends are the best friends.
    Yes. My mom used to sing it too.

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  14. there are no sacred cows so there is that. and oh my god, The Streets of Laredo! I went to private school the first 7 grades (then begged my parents to put me in public school) and we had music class which was basically choral singing and that was one of the songs we sang. I still remember the tune if not all the words.

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  15. lol :)

    I did Bing Crosby in class today, it went down well :D

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  16. I like that you and May have a wicked sense of humor. That's a good thing. A lot of people don't understand but ribald and wicked is okay.

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