A California Yankee in King Cake's Court

This weekend was very pleasant, sunny but not hot with just the right amount of breeze. It made me miss bicycling, so I went to Wal Mart to see what they had, and instantly fell in love with this:

Seriously, you guys. It was like that scene at the end of the Firefly episode "Out of Gas", where Mal sees Serenity for the first time (only she's not yet Serenity, just some busted-up piece of rusting junk, so I am obviously more shallow than Cap'n Tightpants). I wanted to pull it off the rack and slip a ring on its handlebar. I forced myself to walk away, because a) I wanted to wait a few days for my next paycheck; and b) I couldn't have fit it in my car anyway, I'll need Mom to come with me in her truck. But she will be mine. Oh, yes... she will. Probably Wednesday-ish.

I got some shooting done in my Argus C3, although I didn't finish the roll, and last night I made dinner for Granny again. She's kind of depressed about the upcoming holidays, because she misses Grandpa more during them. Plus a few of the residents in her assisted living home -- ones she actually liked -- have recently died.

Mom says she's also worried about Uncle Larry's memory, but I find the ALZHEIMER'S OMG diagnosis everyone's leaping to a little premature. I mean, the guy was a speedball addict for 2 decades. If a little short term memory loss is the only thing he suffers from in his 60s, he's gotten off easy.

I made turkey sage meatloaf, which I brought up making a couple months back and which Mom came up with about a dozen excuses (it's too different, she doesn't like meatloaf, she's 91 and won't try anything new, blah blah blah) for why Granny wouldn't eat it. The last one was the excuse that seriously made me think this was some bizarre conspiracy against me cooking for my grandmother, for motivations I can't even begin to guess at: "She won't be able to chew it". Right. Because everyone knows meatloaf is up there with like, steak or peanut brittle in the category of foods that are tough to chew even when you're not working with your original 90+ year old teeth. The hell?

So I made it anyway, and Granny liked it (I made a kick-ass gravy; gravy is something that I'm kind of hit-or-miss with but this one was a resounding success), and the first thing she said after finishing was "I like meatloaf, it's one of those things that's easy for me to chew".

HEY MOM YOU WANT A LITTLE SALT WITH THAT CROW YOU'RE EATING

You guys, I love my mother, but there are things she does that make no. fucking. sense. at all. to me. I'm learning she exaggerates the hell out of Granny's fussiness w/r/t food. Yes, like most 91-year-old Cajuns, she's a little picky. (Although she'll eat calves' brains and headcheese, 2 things that I can't even look at or smell, never mind chew and swallow.) It reminds me of how she used to exaggerate Grandpa's hearing loss. I mean okay, yes, when the guy entered his 90s, his hearing suffered a little. You had to pitch your voice a little louder in order for him to hear. But she used to bellow at him as if he were stone deaf. Once he and I were talking and I guess Mom thought I wasn't screaming quite at the top of my voice enough, and she yelled "DAD, CAN YOU HEAR HER?!?!?!" He looked at her mildly and said "I could hear you out in the street."

You have to have known my grandfather to understand how truly devastating that was. I was dying.