Mark this one off my Bucket List. I'm getting to see Eric Clapton before I die. Sweet! Stay tuned for details later.
It’s getting a shiny coat of paint and a lot of other tricks. See these wheels?
They will be replaced by some Mack daddy pimpin’ chrome wheels and tires that are already at the house…along with a new dash, side mirrors, a horn and a few other accessories. I think they’ve discussed reupholstering the seats, too. Oh, and see the rack in the back?
That’s probably going to be replaced by a fold down seat that they think will be great for carrying Mama J. and Papa T. to Sissy’s house. Frankly, I’m pretty nervous about putting crippled, blind and deaf senior citizens on the back of this thing for a bouncin’ ride that could reach speeds of 22 miles per hour when they get the new motor on it. Thank goodness they nixed the nine inch lift kit.
I had no words for them Friday when they shared their plans with me. I could only stand there and shake my head. Stay tuned for pictures of the end product. I’ll be sure to share them with you. Who knows? Maybe I’ll fall in love with it when it’s done. They have an iPod/CD kit you can get for it. It would come in handy for the Jeff Foxworthy CD’s we're gonna need.
She shared her Allison Kraus/John Waite suspicions with the rest of the family but apparently had to know if she was right because then she proceded to walk over to her and in a hushed tone asked, "Are you Allison Kraus?" "Yes," she replied, "but we're just trying to slip in unnoticed for some country fried steak. Don't give us away." At this point, SuperCop's wife (I HAVE to give her a name) nudged mama on, and they went to their seats where they proceeded to eat biscuits and stare at Allison Kraus and John Waite for the next hour.
C-circular
See, no body, no control. It didn’t take long for me to gravitate toward the style that would stick with me for years; long and straight with bangs.
Oh, I tried other hairdos along the way. I tried bangs with curls.
Bangs with a shag.
Bangs with a longer shag.
No bangs and a grown out shag.
Around eighth grade I got wild and crazy and whacked off my hair. BIG mistake. Because then I had to enter high school with short hair and feathered bangs. Love the 70’s.
I wore so much hairspray back then I had to stay away from open flames. When it grew out, I tried the curls again, without bangs.
But in college it wasn’t cool to wear sponge rollers to frat parties, and it was either drop the frat parties or be home by 8pm so the rollers had time to dry before my 9am class…. so I dropped the curls (and never had an 8 o'clock class).
But then the bouncin’ 80’s came along and I wanted to Dance With Somebody so guess what….more bangs…big bangs…satellite dish bangs.
Then came along…cue ominous music…the dreaded perm years. Is there anyone out there who was an adult in the 80’s who didn’t have a perm? If so, stand up, wave your hand and shout “Amen”. Anyone? Anyone? I’ll wait. No? Ha! I didn’t think so. I’m just as guilty as the rest of you. Not only did I have curls, I had tight curls…with bangs.
For the last fifteen years I’ve been too busy raising a child and earning a living to worry much about a hairdo. I accepted that no real style was the best style for me, but I know that won’t work for very much longer. For now, I’m right back where I started. Long, straight and bangs.
Gray bangs…unless I keep them covered with San Tropez #2. Tell me, am I the only one out there who STILL can't figure out what to do with her hair?
I don’t even know why I bought them in the first place. We don’t eat pudding unless the thermometer reads 80 degrees and vanilla puddin’ season has rolled around. If it ain’t covered in wafers and sandwiched between bananas, the Hula-gen’s ain’t eatin’ it.
What’s worse than being a canned good orphan? Being a hand-me-down canned good orphan. Mama J. bought these, didn’t use them and gave them to me. I would swear there used to be just one. We like our cornbread sweet. This stuff isn’t sweet. Therefore, it sits and multiplies just like the loaves and fishes….right next to these guys.
I make fajitas from time to time, but usually from scratch and not with a prepackaged mix. I cannot remember when this packet showed up in my cabinets, but it’s been there so long it apparently fell in love with the gravy mix, mated and produced the two packets of unused yeast that you also see in that picture. *#$% squatters! Get off my shelf! Keep in mind; I do not discriminate in my hoarding of canned goods. I embrace all types; spicy, sweet, crunchy, bland.
I bought two cans of chilpotles for a soup I concocted. I used one full can not realizing one full tablespoon would be plenty. That soup was so hot I was afraid to eat any fiber. I didn’t have the nerve to open the second can, and it’s keeping company with this pie filling that was supposed to get turned into apple crisp and these chick peas that were supposed to get turned into….hmmm….ummm…something. Now, because I’m a crappy photographer this picture doesn’t really give the full effect of this can of pork and beans…because it’s HUGE. 53 ounces of pork and beans that I think were going to become baked beans for a potluck that got canceled.
Because of the disastrous effects of pork and beans on Hubby I will not serve these to him unless he plans to hibernate in a cave for three days or has an impending colonoscopy. We may have to host a cookout just so I can get ride of these beans. And finally, I am without explanation for this. 
It seems that over the course of the last two or three years I have bought a new box of salt every time the salt shaker became empty, forgetting that I had more on the shelf. I’m kind of embarrassed to show you this. Is this how a pot grower feels when the cops line up all of his plants for the newspaper and TV photographers? It is my shame. My dirty little addiction. Hello. My name is Hula and I buy too much salt. Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the canned goods I cannot use, courage to buy only the food I need, and the wisdom to know the difference.
This week our Fun Monday host is Mariposa's Tales, and she wants to know about the stuff we collect. Hubby is really the collector in our family. He keeps EVERYTHING. He's what we call in these parts a pack rat. He likes antiques, old garden tools and old wooden furniture. He has a gazillion McDonald's toys and displays, all in their original packaging. His biggest collection is probably his antique toys. Here is just a sample.
I, on the other hand, have started to shed a lot of my "stuff". Every time we've remodeled a room in our house in the last few years, I've eliminated a lot of the what-nots, nick-nacks and dust catchers sitting around and pared down the furniture. The older I get the more I am compelled to live with less stuff. I do have a few things I collect, though. I have an ankle bracelet from every Caribbean island I've been to. We have more music in this house than a stray dog has fleas. I'm addicted to clothing, and I have quite a few kitchen gadgets. By far, my biggest collection of any one item is my cookbook collection. I have so many of them, I can't even show all of them to you. I've had to box up and store most of them in the attic, rotating a few dozen of them in and out of my dining room hutch every so often. I haven't counted them in a while, but I easily have 300-500 cookbooks. Most are well worn and splatted with butter, oil and cocoa residue. Here are a few of the different kinds of books I have.
There's the standard Betty Crocker book that started my cooking addiction. I got this one as a wedding gift, but I cut my teeth on mama's old Betty Crocker book when I was a young girl with pony tails and skinned up knees. It was just like this one. I have a few nice coffee table cookbooks, like the Paula Deen book in this picture. SuperCop bought me that one for Christmas. Pssst! He's going to be a daddy. We're very excited. We'll dish more about that in a later post. Back to the subject at hand. I have just about all of Paula's books, including her autobiography. I just love her cake recipes. I have a ton of those little recipe books by Pillsbury and other companies that I plucked from a rack near the checkout counter at the grocery store. Two years ago, a relative of mine put together a collection of recipes from the 2708 members of my dad's family. It contains a few recipes from my grandmother and my great aunt Nellie. That's a special book.
Which was highly unusual given the fact that our little rural city has a population of 30,000. Salute! A former leader of the free world doesn't roll through town every day. It was one of several stops he made today while campaigning for Hillary in Kentucky. Our primary is Tuesday, and Bill and Hillary are all over our fair state this weekend. I had forgotten he was in town today. It was kind of fun to see him fly by, and it reminded me of when Teen Angel and I were standing in front of the White House last year, and Dick Cheney drove by. I was well behaved that day and refrained from making any sort of rude, anti war gestures, thank you very much. (Hubby was very relieved to hear that when I called him that night.) I have seen Clinton before. In fact, I've seen all of the U.S. Presidents since Ronald Reagan up close. Regardless of my political leanings, I always get a kick out of it. It's just downright cool. It was a fun way to bring a stressful week to a close.
Or calm and composed like Grace.
But I'm not. Not at all. First of all, I've got a little hair problem.
And I'm feelin' a little prickly.
And I really need to vent.
I'm tellin' ya. If I don't get a nap tomorrow......
I wrote a little yesterday about our family’s similarity to the Barones on Everybody Loves Raymond, but I’m not sure you folks get just how MUCH we are like that bunch. The resemblance is uncanny…or scary…depending on your perspective. We watched that show religiously because it was if the writers spied on us and wrote about the daily happenings in our dysfunctional lives. The Hula-gens put the “fun” in “dysfunction”. We were sad when the show ended production because it was like saying goodbye to ourselves, but the Barones live on in syndication, so we still get a good chuckle at ourselves on a regular basis. And when TBS gets tired of running Ray and his gang, we have several of the seasons on DVD. If you are a regular reader here or a new reader and are trying to imagine what I and my family are like, just flip on Raymond and you’ll get a pretty good idea. Let me run down a few of the similarities for you.
It’s also close to a chocolate factory, so you can smell warm chocolate no matter which direction you turn. That helps to cover up the smell of Lake Michigan. I love that smell. The chocolate, not Lake Michigan. Graduates from the college usually have well paying job offers by the time they are JUNIORS. They spend their summers doing internships in exciting places like Paris, and they end up working in major cities and ski resorts. The program is tough. It’s not for wimps. There are many labs, long hours and shifts in the college restaurant. And with so much to see and do in Chicago, they probably don’t get much sleep between the studying and the partying. If I were starting all over again, I’d skip that whole journalism thing and head to Shy-town to learn how to make fancy cakes. Apparently, I’m not alone in that feeling because many of their students are adults who have a degree of one kind or another but are drawn to work with something they truly love….food.
These guys were experimenting with leftovers to make all kinds of appetizers, and boy, were they good!
The only bad thing I can say about it is that they made me share with the other boys and girls. And you should have smelled the stuff that was in the ovens. There was some of this.
And the bread! Great googly moogly, you should have seen all of the warm bread. There were racks and racks of warm yeast and flour concoctions just waiting to be slathered in butter or dragged through olive oil. Is there a twelve step program for a bread addiction? I hope not. And speaking of butter, they use a ton of it here…in the pastry kitchen. 
Paula Deen’s got nothin’ on these folks when it comes to butter. look at that big hunk of butter the guy on the left is using. And check out those cakes just waiting to be layered with some gooey ganache. It was at this point that I considered asking if I could lick the bowls, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to look like some redneck who’d never been to a big city before. But if they had offered…..
I touched Viking stoves, rubbed giant mixers and drooled over the refrigerated drawers and the boiling water spigots on the stoves. (I have spigot envy, but don’t tell anyone.) Everywhere we turned, there was food. Walk through a lab? Oops! There’s some fresh seafood salad with shrimp and calamari. Would I like a sample? Is Hillary Clinton hippy? Of course, I want a sample. Walk around a corner? Oops! There’s an assortment of fruits and cheeses.
Would I care for a wedge? Sure, just snuggle up to mama with that Havarti and we’ll have a dairy good time. If we hadn’t been with teenagers I’d have asked for a glass of wine. They had plenty of that, too. I’d show you a picture of their school cafeteria, but I was so distracted by the gourmet menu I forgot to take one. They serve what the student chefs cook, three times a day. On the day we were there, they had prime rib for lunch. That’s a far cry from that green roast beef we had three times a week at my college. At Kendall they joke about the “Freshman 50” instead of the “Freshman 15” weight gain. Students come from all over the country to earn their degree there. Celebrity chefs visit for workshops. Bobby Flay taped a turkey “Throw Down” there last year. It was a fabulous, fascinating place. They even gave Hubby a little parting gift, which he couldn’t resist sneaking into before we left the building.
