Breakfast Musings

This is my typical breakfast these days - sharing because I love it and I can't be the only one who would:

Start with a truly, bona fide non-stick pan.  Not the 20 year old non-stick pan that smells like tires when you heat it up.  It needs to be honestly non-stick-glue-tar-and-fat-free-turkey-bacon-all-slide-off-this-thing-non-stick.

Turn it up to low-med heat.  Sprinkle your favorite shredded cheese around the bottom of the pan to just cover it.  Cheddar and Havarti work well.  Next comes a great big fistfull of cooking greens.  I like the ridiculously named and packaged "Super Greens" in the bright Barbie Pink bag with spinach, bok choy and chard.  Add a drizzle of oil or butter and the seasoning that suits you.  Next crack in two or three whole eggs on top and cover.

The eggs will somewhat poach in the steamy green juice.  The cheese will remain unburnt for about 10 minutes.  Less for cheddar, more for havarti, but keep an eye on it no matter what.  When the eggs are done through,  fold it over like an inside-out omelet on your plate and enjoy.

As long as you don't overcook it or put the heat too high, the greens should be tender and juicy, the eggs done through, and the cheese somewhere between leathery white and crispy brown.

Rather healthy, and delish if I'm allowed to say so myself.

Simple names

Most of the parts of a guitar have 1 syllable names.

I told you so

Not sure if being able to say "I told you so," is really worth it.  If someone is about to do something incredibly damaging, and you know it, and you don't try to convince them of it, are you culpable?

Robin Williams is Dead to Me...and Everyone Else Too I Suppose.

This Robin Williams thing has gotten me thinking.  Everything gets me thinking, but I don't dwell on things quite this much usually.  A celebrity dies, a public figure, a famous person, whatever you call them, whatever it means to be famous, most of the time when they die I do little more than shrug.  Once in a while I'll go "Aww."  But now and then a celebrity death makes me sort of balk.  And it seems when that happens, I am confounded as to why *this* celebrity suddenly means so much dead when surely they meant less to me than others.  This happened with Heath Ledger.  Loved him in the handful of movies he managed to make before he died.  Lovely, lovely man. Really divine....  Yum.    Anyway. That's not enough to make me mourn someone - is it?  Now as for Robin.  I don't think I ever thought of him as especially attractive.  Though I love a funny man and he was very much that.  Michael Jackson.  Surely he helped define my childhood.  I had a poster of him in my room, I listened to every damn thing he recorded, played his videos over and over.  He was fascinating, incredible.  I barely shrugged when he died.  Is it the persons ranking in my consciousness when they die that determines how I feel about it?  I had heard Robin's name mentioned a few times in recent months I guess.  New Mrs. Doubtfire coming out.  Not sure I was thrilled with that idea.  And I don't think two days ago he was very close to the surface of my thoughts at all...
So maybe it's my comparison to my mom.  She was also 63.  I didn't realize RW was younger then my mother.  I somehow assumed he was a bit older than her.  But he killed himself quite intentionally it seems.  I can't help thinking about how much of a dick move that was.   I've been thinking about his family.  How could he possibly think that no one needed him, or that his depression was more important than his family's happiness?
But then I can't compare Heath Ledger to my mom.  He died before she did.  And, well he was a hell of a lot more attractive than her.  So what's the deal?  Why do some strangers mean more to me than others?



Update:  Oh.  I'm a fucking idiot, that's why.  He died on my mother's birthday.  I love it when I'm dense.

Binkectomy #4

We've taken away the binkies again.  Right now J is up in his bed in a dimly-lit room with a lullaby playing, comfy pajamas, his favorite animals, and he sounds like he is possessed by the devil's devil, if there is such a thing.  The screams coming out of that room are like demonic tongues being fed through a wood chipper.  Hell hath no fury like a toddler deprived of his binky.  I wish he could keep it, but his teeth look terrible.  Maybe he'll thank me later?  That would be nice.

awful

The worst drink I have ever had is this: Gin, a splash of red wine, and olive juice.

Children's television

There is something to be said for kid's programming, and that something is usually "Oh for God's sake please turn off the God-Damn purple dinosaur".  That having been said many times by now, certainly, the programs my kids watch (I will not tolerate Barney no way no how) seem somehow better than most of the stuff I remember having to endure in the presence of young kids in the past.  Now, I realize that I wasn't an adult back when I was a kid....I'll give you a second to process the stupidity of that idea.... so maybe if I could go back with adult eyes and look at the crap that was geared toward young kids when I was a teen, maybe I'd find some appreciation for it.  It seems obvious from the standpoint of a wizened (snort) cynical adult that the reason it seems like the stuff I watched when I was little was awesome, sucked when I was a teen, and then got awesome again now that I'm all growed up, is that being a teen makes you think you know everything and a certain amount of that attitude sticks to your memories like adhesive from Rugrat's stickers you left all over your favorite shirt and forgot to remove before you put in the laundry.

  BUT.  I'm genuinely impressed with some of the stuff I use when I need to get my kids out of my hair for 20 minutes.  From an episode of Sesame Street today, granted, a bastion of kids programming, but still better today that it was long ago I think: Elmo: hahah, Dorothy is imagining Elmo is a Jazz musician playing a violin!  (Dorothy is Elmo's pet goldfish.  For the uninitiated, they do this every episode.  There is a theme and we see a though bubble coming from the goldfish bowl with Elmo dressed up or transformed into this particular....thing.)  In response, a talking violin who is supposed to sound like Rodney Dangerfield I guess says "we're going to watch a  fish think?  This'll be exciting."  whereas in all other segments of Elmo's world before this, it was simply an accepted fact that Dorothy the fish imagines Elmo as what-have-you every episode and we never really question how or why.  Then there was Timmy Time.  A lackluster spin off of Shaun the Sheep which is itself a spin-off of Wallace and Grommet.   There is no dialog, just animal sounds that fill in for speech and we're left to make assumptions about the conversations they have.  Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes not so much, but there you have it, whatever its worth.  Today Timmy imagined himself a pirate.  Again with the animal fantasies, I know, maybe this is the standard of comedy now - in his fantasy he is wearing all the trappings of piratehood; eyepatch, parrot, etc.  But he's still a sheep, so what does he say that still fits with the no-dialog format as he looks through his spyglass?  "Baaaarrrrrr!"
I have to admit.  I laughed.  Something happens in most of these shows that makes me laugh, but I wonder if the writers/creators have really gotten better at throwing us parent's a bone now and then, or if they've always been doing that and when I was a kid ai was too jaded or stupid to notice.