A Bookclub Looks at Buffett

At last; the post you've all been waiting for...
Last night was our Buffett bookclub gathering!
Let me just get one thing out of the way and then I'll report on the whole mess: there were no bikinis.

It almost didn't happen, though, like I had it planned.  For one thing, as of 2 p.m., the luau decorations and supplies STILL weren't here.  Oh, they were out for delivery, UPS reassured me, but that could mean 5:30 p.m.  One can't very well have a tropical themed party in the middle of Eastern Montana in March with two  pineapples and some shells gleaned from the bottom of the toy box.  And it's not like I could forage outside for decorations! Miles and miles of dead, brown grass, cowpies and the occasional sagebrush....

The UPS truck DID show, just in the nick of time!
Maggie and I RAN to meet the driver...I'm not lying...we RAN.  He was a little startled. (I can't imagine why; I hadn't had a shower and had been cleaning all day in my most glamorous tshirt and mom jeans, and Maggie was frazzled from the school day.)  Signed for the package, we ran into the house, he peeled out of our yard...the party is ON!    

You've never seen a house go from "cleanish trailer" to "tropical paradise" so quickly. 
Parrots, grass table skirt, candles, shells, backdrops...it was like getting a prom set up in 20 minutes with a four foot tall helper. 

You can't read it, but the black hat with the pink lipstick motif says, "I'm the woman to blame!".  My mother in law went to a Margaritaville restaurant in Florida a couple weeks ago and brought it back for me!  (She says it's for when I work cows with the guys.  I can't imagine WHY she'd think it was appropriate there.  :)

Little take-home bags with wacky nail polish, cocoa butter lotion, tropical beverage stir sticks, paper umbrellas (of course) and flowers for their hair.  Maggie helped me make them up in 10 minutes!

Okay, so the decorating was done...time for a shower.

(I'd have give quite a lot of my sister-in-law's financial resources for a margarita just then; guests arriving in 20 minutes, still need to prep the pork.  And that's after I get hair and makeup done! It has to be done, you know, because I boldly advertised photos to my blog readers. Dang, dang, dang...)

Showers would be a lot quicker if women didn't have to shave their legs.

I'm just sayin'....

Tossed on my Hawaiian party dress, ran a comb through my hair, looked for my makeup...

Drats!

I left it in the car yesterday!

Well, no big deal, right?

Big deal.

BECAUSE...

That very, exact moment in time, the Garfield County Sheriff chose to put on a clinic for the new deputy on how to start and shift the official deputy pickup, right there in my yard. 

That's right.

Roscoe P. Coltrane and Enos were there to retrieve the pickup, but it wasn't a start-'er-up-and-get-'er-into-town process.  They were trying out the microphone, the computer and everything. I mean to tell you, he was thoroughly training on this girl! (Do you suppose THAT had anything to do with the level of instruction? Hmmm...)

Whatever.

I had guests arriving in 10....9.....8....minutes!

Where it gets tricky is that if Roscoe spotted me in my Hawaiian floweredy dress, he'd talk for just ever.

He'd PROBABLY invite himself to the party, because, you know, it was a fun looking shindig if the decorations were any precursor to the festivities to follow.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Finally, they walked around to the other side of the rig, I took my chance and bolted for my car.

Made it back to the house without being spotted....glory hallelujah!...and ran to the bathroom to apply spackle and frazzle mah hay-ah (my hair).

During this time, unbeknownst to me, (SERIOUSLY Traci and Joni...I truly did not hear it!) Roscoe had wrapped up the seminar and was knocking on my door.

Traci and Joni pulled in, just before he was to make a rescue, thinking I was lying dead on the floor.

I'm not even joking.

He thought something was very wrong, because I was obviously home and not answering the door.

(And I thought I over-reacted to dumb things!)

Still no margaritas.

But, hey...homemade guacamole and chips, coconut bread, sweet potato fries, fruit skewers and conch fritters!

We'll survive.

About 10 minutes later, Anne and Marisa showed up with the key lime pie and....moment of silence here...margarita mix and tequila.

Buffett playing, adornment with leis...

Let the party begin!

And it really did.

Here are some of the finer moments...

Margaritas, child...make haste!!!

(She measures, I don't; made it interesting as Anne had never made margaritas and I have made a couple.)

Shrimp!

And big, honking earrings...sheesh.

Please note the umbrella.  I had 144 of those babies; we'll have umbrellas in our drinks...tea, chocolate milk, whatever...for another five years! Also, the green thingie hanging down by Marisa?  Parrot tail feathers, of course!
Incidentally, we were astonished Anne made it to the party, much less able to be upright.  She'd just been home one hour after a Denver trip and picking up her mother in law at the airport in Billings. 

Please...someone comment on this woman's Bermuda shorts.  She was perhaps a little upset that she was the only one who dug a pair out and was brave enough to wear them! (I was in a dress, with equally white legs AND shoulders, so I didn't want to hear about it.)

Fryin' the fritters!  Which were AMAZING, by the way.  A-MAZ-ING.  I'm gathering up recipes to share with you, because you all need them. I need them.  I think if all we'd had to eat were the fritters, we'd have been good. But we did all the food justice.  We're polite that way; even going back for seconds to make the cook feel VERY good about her potluck dish....

Discussing deep, important things, such as "What's YOUR favorite Jimmy Buffett song?"

Oh...we DID discuss the book for a few minutes. It was not a big hit, but I don't care...it was a fun read for the dark month!

Around 10, Wayland returned to go to bed or something....I don't know....and I asked him to take a group picture.

It was a process....

We had a reluctant participant.

(She was the only one who had not had a margarita.)

 Action shots...

It got a little wild.

Well, she's in the picture, but she's hiding.  This is where the photographer said that it looked like Anne all of a sudden sprouted big hair.  We lost it, again!

This is as good as it gets!

We missed Susie, but I have a take-home bag for her and we'll see her next month, I hope!

OH!

And the book we'll be reading is Anne's selection:

South of the Border, West of the Sun  by Haruki Murakami

The time has come...

to address something that has driven me crazy for YEARS;

 an encounter that fills my heart with dread, brings tears to my eyes, makes me feel like such a failure...it's simply awful.

It's fresh on my mind, because this week I had another traumatizing experience with

the S.C.A.L.E. at the doctor's office.

(That's right.  I capitalized each letter on purpose, because evil entities really need identified by their proper name.  Somehow, the acronym for  "Suicide Contemplation After Looking Eventhoughyoucan'tstandit" is appropriate.)

I am STILL wondering how in the world the scale at the doctor's office can weigh me in at not three, not five, but EIGHT stinking pounds more than my scale at home does!  Actually, I'm not wondering, I'm just mad.

Don't try to make me feel better by saying it's the clothes. 

It's not the clothes.

I dress VERY purposely on doctor days when they come in the lighted decent apparel I own.

I even wear light socks, if any at all.

I don't wear heavy earrings...minescule hoops.

I take off my rings.

I take off my shoes.

I take off any sweater or scarf or hair thingee or name tag.

Which brings me to my NEXT aggravation about doctor's scales:

WHY do they not put them in a private little room where the door can be shut?

Do I hear an amen?

Why do we have to be measured in the very public hallway where, well, first of all, we can't completely disrobe and get our weight down to a managable five pounds over. And then, every doctor, nurse, patient, Pepsi delivery man seems to walk by while I'm standing there on the S.C.A.L.E., trying not to cry, wishing I hadn't had that sip of water before coming in to my appointment.

Which brings me to my FINAL frustration:

I can fast for a solid 24 hours, only take enough water for my medication, use the bathroom seconds before weigh in, breathe shallowly (Does air weigh much? I don't know. It must. Something like three pounds with each intake, I'm thinking...)

Still....eight pounds over my home scale.

And just so you know, you can't "accidentally" kick the darn thing while you're putting your shoes back on, because the nurse notices that and chides you.  It probably gets written up in your chart.  She probably adds two pounds in retribution. I'm sure she does.

I wonder if they just design these professional instruments to tack on extra pounds, some wicked "Watch this, Marge...I think this one will actually swoon when she weighs in; buy you a Diet Coke if she doesn't..."

It's probably some medical lottery to liven up the office.

Whatever it is, it can certainly take an already uncomfortable situation and turn it into a half hour of defensiveness and "But I run and eat fruits and vegetables like you can't believe, Doctor.  Really. I do!"

S.C.A.L.E.s

Next appointment, I'm scheduling in July...I swear I will!

It'll push the envelope on "lightest decent apparel" but if I go to Walmart afterward, I might become famous...

Changes in latitude, changes in attitude...

We still have a book club....I know, it's been so long since you heard about it, you may have been wondering if it still existed, but it does and this month, we're reading Jimmy Buffett's A Pirate Looks at 50.  And we're having a luau-themed party to discuss this deep, extremely multi-faceted book.  :)

Jimmy's music makes me laugh and his book did, too.  I love that he's very upfront about who he is and what he enjoys, how he got to be where and who he is, that he's a curious lifelong learner and embraces people of all walks.  His book reads sort of like a blog; he'll spend some time in remembrance, bounce to the here-and-now, profile a character, take the reader on a flight to Trinidad....you just never know where it's going to turn.  He's a very positive, bright writer who has a pretty generous spirit where life and people are concerned. And he's just funny. 

Here he talks about taking his seven year old son through a breakfast buffet at the Hyatt:

I woke up and my gaze was met by a small pair of emerald-green eyes inches from my own.  I don't know how long Cameron has been awake and looking at me, but there he is, larger than life.  It's a great feeling to wake up with my son beside me, or rather in my face.  "Hi, Dad! Let's get some French toast," he says.

The Buffett boys dress quickly and head for the breakfast buffet, where a line of early-bird Christmas tourists has already formed.  The smells of breakfast have our stomachs growling.  A buffet is not supposed to be a complicated meal- cereal, juice, coffee or tea, eggs and bacon or pancakes.  But the Christmas breakfast buffet at the Hyatt is just too much of an opportunity for the food and beverage manager to pass by.  There are ice sculptures of swans, banana-leaf-lined food trays, and an omelet chef.  The line is backed up like the Long Island Expressway on the Fourth of July.  Suddenly the line is brought to a halt by none other than Cameron.  He has stopped dead in his tracks just past the ice sculpture of a pelican.  He is sniffing the air like a retriever with his tiny upturned nose.  "Look at all that bacon, Dad."

In front of us is a platter larger than his red wagon, loaded to the edges with bacon.  He looks up at me with those wide green eyes, and I connect to his conspiring thoughts.  It's just us boys.  We have fled the International House of Women for a day, where skim milk, fresh yogurt and protein powder rule  the morning meal.  All of that stuff is available here, but I load him up with bacon French toast, and sausage, making sure there's plenty for the old man as well.  Bacon is the quintessential representation of something that tastes so good and is so bad for you.  I remember times in our sailing days when I would start the morning at sea by frying up a pound of Oscar Meyer bacon, which we would devour with hot bread, jelly and butter as insulation against the carcinogens.

And that's how Jimmy Buffett writes.

This Friday, we're having our book club "discussion"/luau/fiesta at my house....

Leis! Margaritas! Flip-flops! Coconut shrimp! Bikinis!
Okay, probably not bikinis (I know of three bookclubbers who just gasped out loud at THAT), but we're going coastal and it's going to be fun! 
AND...because it's Friday and no one has to work the next day, AND the barnacles are having a sleepover at their grandparents' house, the party could last indefinitely...'til 10:00 at least.  (Can you believe how wild and crazy these girls are? 10:00 PM?!?! Cohagen will be abuzz with the news...)
AND...because it's MY house, there WILL be photographs.  (Which ensures with 100% certainty that there won't be any bikinis.)

If you want to get an idea of what the book is like, this YouTube video, "King of Somewhere Hot" pretty much encapsulates the entire thing, except you don't get to see Jimmy's son in the Hyatt breakfast buffet line with the red wagon-load of bacon....

What's YOUR favorite Jimmy Buffett song?

First Calf 2012

It's a tradition...we take a picture of the first calf, every year.  It's funny, because as I look back through the files, here are 10 first calf pictures, all little knobby kneed, fuzzy, clumsy little black Angus calves in very bleak March-in-Montana landscapes, with worried young mamas.  And every year, it's exciting! Babies!

*Maggie was being a grump this morning, not happy that we went went roaring out to the pasture to see the new baby. "It's just another calf! I've seen thousands of calves in the pasture!" and then she wanted to know if it was a bull calf or heifer.  I told her it was a bull calf and she gloomily said, "Well, that's just great.  The first calf of the year and he's going to be hamburger when he grows up..."  *big, dramatic sigh*

So, for those of you wanting baby pictures, here's 066 with her baby....you know, the future Angus burger at your friendly, local steakhouse.

We didn't get too close, so these pictures were taken with my big lens.  She was a nervous little mama and I didn't want her to take off with him; she had him down in a nice little coullee where he was sort of protected from the wind.  It's so hard to take a picture of a black calf standing next to a black cow on a cloudy day....

Isn't he beautiful? And she's SO pleased with him.

This picture really shows how young this mama cow is.  See how her face still looks almost baby-ish, still?

There you go.  Brand new baby on the prairie, the beginning of calving for the year!
It's gorgeous weather for it, supposed to be up in the 50s this week during the day, and very little snow.
Let the games begin!