I Think We’re Just Out of Waldorfs. And Coppertone.
I hope everyone had a nice holiday weekend. I celebrated as I normally do, commemorating the original colonies by eating 13 pounds of potato salad. I made smitten kitchen’s Rosanne Cash’s Americana Potato Salad Adapted from Bon Appetit. I altered the recipe slightly by omitting the fresh dill, thus I am eligible to add my own name to the recipe title, but I won’t because recipe cards are only so big. I have nothing against fresh dill; I just didn’t have any. There were packets marked “fresh dill” at the grocery store, but the dill appeared to have been harvested during the Eisenhower administration; thus, I did what I usually do when I need fresh herbs, which is that I ignore that part of the recipe. My verdict on the salad: eh. I mean, I still ate it like I was going to the chair, but it was just okay.
My neighbors down the block closed down the street and set off fireworks, and since my house didn’t burn down as a result, I am prepared to declare those okay as well. Fireworks used to be legal within the city limits, which means people would buy boxes of those sparkly but relatively safe and quiet fireworks from temporary stands manned by guys with names like Stub or Pegleg, and set them off on the sidewalk. That was always kind of nice. Then one year, someone got the bright idea of making firecrackers legal as well, which mainly resulted in everyone losing an eye. The following year firecrackers were outlawed, and at some point soon thereafter all fireworks were outlawed for use within the city. Consequently, now instead of buying a few sparklers and the occasional Whistling Pete from a neighborhood stand, people figure that if they’re going to break the law they might as well go all out, so they stock up on Roman candles and M-80s from a nearby reservation and scare the crap out of all dogs, cats, and cranky middle-aged stunningly beautiful spinsters.
For about a week before the Fourth, local news outlets reminded everyone that fireworks are illegal and gave a number to call to report anyone who was using them. Uh, yeah. I’m sure calling that number would be super effective. I once tried to report gunfire across the street and couldn’t get anyone to show up. For fireworks, they probably don’t even answer the phone. Besides, even if anyone were prepared to enforce that ban, reporting fireworks on the Fourth of July tends to fall into the category of “this is too pissy even for me.” So instead I just hosed down the roof, made sure my cat could get to all of her standard hiding places, and ate potato salad.
Aside from bloating, the other thing I did this weekend was I had coffee with a friend I haven’t seen in six or seven years. You know how fireworks are really exciting and cool for about three minutes and then you get sort of bored and wonder when it will be over? Well, this was like that. She and her husband are thinking of buying a house in my neighborhood, so she called me up on Friday afternoon and said, “I’m driving around your block, and I remembered your phone number! Isn’t that funny?” Well, no, but I already answered the phone, so YES! Then she said, “What’s new?” I haven’t seen her since probably 2002 and she asks me what’s new. Already, this bodes ill. At any rate, we ended up at Starbucks, where we got completely caught up in about eight and half minutes, and then she started fooling around with her iPhone and I tried to drink the rest of my Coffee Frappuccino as quickly as I could without inducing brain freeze. Then she said, “that guy has a nice ass,” at a volume slightly louder than conversational, causing said dude to turn and smile in our direction, and I decided the hell with my synapses and drank the remaining six ounces of frozen coffee in 0.2 seconds. That was three days ago, and my ears are still ringing a little. We will probably get together again in 2016, unless I’m busy.
Before parting, she told me to look her up on Facebook. I’m not on Facebook, but I told her I would, so I had to at least make an attempt at it. If you’re not a member, Facebook will let you see the person’s picture and a partial friends list. I just saw her earlier that day, so her picture was not all that interesting to me, but her friends list was another story. I saw a couple of people I used to know, which led me to their photos and their friend lists and I ended up finding a lot of people used to know many years ago, and I have come to the following conclusion: everyone I used to know is old.
WHY IS EVERYONE SO OLD? My god. I must have counted 27 jowls. I haven’t been this depressed since my high school reunion. Sunscreen and Nicoderm, people, SUNSCREEN AND NICODERM!
There’s really no such thing as BAD potato salad, is there? Even the mayonnaisey stuff from the grocery store is still pretty much edible.
We’ve all got our collective panties in wads here because the 25-minute “official” fireworks display ended after only 13 minutes, due to an explosion at the launch pad. Can’t we all just replay those 13 minutes in our heads and be good? I can. Apparently many can’t.
Potato salad is pretty hard to ruin, but the sandwich place near my office manages it. Theirs is nothing more than undercooked new potatoes tossed in vinaigrette and sprinkled with green flecks. I think it’s dill.
“…like I was going to the chair”. Love it!! I will be filed into my repertoire next to “…like it was my job”. Thank you.
I hate when people are all “hey, I haven’t seen you in 20 years, but I’ll be in your town so let’s meet up”. And 8.5 minutes of catching up? You beat my record by, like, 7 minutes. (What can I say? I didn’t know that many interesting people 20 years ago. Most of them are still hanging out at the Gas’N’ Sip waxing poetic about relationships with high school girls.)
I’m not big on reuniting either. I feel like I see everyone from the past who I want to see, and if we’ve fallen out of contact, there’s no need to ruin a good thing.
I’m assuming one of the “cranky middle-aged stunningly beautiful spinsters” spooked by fireworks is you, because the other one is me! Of course, I could be wrong, you could be the devastating young lad with the elegant beard or the wise labrador who retrieves hearts and tennis balls. Ain’t the internet grand? Except for Facebook. I signed up in a moment of social confidence mixed with vile curiousity, and now I’m bombarded by highschool classmates who share neither my passions nor my politics, but who do sport my (stunningly beautiful) jowls.
I don’t feel I should identify myself further because it wouldn’t be fair to the other spinsters or, depending on how things shake out, the other Labradors.
That’s a rather standard recipe for potato salad, perfectly edible but nothing special. I toss the potatoes while still warm with some oil and lemon juice and let them cool before I do the rest. Then they get chives, parsley, just enough mayo, onions that I soaked in the brine from Kosher pickles (then drained off), and a good dose of white pepper. Just before serving, crumbled bacon is stirred in so it maintains its crispness.
You’re right- I, too, have seen a few people I went to school with, and for the most part, everyone but us looks like total crap.
When I went to my 20-year reunion, I looked significantly better than I did in high school, and one woman said in an overly cheerful way, “everyone is talking about how DIFFERENT you look, but I don’t think you’ve changed a bit!” I really had to admire the artistry of the insult.
Ohhh, bacon in the potato salad. I think my life just changed.
I don’t know what is with those “friend collectors” on Facebook. I have already officially “ignored” about a third of my high school. Most of those people didn’t even talk to me in high school either, and I think some of them used to make fun of me behind my back. I’m sure they are now crying because they are unable to read my supremely witty and thought-provoking status updates.
I wouldn’t mind being on someone’s friend list and having them toss the occasional goat (or whatever) at me, if we could just leave it at that. But I know it would devolve into people wanting to meet up as though we’re actual friends, culminating in a multi-level marketing pitch.
I am in the minority here- I got on Facebook, reconnected with a few girls I had not seen in 20 years- then planned my vacation around extending the meet-ups. But I hear you- people get old…. I guess they do that to remind me that I am also old- because I am not noticing it happening.
Glad you survived the 4th singe-free
As I get older, I find that selective blindness is a a wonderful thing. Then someone takes a candid photo of me, and I have to put curse on that person.
Did you actually use the word “spinster”? I’m thinking that using that word puts you in the AARP honorary member section. Next thing you know, you’ll be on FB arranging more 8.5 minute meet ups with your former buds to drink frappaccino and compare bunions.
Unmarried women over 40 are reclaiming the word and divesting it of the derogatory power attached to it by, well, people like you. STOP BEING PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Ooo… my 20 year reunion is in a couple of weeks – I should count the jowls. Although at my 10 year, I was shocked to see that most everyone had aged very well, despite a curious lack of birth control among the group. I’d thought that people my age weren’t having 4 and 5 and 6 kids anymore, but this trend had evidently been lost on my former classmates.
At my 20-year, the women actually had not aged badly at all, but the men: ook. I guess sunscreen is not macho. In general, my classmates had a reasonable number of children, but I was surprised at how many stay-at-home moms there were. More than half of the women didn’t work outside the home. I hope that’s not that half that falls into the 51%-of-all-marriages-end-in-divorce category or they’re going to have some scrambling to do.
Oh. Those really loud firecrackers are called M-80s? No wonder people look at me funny when I talk about the M-16s. In Hoosierland, firecrackers used to be illegal, but you could buy them at those temporary stands as long as you signed an affidavit saying you were going to use them out-of-state. What a joke. So they changed the law so you could buy just about anything and set it off almost anytime. Then all those cats, dogs, and spinsters started complaining, so now there are designated firecracker days. In previous years, the 4th sounded like a war zone around here, but I think the economy has made a dent in the pyro budgets of my neighbors because things were relatively calm around here last week. It also helps to have a house between your house and the yard where all the action is occurring. But what REALLY amazed me was everything quieted down at 11pm! Did hell freeze over and no one told me?
I think an M-16 is a rifle, so they don’t generally get used until people are out of M-80s. I was also surprised by how early it got quiet here. At midnight, everything just stopped. It was like, “nope, 5th of July!” Weird. We also haven’t had any loud booming noises on subsequent days, which is also unusual.
“Aside from bloating”…. I love that!
I’m still a little full, actually.
A hot and sultry post-Fourth of July greeting to you from hot and sultry post-Fourth of July Tampa Bay. We (Mrs. RWP and I) are returning to our beloved mountain foothills of north Georgia tomorrow to rejoin the horses and cows and chickens and goats (note I do not say our horses and cows and chickens and goats, because they’re not, any more than the winding two-lane country roads instead of super-wide interstate expressways are ours) once again. This has absolutely nothing to do with your humorous post, but what the hey….
In an attempt to keep it relevant, the Homestyle Potato Salad at Publix tastes remarkably like Mrs. RWP’s. The New York style and Southern style do not [taste anything like Mrs. RWP's].
That’s a lot of information, but I like goats, so I will let it stand unedited.
Tanning (or fake baking, as we called it) was the thing to do for most popular and wannabe popular girls at my high school. I saw pictures of the ten year reunion, and wow those women looked old and leathery already. It made me kind of happy, I admit.
I like professional fireworks, but neighborhood ones annoy me. I worry too much that some kid is going to blow his hand off. This year in Minneapolis, a man was pissed that a 14 year old kid was shooting off fireworks, so the man SHOT the kid. That man has moved beyond curmudgeon territory into psycho territory, I think.
That is an AWFUL story, so I don’t know why it makes me laugh. People. So insane. I hope the kid is okay.
One of the people who didn’t show up at my reunion was the girl who was voted “Best Figure” our senior year. (I don’t know if classes still do this, but it was the 80s and we were savages.) Someone who had seen her said that she had gotten fat and everyone’s face lit up. I would feel bad about that, but she was so conceited back then and used to give people shit about their weight, so I’m mostly okay with it.
Ha! Next time my dad calls my 27 year old sister a spinster and she gives me that “Oh my God, our Dad” eyebrow raise, I will inform her that it is the hip thing to be called.
He calls your TWENTY-SEVEN year-old sister a spinster? Ai yi yi. I assume he’s kidding, but if not, I hope he has good long-term care insurance.
I love potato salad but haven’t had it for a while. This post made me realize that I have a huge gaping hole in my life that must be remedied immediately. You think the boss would have a problem with me asking to go home early because I need to make some potato salad?
I hate fireworks. My kids are going to grow up hating me because I robbed them of this experience but I figure they’re going to hate me for something, right? Might as well still have all fingers and limbs attached.
One of my professors once canceled class because he had to cook a brisket, so I don’t see why you can’t take off early for potato salad. In fact, you could get together with my professor and have a picnic.
We usually go all out for the 4th, but this year was really boring. We didn’t do anything, except go stand in the yard, and behind every big tree there were the visible sprinkles of what looked like really marvelous fireworks from somewhere fun, so mostly I watched a Mummy movie through the window of our neighbor’s house on their new t.v. the size of Rhode Island, and then I took a bath. I love potato salad. I’m a Facebook Flunkie. That about covers it.
(I did read something sweet once where someone was in England on the 4th and saw a sign that said “Happy Birthday, America. Love, Mum”)
Okay, this comment cracks me up, maybe because I once watched a basketball game through my neighbor’s window. I don’t even like basketball, but I was mesmerized by the 60-inch screen.
I see fireworks, potato salad, and jowls have already been covered in the comments here, so I will talk about fresh herbs instead. I had the same problem the last time I tried to buy dill. I like your solution of simply ignoring that part of the recipe. The danger in that plan is that I might start to omit EVERYTHING I don’t have on hand, which some days could leave me making a recipe with nothing but salt. Probably not a good idea.
But if you mix the salt with water, you’d have soup! Since someone might be getting ready to tell us we can grow our own herbs, I will just preemptively tell them on behalf of both of us to shut up.
I am on the verge of being a facebook flunkie, but if you decide to join, let me know. I’d be happy to throw something at you. And I’ll spare you the meet up, because you just live too damn far away.
If you are willing to throw things at me, I would like to request (a) cash and (b) waffles.
I sat home alone on the 4th by choice because I didn’t want to go hang out with a large gathering of rednecks in the metro-Atlanta town my brother lives in for the fireworks display at the Georgia International Horse Park built for the 1996 Olympics (my brother is an exception and not a redneck by the way). It wasn’t just to avoid the rednecks – I also try to avoid the odor of horse manure whenever I have a choice in the matter. No, instead I sat on my sofa and listened to a combination of fireworks and gunshots in my area of downtown. The gunshots are a fairly regular sound, usually followed by the sound of police helicopters flying overhead, but the fireworks are a nice touch a couple of times a year for July 4th and New Year’s Eve.
I am not surprised that the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau has never offered me a job based on the glowing descriptions I offer of my hometown.
The first step to recovery is admitting your brother is a redneck. But at least the Atlanta police show up when there’s gunfire. Here, the police evidently will respond to fireworks, but not necessarily to gunfire. Because they might get hurt.
But you could grow your own herbs!
WE’VE ALREADY COVERED THIS!
You crack me up. I’ll be seeing some high-school friends tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll think the same thing – not everybody ages as gracefully as we do, obviously! Ha
In general, I don’t think people should fight the aging process too hard, but … they should fight it a little. At least pick up a bottle of Olay once in a while.
I’m sure these bendy ladies don’t actually eat potato salad, solid or otherwise, but this made me think of you, my gently resplendent Labrador: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ76pS23Ky8
I know I should be impressed with their flexibility and athletic prowess, but these girls mostly just make me think of the deprivations of war.
i made potato salad for dinner around the fourth – does that count? it was yummy. wait. i have leftovers. i think i’ll go eat more. nom!
It might be a little late for leftovers. On the other hand, you could live-blog the ptomaine poisoning.
I shot off Sparkler bombs and the police came. When gun shots occurred shortly thereafter? the police didn’t even get out of their cars to investigate. i guess fireworks are far more dangerous than gun shots? Didn’t the police see the latest episode of “the closer?” death by random bullet? okay, now, i’ve officially annoyed myself with my comment. feel free to delete.
When I tried to report gunfire, the 911 operator kept asking me, “are you SURE it’s not fireworks?” I think she wanted me to outside and check, but I was kind of busy lying on the floor away from the windows. She said the police would come check it out, but that was six years ago and I’m still waiting.