I really can screw up a two car parade. Totally.

The other day I made a comment online to a friend that I was going to make gravy over the weekend and she promptly asked me why the hell I was making a stockpot full of brown gravy and just how many potatoes would I need to use up all that gravy. I explained that I was making graaaaaaaavvvvvy, as in, Italian style. That's what real Italians call red sauce, you know, like over pasta. Granted, I'm not Italian but rather I'm Indian. Now, to the best of my knowledge, Indians weren't known for their gravy making, but this little Indian learned from a pro and I can make a mean gravy. Anyway, I keep seeing all these blogs with tutorials and cooking sessions, lots of pics, and as you know, I aspire to be a cool blogger so I decided to grab the camera and picture the entire process.

I began by completely cleaning the entire only part of the kitchen that would be in the picture. I tried to be all artsy with the photos but I was getting hungry and Ed was seriously making fun of me the entire time. Seven hours, two sinkfuls of dishes, thousands of "it'll be ready this evening, GET OUT of the pot," and 47 pictures later, I had a masterpiece - in my camera as well as on the dinner table. It was so good that Ed even said he'd consider putting another clothesline for me. It's that good. So Sunday morning I finish working and start uploading the pics when Blogger took a nap. Again. I tried everything, shrank them, uploaded them another site and linked, you name it, every time I got more than two in the dang post it totally went dead. I was going to just upload them to the Picasa web albums but I have to thoroughly explain each picture and the captions just aren't big enough. So here I sit, waiting to bring you the most fabulous recipe you've ever had and I can't. I'll keep working on it. I will post it. I will! {think Daniel Day Lewis in "Last of the Mohicans"}

In the meantime, Jennifer came out today bright and early this morning so we could visit and ride. Oh my goodness, Jennifer was so right when she said that part of my issues with Silver was that she needed a buddy along. She was just the most well-mannered girl the entire ride! Never once questioned my request and was such a lady! Well except for when she tried to sniff Cartman's butt, but I think they just do that you know. We rode around the section, over a bridge, through the ditches, and even had a farmer drive by in his huge tractor - they both did fantastic and it was so great to have someone along. We've decided to ride several times a week and I'd like to work up to riding with Vincent behind me so we could pick him up from school. The kids would just love that! The only problem with learning to ride is, uh, well, are there any exercises I can do? My 40 yr. old parts are definitely not in riding condition!

And I did my shopping yesterday rather than today so I could spend the day with Jennifer. I usually go when the store is the least crowded like late Sunday afternoon or early weekday mornings because I know it's inconvenient to make people wait behind me when I have an inch high stack of coupons. So Ed insists I buy a whole $10 of stuff that's not on the List which just irritated the crap outta me, but I love him and he built me a clothesline so I did it, anyway I fill the cart and even splurged on steaks for this evening because they were 50% plus I had a coupon for $3.00 off the meat department. As the cashier finishes I give her my plus cart and a lady comes behind me with like four items and she's totally in a hurry. Well on these registers you can't start scanning the coupons until the card discounts are taken so it takes like forever for the first $75 to come off and the woman starts getting pissed. She complains to the cashier and asks me what in the world have I done to cause this holdup. I just smiled and said that the computer was giving me the discounts. And then I hand the cashier the coupons and this woman literally rolls her eyes and says, "You're kidding me? NOW I have to wait for all those coupons? I'm in a hurry here!" The poor cashier apologized but there's really no way to speed it up. Naturally three coupons beeped and that required a key turn which pissed the lady off even more. Finally the cashier finished, gave me the total, printed my receipt (which was nearly 3' long!) and says very loudly, "You did great this week Mrs. Hammond - you saved $130 which was over 50%!" I'm telling you this woman's eyes lit up and she says, "HOW much did she just save?" So the cashier tells her again and then this woman is all smiles to me telling me how amazing that is and asked if I could show her how on earth I did that. And typical, she said that my List was just based off the regular sales ad so she wondered why a membership at The Grocery Game would be any better but seemed quite surprised when I told her that of the nearly 100 items on my List that week, only about 30 were advertised sales from the flyer - the rest were unadvertised sales which I wouldn't have known about with the List! Wonder if she'll sign up for the $1 trial?