Bierocks and other weekend wonders.

Hello.

Well, so far it’s been one great Monday...and how often do you get to say that? And I have our awesome (hello) basement project to thank for it. Because this morning, the crew actually cranked up some really great Mexican music and were SINGING down there!! Priceless. I wanted to head down and take some pictures, just in case they were having some sort of Mexican hoe down or something, but I was afraid to even let them know I was still in the house for fear they’d stop. So I tiptoed around and just enjoyed the free entertainment. Well, free if you don’t count the $35,000 price tag for the basement.

And I’m pleased to report that I had a wonderfully relaxing weekend...mostly because my sister Sally got sick at my house. Which I feel bad about (naturally) but still...it turned into one of those "dream sequence" weekends (except for her being sick of course). I should probably start at the beginning...

You see Sally was coming out for the weekend and we thought...why not have a "prequel" garage sale on Saturday? Prequel because more of the family is coming out next weekend for the REAL family garage sale. But Saturday morning when I came downstairs, Sally informs me that she can’t stand up without feeling dizzy, which then brings on nausea. (With the help of my medical book, I later diagnosed her with either Mineire’s disease, where she possibly could go completely deaf, or the less serious Labyrinthitis, where she just gets to go to bed for a few days, but all this is neither here nor there to the story of my weekend.)

Anyway, so we sat around for a little while, hoping she’d get better, but she didn’t. So instead of garage selling, I spent the day talking to her and puttering around my kitchen (which I actually LOVE to do even though I don’t really know how to cook). And I have to give Sally credit for acting like my near-monologues were interesting, because of course I did most of the talking, trying to keep her mind off her dizziness and all. I mean, sometimes I’d look over there in the middle of a story and she’d be sitting up but her eyes would be closed (which I’m pretty sure meant that she was sick and not bored), and I would carefully bookmark in my mind where I was in that particular story so when she was more alert, I could finish what I was saying.
But anyway, I baked some stuff at first and then thought I would "whip up" some bierocks. Which sounds weird I know, but I’ve had sort of a mini-obsession with bierocks since last summer when I ate some that my friend Angela made for a fundraiser concession stand. And then when Emily brought home that head of cabbage instead of the lettuce I asked for, I started thinking it was probably some kind of sign that I should make my own bierocks.

Of course, just saying I was going to "whip up" some bierocks must tell you that I’d never made bierocks before. Because honestly, now I know there’s no such thing as "whipping up" bierocks. And I want to take this time to publicly apologize to my friend Angela for thinking her churlish when she refused to make some bierocks just for me, even after I practically begged her. Because she did offer to make me some for my birthday. And seriously, after going through the ridiculous amount of chopping and kneading and dough pinching and mess-making involved in this process, I now see that she is perhaps the best friend I ever had for even offering to make me some for my birthday.

So anyway, I did in fact make 36 bierocks on Saturday. And they came out all different shapes and sizes, but since I had formed them with my bare hands, I found them to be quite beautiful and even took the pan in to show sick Sally, and I think she was appropriately impressed. And at that point I was feeling a bit like Scarlett O’hara, when she said she’d NEVER go hungry again, because I was thinking that I’d NEVER make bierocks again, not in this house or any other for that matter. But then I tasted them, and I decided, I MIGHT make them again. Because they were as delicious as they were beautiful. And I figured out why people go to all that trouble, but not for their friends.

Other parts of the weekend deserve some mention. Of course Emily lost her homecoming queen bid Friday night, but to a worthy opponent and friend. And the consolations were some nice sympathy pats on the head, and a text from her cousin Ben welcoming her to "The Club" of family homecoming losers, which includes some of her very favorite people. She told me she sang "we are the losers, we are the losers, no time for winning, cause we are the losers, of the world" to her escorts as they walked off the football field. So all in all, I think she took it pretty well. Not to mention dodging "the kiss" bullet...which had her a tad bit nervous.

There was a sweet part during the evening, when Emily was introduced and they were reading her information. They said the person she admired most was Rachel, because she was always herself, and didn’t worry about what other people thought of her, and because she was always there for Emily, blah blah blah. I was touched of course, but then they bickered for the rest of the weekend, and I decided it was like those funerals where everyone says all this great stuff about the deceased but it’s really just a bunch of hogwash.

And in other weekend news, Rachel had her first symphony concert Sunday afternoon and as I watched and listened to her, I thought this was the coolest AND weirdest thing that any of my kids have done. I mean the music was beautiful and she seemed to enjoy playing, but I couldn’t help singing under my breath, "one of these things is not like the others..." because she doesn’t exactly fit in with the other musicians, who mostly could be either her parents or grandparents. Emily came along willingly to the concert, probably because we were eating out beforehand, but we basically had to drag David with us and promise him some sort of reward for inflicting the pain of classical music upon him. But he did perk up a bit when they played the "Variations on a Sea Chantey" which apparently is a Sponge Bob favorite, and when they played some Halloween-ish song where one violinist would let loose a blood-curdling scream every so often. So all in all, it was a nice afternoon.

I believe Dave had a nice weekend too. Although I’m not sure he enjoyed having to load and unload and load and unload the tables for the garage sale, with no resulting decrease in the junk in our house. Also, he had to attend David’s cross country meet Saturday morning by himself because I was busy holding Sally’s hand and making bierocks. But David did well, placing 10th and getting another gaudy medal, so that was some consolation.

So that’s about it. I didn’t mean to drone on and on, but it’s what I do.

And I had a lovely lunch with Rachel at Ranchito where I enjoyed the single combination.