Call me Popeye

After a weekend learning about the indelicacies of White Castle, I was prepared to take it easy on my internal system this week. I did a fairly decent job of placating my angry intestines and was rewarded with an amazing chicken pot pie at Tina Noel's Euchre Club. (Julie and I also won but that's another story...)

Next up was Friday Book Club, and as we were reading a book based in India, Indian food was the theme. I'm the only one in my house who loves spinach, and hoping there would be left-overs, I had offered to bring the creamed spinach and cheese dish I always start with at the Indian buffet -- saag paneer.

So Friday comes and I go to a great Broad Ripple Indian restaurant we love, wondering how to order this dish, which is generally a side.  We always eat in when we go there, and I had zero ideas about the actual quantity I needed, let alone whether they had an adequate take-out bowl to put it in.

Here's where not wanting to admit I had difficulty with the waiter's accent came back to bite me. He quite rightly initially assumed I wanted lunch, then thought I wanted to order dinner carryout. 

I explained that I only wanted enough spinach to feed a party of eight as part of a pitch-in offering. Oh, and while I was at it, I might have an appetizer, too, also enough for eight.

We were having a great conversation. Everyone was happy. He asked if I also wanted Naan -- the bread they make on premises. I declined, saying another Book Club member was on Naan duty. "It's a pitch-in," I said, again, thinking that explained everything. 

"You'll need rice, then," he said, clearly worried about me not having Naan. Shalimar's Naan is amazing and he was aright to wonder why I was skipping it.

I thought, "OK, sure," and pictured our Chinese carry-out which always has at least one white carton of rice. 

"Soup?" he asked.

Their lentil soup is also amazing. "Sure," I thought. "I'll skip bringing wine and alert Kate so she can adjust if need be."

He tells me it'll be ready in 25 minutes and off I trot to the other errands on my list. I go back to the restaurant. He greets me with two bags, one medium-sized and one small. I'm thrilled. He says he'll help me carry it out.

I'm sure I looked at him funny. From the Book Club book, I've learned a little about traditional Indian culture, which is heavy on the man being charge. But I can carry two bags. And then I see the rest of my order.

The spinach was in a 9x3 aluminum pan. If my math is correct, that's at least 12 cups of saag paneer. A nutritionist will tell you that a serving of saag paneer is 3/4 of a cup.

That pan of yummy goodness was big enough to roast a Thanksgiving turkey if you're feeding a family of four. And with it was an equally sized pan of rice. 

I had apparently indicated that our dinner of eight was vegetarian and that we would be eating only spinach, rice, soup and vegetable samosa. And that "pitch-in" meant I alone (other than the phantom Naan supplier) was feeding this small army of anti-carnivores.

I swallowed hard, smiled brightly and handed over my credit card. The overage was entirely my fault for not just owning up to the language/accent barrier. So, I had saag paneer for lunch. And then I had more at Book Club. I have a couple tubs in my freezer, too.

Later that night, I was in bed shielding my ears from the angry shouting of my intestinal tract and wondering if you could die from spinach poisoning. And if I did die from it, would I be found in a puddle of green ooze? Was there a green-tinged cloud of noxious vapor hovering over me already?

Turns out spinach can, indeed, be toxic. It's the oxalic acid that'll do you in. The interwebs told me, it would take about 25 grams of oxalic acid to cause death in a 145-pound person, which is about 7.3 pounds of spinach. 

That's about 14 bags of grocery-story spinach, right? Cooking spinach greatly reduces its size, so what does 7.3 pounds of cooked spinach look like, I wondered. Plus, saag paneer has other ingredients in it, so after much internal anxiety, I decided I'd probably survive the night. Spoiler alert: I did.

But at 2 a.m., I wasn't as confident as I am now. It's possible I prayed not to wake up dead. And that any residual gaseousness wouldn't do in the Captain.

This morning, all I can hear is Popeye's song ringing in my head. If you run into me this week and I say, "Well, blow me down," in response to your news, don't be surprised.

"I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm Popeye the sailor man.

I'm strong to the fin-ich

'cause I eats me spin-ach,

I'm Popeye the sailor man!"

In Alison news, we are still in the college exploration stage. She's been accepted at a few schools already so we know she'll be going somewhere. But she has a few more interviews with fancy schools to go and then the wait for whether she'll go farther in their process.

If you happen to get a call from an Ivy League school looking for intel on the redhead, don't tell them about this blog.

Le Chateau de Blanc and Chateau de Pee-ew

I don't mean to cause any trouble here, but last night I had my first night on my new mattress with a proper foundation. I also had my first White Castle experience. The two will be forever enshrined in my olfactory system.

For those of you not blessed with White Castle in your region, it's a mostly Midwest burger chain that some people -- mostly men despite the photos on its website -- claim is next to manna from Heaven. There's even a White Castle Hall of Fame for those who've gone to great lengths to satisfy "the crave" -- think helicopter delivery to people at sea or in other areas of wilderness where there's not "Whitey" delivery.

Somehow I had escaped the actual eating of a slider lo these many years in Hoosierland. My friend Peter used to bring them in by the truckload at Angie's List, and Jeff always includes it in the rotation when we're trying to find something fast to eat.

Last night at the Christ the King Trivia Night, I caved. They're two-bite sized little things. Warm and fragrant, they have onions and pickles. I love pickles. The wait staff convinced Jeff he needed onion fries and crinkle fries as well, so we had those, too. (Knowing we'd have a bunch of bad-for-us-food, I brought a veggie platter with garlic hummus as one of our apps as well.)

I had three sliders and a good portion of both kinds of fries along with champagne (because, if you're going to drink, you should drink champagne) M&Ms, some jalapeno things, a cheesy-cauliflower bacon thing and some guilt-laced portions of the veggies because I'd gone off the rails dietarily.

There were more than 400 people packed into the CKS gym, and they were loud. Particularly the tables around me. Which was a good thing.

Because one of the side effects of White Castle sliders is flatulence. Thanks for that warning, Jeff. Yeah. Like, a lot. Jeff bought 18 sliders. Some with cheese. There were none remaining so I'm pretty sure we gassed up the place like it's never been gassed before. (It's a gym, so thank the good Lord for high ceilings.)

I'm not one to embrace the fart. It's just not my thing. Jeff celebrates them like it's the Fourth of July, and he's passed this on to Alison. I was just thankful Beth Harriman's party was having a good, loud time.

On the way home, I was discussing my dissatisfaction with the cuisine. More precisely with it's residue, and Jeff laughed. He has a buddy whose new wife won't let him have White Castle sliders if he's going to be in their home. She's away for six days.

What's said buddy doing? Indulging his crave, of course. Probably for all six days. I should have Jeff tell him to light a three-wick candle in every room the night before she comes home. Although a spark might send his house up in a ball of greasy slider fire.

But I spoke of my bed. Yeah. It's finally perfect. Right now it's airing out. It's a good thing I have a lot of candles.

My spate of cleaning last week was inspired by a project to clean my bedroom that came about because we got a new mattress. Getting the mattress meant getting the old box springs and mattress down to the guest bedroom downstairs, getting that set of mattress and box springs up to the back porch awaiting donation to a friend.

You'd think the struggle of moving over-sized, unwieldy items down and around the stairs would have tired me out. But the size of the dust bunnies under the bed frame prompted the cleaning of the floor. That led to the realization that the dust on the top rows of the curtains had to go and then the walls and and then it became an all-out war on the whole house.

Meanwhile, the Captain was in home improvement heaven. He'd done all the research to determine what mattress we wanted and what foundation it would need. He'd gone to Lowe's. He'd gotten out his power tools. He'd measured and sawed and drilled and created the precise number of horizontal slats at the precise width apart and then created new legs running below that to give further support to the Casper foam mattress that arrived via mail because that's how we do things now.

He really worked hard. He'd done a great job. And no blood was spilled during the construction project. We'd avoided any marital spats ala the famous front walk project where he'd come home after I'd spent all morning digging out old stepping stones, widening the path and laying down new, bigger stones. I was sweaty. My arms were approaching noodle status and I had whole families of blisters on my hands. "Did you research the best way to do that?" he'd greeted me. "Did you use a level to be sure the ground is even?"

I was pretty sure we'd divorce before we got the stones in place, or kill each other, but somehow we managed to keep the stones on the ground and not swing a shovel too close to each other's heads.

In Jeff's defense, research is an important part of any project and I confess that I often will dive right into an idea only to find that if I'd slowed down a bit and examined the right way to do something, I'd be better off. (Those stepping stones were no where close to level when he came home...)

While he was exploring the best foundation for the new mattress, he'd asked me if I would be open to having it on a simple bed frame instead of in our sleigh bed frame. "No," I'd replied, not even looking up.

"How about on the floor?" he'd asked. "The hardwood would be good support."

I'd looked up at that one. "We are grown-ups. We sleep in a bed," I'd decreed.

He muttered something about me being an old lady as he turned back to his research, but I stood, well, firm. And thus, he decided we could keep our bed frame, but the current system that held the traditional box spring wasn't worthy.

While he created a better support system, I cleaned in different parts of the house. I quite purposefully stayed out of his way as he trotted back and forth with tools and lumber. Genius, right? I've learned a few things in our 20+ years together...

So. He finishes the slat project. The mattress arrives. We un-box it. I saw it, and I thought to myself. "Hmmm." But I didn't voice anything. I was hoping the thing would inflate a bit after having all the air sucked out of it so it would fit in the box. I think I didn't comment out loud. Here's what it looked like when we first installed it.

In my head, I thought, "No way, buster," but out loud, I think I said, "Uh, honey. Does that look a little low to you?"

He shook me off. He thought it would be fine. We just needed to get used to the look of it.

"Lay down on it and see if it's more firm and better than the old one," he suggested.

I did just that. Now, Jeff is almost a foot taller than me. Our old bed required me to jump up a little to get into it. I had to stoop a little to get into it. I felt like Snow White stumbling into the dwarves' house.

"I feel like I'm sleeping on the floor," I said.

"You'll get used to it," he said.

My pillow fell through a crack between the mattress and the top of the head board that was about the size of a pass-thru between a diner kitchen and the counter area. Later that night, I got out of bed to go to the bathroom, and I stumbled because I was used to sliding down a little bit. In this bed, I had to kind of climb up out of it.

I don't know how to describe how I felt laying in that bed because I've never really thought about the height at which I've slept before. But you've camped out, right? When you camp out, you know you're sleeping on the ground. You don't think about your position in the universe, there's just a lot of it on top of you.

The mattress is great. It was beautifully supported and I did sleep better than in the old one. Jeff did too, but he claims I drift over to him and move around a lot and that keeps him up. The old mattress had formed a bit of a trough which made it easier for me to roll over onto his side. The new one, of course, doesn't have that and apparently I keep more to myself now.

Horizontally, it was lovely. Vertically, though. And it looked weird!!!!

"It's fine," said the man. "You'll get used to it. We are the only ones who see our bedroom, anyway."

When I suggested -- again -- we needed to elevate the mattress, Jeff was less-than-enthused. He had done the research, the work and he had done a great job. It's true.

"Fine," he finally said. "But you're doing the box spring research."

We ended up with a steel box spring that's suggested for the mattress we have. It came UPS. He worked to improve the wooden structure he'd built -- yay! power tools -- and I read the instructions. They were more pictures than words, but I bent to the task.

It didn't take long at all, and of course it required a little more cleaning after all the cardboard bits and pieces were collected.

Alison was home while we worked on this, and she's witnessed our attempts to work together. She found herself a nest in the living room and put on her headphones. (The girl has learned a few things over the years...)

We used all the parts that came with the thing and assembled the steel box. It's literally a steel box with vertical slats covered in a zippered fabric shell. Its light, but strong and will be all the box spring we will ever need.

"I bet that the support you built will make this even better," I said, sucking up a tiny bit, but honestly believing it, too.

It's slightly lower than the old set but I don't have to jump up to get into it. The pillows don't slide underneath the head board and when I go to the bathroom at night, I slide off and over rather than having to climb up to the floor like I'm on a submarine.

Here's what it looks like now. Not that anyone but the Captain and I will ever see it...

It's better, right?! And we are still married...

For the love of God, please

Please don't ever look too closely at the tops of your kitchen cabinet doors. Or the little bit of cabinetry that surrounds your stove. Don't wonder if your hand can fit under that bottom drawer under your oven. And don't consider checking out the back of your free-standing microwave.

These are places you should should never, ever think about.

Heed my warning or you'll end up spending most of your Sunday morning on your hands and knees scrubbing at grime and grease that's been living in those spaces rent-free and happy as a grimy lark for years.

Unless you're better than me and deep clean more often. I made the mistake of looking at the spaces I tend to ignore after telling the Captain I was almost out of Costco's Kirkland disinfectant cleaning wipes. It was an innocent mistake. I'd nearly emptied the packet of them I had upstairs in a bid to eliminate some of the grossness of sharing a bathroom with a man.

To be fair, I shed hair like a Shetland sheepdog undergoing chemotherapy. It's gross, too. But my white tiled bathroom floor is clean now, and there's not a speck of dribble on the porcelain throne.

And it turned out that when the Chief Dribbler and Shopper of the family came home with a new case of cleaning cloths, I was actually almost out of the first pack of the 3-pack they come in. When I realized I was now over-stocked with the handy cloths, I decided to wipe down the kitchen counters.

I was done with that and ready to read the paper when I made the mistake of opening one of the cabinet doors, cleaning cloth in hand.

Ever looked at the inside of your kitchen cabinet doors? DON'T DO IT. Otherwise, if you're a real human being with a real human family, you'll see a CSI unit's DNA wet dream.

Neither Jeff nor Alison is particularly tidy in the kitchen. And they're in the kitchen a lot. I don't usually complain because I tend to get some tasty treats out of the deal. I also get dishpan hands cleaning up after them.

One memorable cookie extravaganza of Ali's left a film of powdered sugar over the entire room. This was AFTER she'd cleaned up. The cookies were beautiful and delicious, I grant you. Jeff can't heat up soup without leaving spots of it from heating source to bowl. (There's a pattern here...)

Anyway, most my kitchen is sparkling right now. I finished the open pack and got about half-way through the second in my original Costco case.

I had to play chauffeur before I got to the inside of the refrigerator, and I ended that task with a trip to the gym. In a surprising turn of events, I managed to keep from driving through the drive-thrus of the multiple Dairy Queens I passed. I was hoping to keep from eating until after the gym, and I did! Personal record, Tracy Wiseman: I didn't eat until 4 p.m. when I got home.

And no, I didn't cook any of it. Thank God for leftovers. I'm too exhausted to tackle the inside of the fridge. If I get my way, it'll be take-out menus for the rest of the month.

They Saw Her Coming

I'm not saying Alison Reed is a glutton, but she has the appetite of a lumberjack in that skinny little body of hers. This is what she left behind after our annual Christmas Eve dinner in 2017:

And this is what greeted us when we arrived back at the site of our Christmas Eve foray this year:

In case you missed it, the sign limits customers to one plate of crab legs.

Despite the limitation, she dove back into the crab, extolling its deliciousness to anyone who would listen. Later, after she'd gorged on other treats, she made room for ice cream. She dripped a bit on her skirt. She snatched up the ice cream with a finger.

"Hmm," she said. "Tastes like crab."

Just as she has every year since she discovered crab, our delicate flower reeked on the way home.

Our Maine Christmas was amazing, as always. We worked a tiny bit of the excess off with a trip to a local skating rink that's conveniently situated on a bay, but also across the parking lot from Bissel Brothers brewing. A little fun for everyone on the party.

We had our usual cookie day, where despite years of honing our decorating talents, Auntie Mary kicked our butts with her better detailing. Yes, Alison turned a stocking into a crab claw. She's a little fixated.

We scored our usual bags of loot and spent lots of great, quality time with the Reeds of Maine. It's awesome there. Except for the times when the snow is taller than me, of course. And the wind howls, sending sub-zero temperatures down your shirt. We'll brave it, though. The benefits are worth it.

Oh, side note: I whined a while ago that I couldn't squeeze myself into my wedding dress, which was the dress I'd planned to wear New Year's Eve to the Indy Masquerade. The good news is, I did manage to get into the thing, zip it and still breathe. I could have worn it if I'd wanted to, but I still have a few more pounds to go to make it slip on with a whisper instead of a gasp.

Following a pattern set by my friend Anna, I started shopping at a vintage Goodwill boutique (it's a separate shop from the main site, where I'd started out but didn't find anything that worked) and found a velvet dress for -- get this: $16 and needed only a small hem to make it work. It did the trick and looked super fancy. Had I not told you where I'd gotten it, you'd have thought it would have required at least another zero.

Happy New Year, everyone.