Day 3: Favorite Comfort Foods and Why

I love comfort food. I know each region of the country and parts of the world have their own comfort foods — here are mine.

Macaroni and Cheese. I love my homemade macaroni and cheese. I love it with lobster. I’ll take Kraft in a box. It’s pasta, it’s cheese — what’s not to like?

Risotto. Good risotto is heaven. I can’t remember when I first had it, but my favorite is a champagne risotto from a local restaurant here in Kingwood. I make it with sweet peas and Parmesan. Creamy and delicious. Also, I love rice.

Rotel Dip. Sweet American Baby Jesus, if you’ve never had Rotel Dip, do your mouth a flavor and get a block of Velveeta cheese (yes, Velveeta) and a can of Rotel Original tomatoes melt them together in a big bowl and eat with tortilla chips or Fritos. Why is this comfort food? Because cheese. Also because unlike most families, my mom’s side of the family had Rotel Dip out with Fritos before every family get together or holiday. That was the appetizer. Not a cheese plate, not crudité, not mini sausages, not whatever your family had. Rotel Dip, baby.

Desserts. I have four favorites. Cheesecake, creme brûlée, key lime pie, and sweet potato pie. Sweet potato pie because my grandmother always made it for Thanksgiving and Christmas and it’s amazing (and technically a vegetable). Key lime because it’s tangy and tart. One vacation to Gulf Shore, Alabama I ordered key lime pie at each restaurant we went to. Lulu’s has the best.

And that’s more than you wanted to know about my favorite comfort foods.

Day 2: Top Five Pet Peeves

1. Bad grammar/spelling. This mainly comes from social media. I don’t understand how adults didn’t learn proper grammar and spelling. Christmas cards addressed to “The Faler'” kills me. “Me and her.” “Supposably.”

2. Using all caps (unless it’s one word used for emphasis.)

3. Bodily noises. I’m not elaborating.

4. People who put false information/memes online and the people who share them without fact-checking it. It literally takes ten seconds to fact check something.

5. Whatever the latest product stay-at-home moms are selling.

As I said a couple of days ago, The Second Forty and I are doing a February Blog Challenge. It’s pretty random, as are we.

Day 1: Five Problems with Social Media

1. I find Twitter to be unorganized. I like order in my Interwebs. I’m always having to shift the toggle from Trending to Latest. It’s aggravating. AND it needs to borrow from Instagram and have the “All Caught Up” feature, so you’ll know where left off last.

2. Instagram I like. It’s pure fun. I really dig it. I don’t like the way shows messages — it’s not very noticeable and I’d like it to be bigger.

3. Facebook. Here we go. I love The Facebook. I don’t like the ugliness it brings out in people. How people pick fights and debate. People like to argue. Argue on the phone, not on FB.

4. Facebook posts that say “one like, one prayer — one share, five prayers” or “I need 10 women to…” or “like and share” or “if you think God (fill in the blank) share” or MY FAVORITE: “share this post and God will grant you one favor” because God is our personal genie in a bottle.

5. All of these: friend requests from strangers/fake profiles. If you have one photo you are a scam artist or some kind of robot. Damn robots.

“It has been said that time heals all wounds. I don’t agree. The wounds remain. Time – the mind, protecting its sanity – covers them with some scar tissue and the pain lessens, but it is never gone.” — Rose Kennedy

If anyone knew about pain it was Rose Kennedy. She had nine children, two dying in airplane explosions/crashes, and two dying from assassinations. I don’t have to tell you who the latter two were. One of her daughters was “slow” and was given a lobotomy at 20 which left her incapacitated in an institution for the rest of her life (she lived to be 86). What Rose Kennedy lived through must have been pain. She was a bit of a mystery until her personal papers, diaries, and photos were revealed 12 years after she died at 104 years of age. She knew that life was full of love and wonderful times and pains that remain as scars. After losing so much in her life, she said that “tragedy had to follow triumph, as surely as night follows day.”

Those are scars.

Most of the scars we carry around aren’t physical. Maybe we don’t realize it, but we do. Things are hard. Life is hard. Having people in your life is hard. Even the best of people can leave scars.

This is something I’ve been thinking about for some time after Kennedy’s quote. She left over 150,000 diaries, papers, and photos when she died. She requested them not to be available to the public until 12 years after she passed. This computer screen in my diary. I publish my thoughts, beliefs, lots of silliness, scars. 10MB to be exact as of 2pm today, when I exported my old site into this very site you’re viewing now. 16 years of writing. This is my diary. I don’t know how many pages it would print into. I don’t know that anyone would care if it were only released after I pass one day. I live life as it happens. I update my Facebook routinely. My Instagram when I think of it. My Twitter when I remember I have one. So, in these modern times (doesn’t each generation think of themselves being in “modern times?” That phrase means nothing, really. What I mean is that my friends and family and people who come across this blog from all corners of the globe (shoutout to my Japanese and Ukrainian and Indian readers) know my opinion in a minute.

My joy. My love. My sadness. My hate. My views. My scars. It’s all out there.

So, if you have scars, know that it’s the body’s way of healing. I believe this is true “on the inside.” You will heal. We all do. And for the scars that are on the inside, this poem is from poet Lang Leav:

“Wounded”

A bruise is tender
but does not last,
it leaves me as
I always was.

But a wound I take
much more to heart,
for a scar will always
leave its mark.

And if you should ask me
which you are,
my answer is –
you are a scar.

I follow a comedian on the Facebook called Godamnzo who makes reaction videos, BUT it’s as if he’s having a conversation with the person. This may be my favorite thing I’ve seen in awhile.

“Yes, touch this ticket, Lord! I need you to do your good work! I don’t know if you do lotteries…”

I am laughing despite the damn bronchitis.

Next month, The Second Forty and I will start a new blog challenge. It’s a little random, some things are funny, some personal — all pretty good.

Here’s a sneak peek:

Y’all know how much I love typewriters, so when I watched a documentary today which had the original footage of Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter” for symphony orchestra. I can’t find it online, but I thought I’d share the Icelandic Symphony’s performance. Why this one? Because all the others make it so comedic that it makes the song a joke, when it’s really something beautiful.

Start at 43 seconds in unless you understand the Icelandic language.

It’s getting cold up in here. This is the only way I’d ever do any kind of yoga.

My kids got Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Christmas and it’s a stunningly beautiful game. I don’t play video games. I was great at Pole Position back in the day. And Centipede, but that’s all. I never played the 8 bit Zelda game and wasn’t aware of how the Link character had changed over the past hundred years. What I wasn’t expecting was recipes!

I’m not sure if you can make it out, but the description reads exactly like menus of restaurants everywhere.

I thought this was much funnier than the kids.

I can’t roller skate due to my lack of coordination and gravity.

Look at this.