Monday, July 28, 2008

3X INHALED

I was so proud of myself this morning. I mean, boastful proud of myself patmyselfonmyfreckledback and say kudos to you mommieO proud.

We had what we would call an "immediate family + a few neighborhood walk on" gathering Saturday afternoon/evening. The rather "last minute" gathering was put together with ease and with a balanced amount of help between BDD and I. We had set up our backyard with that bean bag game, had a few round tables with fun colorful floral linens, croquet, Bob Marley playing on the CD player, homemade lemonade filled up in a Gatorade dispenser for the kids, our famous fling drinks, beer, coolers, and although this is beer it deserves it's own category; Red Stripe beer.

I hung colored twinkling paper like stars throughout our trees in the back yard, found some awesome tiki torches on clearance for 99cent at a store called Party City (I bought four and forgot to get citronella for them), had the grill all fired up or so we thought until we tried to start it up about two hours prior to the tentative start time of 4pm (no one ever is on time around here, drives me crazy, but this time it was just a leisure whenever you wanna arrive backyard gathering). The propane was out, (thankfully we had checked it prior to the party starting) so off BDD runs to refill the tank, oh and he went to purchase a bean bag set as we weren't sure if anyone was going to bring theirs and being that we didn't own a set of our own we figured it was time to have our own set. Yeah, so off he went to refill the tank for the gas grill and to pick up a bag set while I prepared the house for our little bash.

I was in my groove with food prep and presentation. We removed our round kitchen table from our boxed kitchen and placed it out back on our concrete porch so that we'd have more room in our kitchen as it always tends to be the spot that people gravitate to-even though the party was in the backyard-In place of the table I took what I would call a "back of couch" table (that I purchased at a store called Ikea back in 2000) and placed that along the wall of our boxed kitchen. Ben's highchair was next to the now linen covered substitute table and was used as the plates, bowls, plastic ware, napkins point of contact.

I made cucumber on rye appetizers, cream cheese green chili pinwheels, Pioneer Woman's infamous mystery biscuits, we had a bag of the most authentic Mexican nacho chips I've had in a long time (no, not Doritos, actual flour chips picked up at a mom and pop grocery store where Spanish is the first language), and the most spiciest but yummy Pico De Gallo that the adventurous guests really delved into. Th last appetizer or simple teaser, prior to the grilling of the ground chuck hamburgers and better then ballpark bun length dawgs, was a bowl filled with wasabi edemame.

We bought the meat at a local meat market and if I'm not mistaken spent a good $65 on the meat alone-you see we have a big immediate family.- In lieu of buying cans of soda/pop, I picked up some liters of Coke and Sprite that were on sale at Jewel-one of our grocery stores- for 89cents each.-

The BBQ backyard bash mealtime sides were placed on that same table that was used for the appetizers as those had been transferred out to our dining room table. I took a recipe from my sister and another one from my mom and combining it into a delicious homemade -ground round and Doritos crumbled chips with other fun surprises inside of it - taco salad. I made a pasta salad full with summer sausage, cubed mozzarella, red peppers, tomato's, yellow peppers, red onions, chives, diced black olives, Rotini noodles, salt and pepper and a dressing that is always added just before serving, to finish up the sides for the meal was a simple fruit salad made up of watermelon and purple grapes.
The ground chuck burgers were delicious as were the Dawgs.

Dessert was fun as well! I made three different versions of cake; one (which I will post pics later) was chocolate with multi colored sprinkles cupcake cones, regular yellow cake with chocolate frosting cupcakes and a moist delicious white 13X9 sheet cake with whipped vanilla frosting, and red white and blue sprinkles. Plus there was home made fudge that my neighbor had made and chocolate covered strawberries to finish it off.

Everything was a blast. The last ones to leave left around 2am after an intense round of one on one bean bags tournament between BDD's neighborhood guy friend and himself-meanwhile Alice In Chains being the music that was being played in the background with the occasional change up to Dave Matthews, U2, Bob Marley, the Blade Soundtrack-yes a diverse long playing record.-

Remember how I said we had just bought that bean bag set? It was the wooden type with legs as the stand versus a solid flat piece (if you know what I mean) and within the first 2hours of the start of the party one of the kids had walked up on one of the boards and the leg snapped off rendering the game useless. Who knows what kid or why and that doesn't matter, I was just really disappointed having spent $59.00 on boards that I now will never have a chance to try out because obviously with all the other things in the backyard for the big group of children to play with, they had to go and walk up our bean bag toss wooden board game-Nice!-

But, my brother's girlfriend came through and brought her own set so thankfully there was still that late night challenge between quite a few beers, famous flings and two intense yet extremely dedicated men.

We all woke up between 9:30 and 10:30 Sunday morning which is a new record for this family, and I without a headache began to finish what I didn't get around to doing Saturday night with clean up. Bdd ran out to the grocery store to pick up two bagels and a gallon of milk and I swept and mopped the hard wood floor in our square of a kitchen.

Yesterday was just a very relaxing peaceful with children day.

So, back to the entire LONG WINDED point of how proud I am of myself. And no, I'm not patting myself on the back because I was able to exchange the "defective" snapped leg bean bag board game with a brand new set at a local Sporting Goods Store, but because early this morning after BDD left to walk to the train (remember, we have one car-simple living) and I pulled down the kids haven't been used since last summer inflatable shark blue sprinkler two or three inches tall pool.

There I was in between sips of coffee crouched down on the floor of our now very organized garage (ladies and or gents, if there's a room in your house that needs severe organizing, plan a party that will require access to that room therefore prompting yourself as well as your partner to get your ass in gear and set things straight and in order-trust me, it works). So, there I was crouching down on our clean garage blowing up this inflatable pool.

In between the dizzy spells I'd get up and take in what was the last of pickup; bottles and cans of beverages that were still quite chilled in our coolers that sat on the floor of the now very organized garage floor.

Prior to the party while we were organizing our garage as well as laundry room (because in order to access the backyard from our house you have to walk through the laundry room to reach the door to walk up about 6 or 7 concrete steps with a rusty old paint chipping wrought iron fence-thing) I happened to discover an inflating tool which put the idea in the back of my head that for Monday I'll wake and inflate our boys shark pool and fill it up with water from the garden hose/faucet so that we can spend a day hanging out in our backyard in the little kiddie pool.

Have I mentioned that up until this party we had on Saturday evening and besides when we were doing back yard maintenance, we probably since moving into this home have only hung out in the backyard and played with our boys perhaps 2 or 3 times-don't ask me why because I don't have an answer for you there-perhaps we were just content with playing on our long concrete driveway and front yard where you can easily access the sidewalk-who knows!!!!

Okay, it's Monday and I'm detailed, so anyways, I blow up the pool with my mouth because although I had found a box as well as the tiny "machine" part for inflating things, there wasn't any attachments in the box as there should be, therefore rendering this product useless (like the brand new first set of bean bag boards that we bought Saturday afternoon) for what I needed it to do.

Instead I used my lungs and Thank Goodness I stopped smoking last Sept/October because there is no way I'd have been able to blow that puppy up if I had engaged my old deliciously fun missed habit of smoke and choke with sips of coffee in between early this morning.

Yes, I blew that stupid pool up. I carried the now inflated shark finned blue pool to the backyard, pushed the garden hose container out of the garage as well, into our backyard to begin the last phase of the project, filling up the pool with water so that by lunchtime it will be ready and slightly warm for the boys to run and splash in. But when I had walked the hose over to his destination, that damn pool had gone limp on me, no longer erect and content and full of himself, he was limp and miserable looking. What the hell?

I blew it up again and it was all good. I placed the hose in the pool and began to fill it up. My feet carried my proud self into the garage and out of the garage to the door on the side of our home that accesses the kitchen, so that I might sip my coffee yet again without the dizzy spells brought on by self pool air inhalation. After a few sips I retraced my steps back to where our pool lay filling up. Yet arriving at the back of the garage in what I thought was a level spot of grass I saw water pouring out of the side of the pool and that same side of the pool, limp, yet again.

WHAT THE HELL??????!!!!!!!

I realized that it must not have been on a level part of the grass therefore by pressure of the water knocking one side of the inflatable pool limp. So, I dumped out the water and carried the pool to a much better level area although this meant placing the pool in a very shady part of our backyard which means less opportunity to warm the water, but I have boys and they'll get used to it "so be it this is a fine level spot, I think to myself." I re-inflated the pool with my lovely tired lungs and began refilling it up.

Repeat steps of heading back into the house to kitchen, to sip my coffee, as mentioned in one of the paragraphs a few up from this one. Then back outside to check on my proud mommy pat myself on the back project of bringing hopeful twinkling delight to my boys when they wake to discover that after asking to do this all summer long, that blue sprinkler inflatable pool was indeed up and open for child business.

Nope. The little shit had gone limp on me again. I was so over it all at this point, walked up to the hose that had somehow caused that same side of the pool to deflate as the pressure of the water was flowing outside of the pool and threw the hose across the yard in big time frustration muttering a few "not so nice words," As you can probably tell already from just a few minor ones here that I've written. Naturally, I was not a happy pool pumper at this point Monday (TODAY!!) morning.

Crouching down to inspect the blue limp shark of annoyance was when I finally discovered the issue-a tear about the size of the tip of my pinkie underneath that same side of the pool where the water had flowed over therefore what I thought was causing the side to deflate.

A hole, a fricking hole!!! 3 times I inflated that stupid thing, 3 different times of experiencing dizzy spells and "Woooooooooo is this what it feels like to inhale whipped cream from it's can?" -I never did try that, I was more about nature and herbal love. So anyways, a freaking HOLE, and not a single patch or any repair patches for that matter around in my now very organized garage. Not one opportunity of repair to safe that damn limp shark from receiving the death penalty by means of cans, flies and maggots.

Looks like it'll just be a batman sprinkler day-in the backyard that I know really enjoy playing in.

Welcome To Crustybeef~
Surprisingly as winded as I was from all that inhaling it didn't stop me from being quite long winded here, somethings will never change.

11 comments:

Kstro said...

Isn't that just the way it goes? Nothing can ever be easy! :)
I want to know what God-awful time you woke up to do all of this and then write about it before your boys woke up??!
My sis and I are working out every morning at 5:30ish at her place on Hale. COME! We always go to Starbucks afterwards for a reward. COME!

Cheryl said...

Lucky for us that you're so long-winded. Sounds like the best kind of party despite the setbacks. Same with the water fun. Yeah for the healthy lungs, although what a pain. You need an electric pump when you get that thing replaced. I use one for our air mattress. Enjoy your summer day. And I wan to go walking and to Starbucks afterwards!

Anonymous said...

Ya know, I think after the first time it went "limp" I would have checked for some sort of air escaping.......
Sorry I missed the shindig.
CHV's!

fiwa said...

I am now faint with hunger after reading that list of goodies. Must go raid the office kitchen for snackles.

lovins!
fiwa

CRUSTY MOM-E said...

JKHCJ: :) I hope to be up to meet you guys! 530am? you arrive there?? I wanna go--but how long do you work out for? don't know if I'll make the sbux run as Bri has to get to his train. :)ps. I made them make their own bfast in order to finish this post- lol!!! :)

Tex: Yeah, I figured you'd be the snarky one to bring that up, and I considered it, but being that it was neatly (sarcasm) packed away, I figured unless a rat chewed threw it for payback from viewing Jaws through a house window on the boob tube, that there'd be zilch of a chance for a hole...dumbass, I know! You missed a good bash--next time..!!!

Cheryl: HA, longwinded and still going. I have two airmattresses that have a plug in the wall inflate thing that is attached to it, therefore not needing an airpump--ha! I actually had found a portable jumper, air compressor thing as well (compliments of a lexus dealership back when we lived in Florida) but when I plugged it in, it didn't work. :(

I bought them a new one today at target a pirate ship thing with a slide and borrowed an airpump from my neighbors on the next block.

Fiwa: make those mystery biscuits they have always been the rage when I've made them-again that Pioneer woman knows her food! UMM! You still hungry? :)

Always,
Elizabeth

austere said...

When ever did you get to sleep?

Sounds like a great party.

Even if you had to huff and puff away.


Something tells me that backyard is going to be used much oftener now. :)
Seems like a quiet, restful place, just right for the kids to whoop and noisen up. :)

CRUSTY MOM-E said...

austere: Hmm,I headed to bed about 2:30and woke about 9:30 which is a very rare thing with the busy youngones in this household. :)
you are absolutely correct, we actually spent the entire afternoon back there yesterday--it was peaceful (the yard) and they were obnoxious (the boys) but everything was safe (no streets!)

happy days, right?
Always,
elizabeth

jAMiE said...

Yummy...sounded like it was a lot of fun and the food sounded ..well, yummy.

Anonymous said...

I like your long winded updates.

Congrats on a great party and staying cool through the swimming pool fiasco.

I can tell you are the life of the neighborhood party!

Jamie said...

Loved this post...

I can just see you...blowing with all your lungs, heart and soul..Poor baby, damn. I know the sprinkler was just as good.

Have a very happy week, my friend.

PS...next party, can I come? teehee
I want to try your wonderful menu.

Hugs, Honey.

:)

Portia said...

Me too- I want a famous fling drink! Sounds like loads of fun:) Shame about the hole, but glad to see it didn't deflate your backyard plans:D