Gilda Lily Conclusion



By Cu11ie on Deviantart

OK it’s one o’clock and I have to get 6 hours of work to do in 2 hours. First I dig out one of my antique cook books. I find a great chocolate mocha cake recipe in my 1942. Then it’s on! Suddenly my kitchen is transformed in my mind to the Iron Chef Kitchen stadium. The whistle plows and I am off! First I go under the cabinet and grab my Kitchen Aid mixer and promptly drop it bending the on and off lever. I then got a hammer and banged the lever straight. I threw the batter together and fill two pans and slap them in the oven. They pans bake the allotted time and I peer in to the oven to see 2 beautiful chocolate cakes each with a special surprise, an ominous liquid sinkhole in the middle. I bake them longer. Time check 2:05 I have 45 minutes before I have to get the kids from school. The cakes look like crap! The kitchen is a mess and I have to wrap presents! I stay focused! I am an Iron Chef after all, I am in a mission, and I clean out the Kitchen Aid bowl and start on the frosting. In no time I knock out a delicious mocha chocolate frosting. The consistency of whipped butter, not butter cream. Did the people in the 1940’s enjoy a little sugar and flavored butter on their cake? I could thin out the frosting with more liquid; on the other hand this would make great cement to fill the pot holes in the cakes. The cakes!

I pulled out the cakes and they were solid in the middle. I put the cakes in the fridge to cool. I put the frosting in a container, a very small container. If I put this frosting in the middle of the layers I wouldn’t have any left for the top and sides. I cleaned the kitchen aid bowl for the 3rd time and whipped together a vanilla hint of mocha frosting. I changed this recipe to make it more like modern butter cream. I threw it in a container and cleaned all of the baking bowls, utensils, measuring cups, and yes, the kitchen aid bowl for the 4th time in less than 1 hour. Time check 2:45. The cute cable guy is done and leaves.

I clean the counters, sweep and run out of the door to go pick out the kids. I grab the kids at school and run the kids to the eye doctor. I don’t recall the Iron chefs having to leave the kitchen in middle of the battle to attend to their children! I lead the kids into the car like a militant mother duck. We see the doctor and then it’s time for bowling. I have no time for bowling league today! The kids love bowling. Gilda Lily the perfect mother she can’t damage her children by denying their activity because I have no time management skills. Thankfully the party planner sees the big picture and gets us back on track.

“Momma! We can’t go bowling today! We have to make Daddy’s party!” I love that girl. I play it cool.

“Well, we can still have daddy’s birthday after bowling.” I hold my breath. The boy speaks up.

“Come on mom. I don’t want to go today. Can’t we go home?” The girl chirps in.

“Yeah go home!” I am so excited. I play it cool.

“If you guys are sure, we can go home and start daddy’s party”

I drive home as fast as I can without frightening the kids. I run into the house turn on the oven put a pot of water on to boil and start cleaning off the kitchen table. 4:30 I have about 90 minutes to have everything ready.

The kids who are so excited to help plan a party come in drop their coats, backpacks, and shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor and go turn on the TV. I try not to scream. I go into the TV room and lead the kids back to pick up their crap. Then I peel potatoes, and take the cakes out of the pans. The cakes are a bit crumbly and dense. I think I should have gone with cocoa powder instead of melted chocolate (even though the recipe said you could use either). I take the ugliest cake and put it on the bottom and get out the chocolate mocha cement and use it to repair the broken pieces that fell off during un-panning. Thankfully the frosting also fills in the pot holes nicely and leaves me with a nice flat top. I shove the cake in the fridge and throw the pork loin in the oven and put in the potatoes.

The kids whine for snacks and drinks. They fight, need help with the computer, and fill in the blank with 100 needs that must be met immediately. I start to feel like Cinderella as I was the broccoli and start to crumb coat the cake with the vanilla frosting . The frosting is so thick and the cake is so delicate and keeps falling apart. I get back into my Iron Chef mode. I shove the frosting in the microwave and it thins into a thick glaze. I pour the glaze over the cake and shove the cake in the fridge and the frosting in the freezer. I start to try and clean the table again. The table is clean. I grab a table cloth. I drain the potatoes and cut up the broccoli and put it on the stove. I grab the presents and start wrapping. I made the mash the potatoes. I help Alice find her lost card that she made Dave a few days before. I let the dog out. Get the mail. Clean up off the counters. I let the dog in. Dave calls to say he’s 10 minutes away.

Gilda Lily goes to the dark side and starts sounding like the little red hen. “I bought the food, I cleaned the house, I made the cake, I made the dinner, I wrapped the presents, why can’t you kids at least pick up your granola bar wrappers and put the milk away!” Wasn’t this Alice’s idea? How has she helped? By sneaking into the fridge and sticking her fingers in the frosting?

I need to finish frosting the cake. FROSTING! The frosting is in the freezer. It’s solid like a block of cheese. I throw the frosting in the kitchen aid again! I whipped it and thinned it into usable frosting. I frost the cake until the frosting runs out. I have no more butter in the house and the cake looks sad.

I put the presents on the table. I grab the football napkins and plates that on closer look are actually basketballs. Does Dave even like basketball? I grab the noise maker thingys, I grab the cards then I smell smoke. The broccoli! The broccoli is burning. I grab the pan and chuck the contents in the trash and clean it in the sink. I open the fridge and pull out a bag of frozen peas and throw them on the stove.

Dave walks in the house. I want to cry. Nothing is ready and I feel like I have been sprinting on a treadmill all day. I kiss Dave. He tells me that he is tired and wants to take a nap. I am in luck! I march him up stairs and get back to into my crazy chaos. I grab the rest of the chocolate chips and locate an ice cube tray with heart shaped ice cubes. I melt the chocolate and pour it into the ice cube tray and shove it in the freezer. I take out the pork and throw in the rolls. I make the salad. I open the wine and test a full glass. I set the table, season the peas, and whip the potatoes back into perfect shape. I pop out heart shaped chocolates and stick them on the cake. The cake looks happier. I am sad and feeling overworked and underappreciated just like Gilda Lily always does.

The rolls are done and I have the kids get Dave. He comes in and is so happy to see his beautiful meal. I am ready to grab the wine bottle and go up to bed. I put on a happy face and serve them dinner. OK I am a grumpy witch as I serve dinner feeling like an under paid waitress. The kids complained one hated the pork the other hated potatoes and peas. I was contemplating my wine idea. Then Alice picked up one of the noise makers and I saw that it didn’t say Happy Birthday it said Happy New Year. I pointed the mistake out to Dave who laughed and said.

“Yeah, I noticed I just thought you just got them because they were on sale.”

Guess what Gilda Lily? He didn’t care what they said. He didn’t care about the basketballs or the piled up dishes in the sink. He would have loved pizza and beer and Twinkies with a candle. Who does Gilda Lily make herself sick for? Who is she trying to please? I blew my Happy New Years noise maker and remembered my goal for the New Year; I am supposed to be putting super-psycho-perfectionist Gilda Lily into hiding and becoming balanced happy Lydia.

The cake actually looked OK and tasted amazing.

Smells like Gilda Lily

When we last saw Lydia she had morphed into the adrenaline junky super hero Gilda Lily. On her quest to give her husband a perfect birthday. She, err, I was currently terrifying small children and running down senior citizens with my grocery cart. OK so I wasn’t trying to run people down, but when you are running through a small store with big cart collisions happen. I was in and out of the market in 4 minutes flat, with a full cart. Dinner was easy pork loin, mashed potatoes, broccoli, hot rolls, and salad. The hard part was the cake. As I hadn’t decided what kind of cake I was making so I just dumped half of the baking aisle into my cart. I would figure out the cake at home.


First let me say that Gilda Lily is a major perfectionist driven mainly by anxiety with laser sharp focus and very little regard for the restraints of time or reality. Then add the factor of the 2 strong cups of coffee that I chugged to battle my fatigue due to Alice tantrums and lack of sleep. Now picture me running around the grocery store and sprinting up and down my steep drive way with bags of groceries. You know where I am going here? You guessed it I dropped the last bag onto the counter and bolted down the hall to the bathroom. I will save you the details. It was not pretty. The small bathroom is right next to the living room. The living room that now smelled just as ripe as the bathroom, so bad that the poor dog took one whiff ran and hid. The door bell rings and I see a FIOS van in my drive way.

I go to the door hoping to see Larry the cable guy. No an adorable guy a little younger than me is standing there at the door. He is polite but I see his nose twitching. You’d have to be wearing a gas mask not to smell the wretched pollution floating around my house. Then he asks to see the computer and the basement, both require passing right by the bathroom. I show him quickly and hide in the basement.

2 loads of laundry and 1 organized work room later the cute cable guy comes down to work on the basement cable box. Of course I run upstairs and I am happy to report that the house smells fine. I am unhappy to report that the clock reads 1 o’clock! I have 2 hours to find a cake recipe, bake, frost, wrap gifts, make a card, and clean the kitchen, oh and cook a large dinner. But I am no mortal sane person who would simply go buy a cake and order Chinese food. No I am Gilda Lily! To be continued….

It's A Bird It's a Plane it's Gilda Lily

Yesterday marked two special occasions, my perfect husband’s 45th birthday and the installment of our new FIOS TV, internet, & phone system. You know that I have been trying to simplify my chaotic life and make more “me” time, well for the past few days I have been back to my old ways running on the psychotic treadmill of life. For Dave’s birthday I had a stress free no fail plan. We’d take him out to dinner then come home and do presents. I was also going to buy 4 cup cakes from our new cup cake bakery to avoid having left over cake in my house. Now that was a great plan! That is until I told the kids about the going out/cup cake plan, my daughter burst into tears, crying;

“NOOOO! Daddy has to have a birthday cake!”

After that it’s all a blur. Between tears streaming out of Alice’s beautiful blue eyes, her strong heartfelt desire to give her father (whom she shuns and refuses to spend one on one time with) a “real” birthday party. I had never seen her act so lovingly towards Dave before, the next thing I know Alice is in charge of planning “Daddy’s Big Birthday Party”.

The days leading up Alice and I go to buy party supplies, we buy football themed plates, napkins & those blowy noise maker thingies. I am keeping things small; I refused to but the dozens of balloons, streamers, hats, or wall signage that she wanted. Apparently at school the next day she had talked her fellow classmates into making Dave, cards, posters, and other art work to decorate the house. What can I say? A real professional party/event planner should have a vision and make it happen. I also must add that my little party planner has been very moody lately and having a lot more behavioral issues than usual. Getting her to go to bed and actually sleep has been a horrid challenge; involving up to an hour of screaming, crying, and property damage. Then the morning she is so exhausted that getting her dressed and off to school turns into a continuation of the night before. Needless to say by the time that she truly falls asleep at around 11:00pm I am too emotionally drained and fatigued to do simple math forget about writing a witty blog entry.

The day of the big birthday party comes after her morning tantrum I get her to school. She is already for the party with her clipboard and Blue tooth ear piece. I remind her that we have to go to the eye doctor after school, then bowling then the party. Earlier that morning Dave has reminded me that the TV instillation guy is coming at 9:00am and I have to be home. As I drive out of the school parking lot I realize that I other than a few party supplies, and presents, I have given no though to Dave’s birthday. I have nothing planned for dinner, I have not even decided what cake I am going to make.

I look at the dashboard clock it’s 8:57. I feel my body tingling, my heart is pumping like a Tommy gun, my brain starts revving up like a Harley, the transformation has begun. I speed to the supermarket and make the 8 minute drive in 3 minutes. By the time I slam on the breaks and run into the store the transformation is complete I am now the crazed super mom Gilda Lily. To be continued....

Today I solved a huge mystery that has been baffling me for about a month. My mystery is the fact that someone has magically made me gain 20 pounds since my big juice fast. Yes 20 pounds! One morning my jeans were getting too loose the next morning they were tight and this poufy flab was billowing over the waistline. Or should I say pillowing? I mean I ate holiday treats but I didn’t eat a whole 20 pound turkey.

My naughtiest dream would be a HUGE Toblerone Bar

The other day I was going through all of my receipts for the year. No I am not balancing my budget or financially organized in anyway. Dave asked me to keep the receipts so we can itemize our medical expenses for our taxes. I start going over the receipts. I start seeing a pattern of snacking. It starts slow; I find my trail of snacks. First I find an occasional little bag of trail mix, a small can of mixed nuts, a granola bar, on it could have been lunch time, and I don’t freak out over the receipts. Then I notice Doritos, Twix bars, and whole boxes of cookies. I would buy my little treats and eat them in the car. I deserved a treat for all of my exhausting shopping and traumatic life right? Why does allowing one’s self a smattering of pseudo health foods lead to outright forbidden crap food? Is this what the war on drugs was trying to teach us all of those years ago? Remember those countless public service announcements; that smoking a little pot will lead to worse drugs? The theory is that once you open the door to drugs or crap food, my drug of choice, you run the risk of going insane, like waking up on the street with a needle in your arm, or in my case finding receipts for bags of Lindt truffles and large Toblerone bars. These were always bought for others in good faith, then stress & exhaustion would have me sneaking into the kitchen once the family was asleep. Some of you might know how that works. I open the bag and just eat one and a half an hour later the bag is empty. The funny thing is that once the wrappers are in the trash it is so easy to forget you ate anything. No proof no calories. Yeah, well I have a basket filled with little slips of proof in front of me and twenty pounds of proof around my middle. Case solved and closed. No more buying mommy drugs at the store. I am back to keeping apples & almonds in my purse.

Progress today I called and made all of my appointments today! My lap band doctor (if you didn’t know I’ll catch you up when I go there next month). I made an appointment with my primary doctor to talk about getting a nutritionist, my Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, and my rubber legs (I’ll talk more about this later too). Most importantly I scheduled to have my hair colored & cut, and wait for it….I am getting a facial and waxing. My pours are becoming dangerous pot holes & my eye brows are ferocious.

HARDWARE

I painted an old night stand and was looking for a new drawer pull so I went to my favorite hardware store. The store sign simply reads “Hardware”. I love to go into this store because it has been in business forever, well since 1948, but the some of the stuff in there is older. The store is decorated with vintage clocks, signs, antique tools hanging from the ceiling, even a pair of large Japense satsuma vases. The best thing about the store is that they sell vintage hardware mixed in with the new stuff and you never ever know what you‘re going to find.

Every time I go in I find something totally cool like a decorative turn plate of a hundred year old door bell, or a brightly covered English tea container with lid that was being used to hold plastic washers. The store honestly looks like a hardware store museum and I am usually the only customer there.

I first went to the shop looking to set up an interview with its owner the distinguished town elder Mr. Ranieri. I heard from my neighbor that Mr. Ranieri now in his mid-eighties not only owns most of Franklin, but can talk for hours about the town’s history. Living here his whole life Mr. Ranieri knows everyone and everything of importance that has to do with our town since the 1930’s. Sadly when I went to the shop that first day Bruce told me that Mr. Ranieri being of ill health does not go to the shop much anymore. I was sorry to hear about Mr. Ranieri, but it was love at first sight! How can a girl resist a shop that’s window display consist of a row of toilet seats in various colors? Also they let you pick through bins and boxes of old stuff and if you sweet talk them enough anything is for sale.

Back to my drawer pull. I walked through the door on Thursday and who is sitting there in the front of the shop but a little old man wearing a full suit with vest and a lovely smile. I was so excited! He got up and greeted me welcoming me to his store. He also asked why I was holding a drawer ( I hate measuring, numbers are not my friends. If I want to make sure the drawer pull fits, I bring the drawer). I told him what I was looking for and then I asked if he was Mr. Ranieri. He said he was and then we started chatting and I fell madly in-love.

He was the most charming lovely man, showed me around the store showing me things that I had never noticed before; like his grandfather’s handmade sled, and large tongs used in Franklin many years ago by the local ice-men. He asked me all about myself, my family, my hair, he loved me hair, and I told him that I loved him. Joking back he told me that he was sorry but he was a married man, and that his wife was a multimillionaire. I said “Yeah, isn’t that because you own most of this town?” He laughed and said.

“In school I was so dumb. Oh I got all F’s I was the dumbest kid in class. They told me I’d never amount to anything.”

I said. “You showed them huh?” He laughed and said.

“I sure did. I’ve done OK.” His eyes smiled so bright.

We talked about so many things. I explained EBAY to him. He asked me to take a look at a few antiques he has in the back. Then he told me that he never throws anything away and that he has a small warehouse full of old stuff. My knees almost buckled. He said that when he was ready to start letting things go he’d give me a call. His daughter came to pick him up and he had me write my first name, the date and time, my phone number and the word “EBAY” on a business card. He took the card put it in his wallet and told me that it was wonderful meeting me. Then he told the Buddie (the guy behind the counter) not to charge me for my drawer pull.

I hope that he remembers me and that we do meet again. I used to be annoyed when I saw his family name put up on so many building in town. I especially didn’t like him when his family turned the 20 acres of woodlands behind our cul de sac into townhouses for a 55 and older community. Well now I don’t miss the woods, there is a wooded trail we can follow around the town houses. I also like having new neighbors, but more than anything I have a new friend and I do love Mr. Ranieri.