On the other hand, I know exactly how I lost that chunk of skin on my finger. That would have been the microplane. I can also tell you how many lemons are in 2 - 5 lbs. bags and how long it takes to zest them: 26 and an hour. It probably takes less than an hour but I am just a wee bit compulsive about my zesting, making sure we don’t get any of the bad white stuff mixed in by accident.

I’m sure you can all guess why I am zesting lemons. Yep, making another batch of limoncello. That’s because I’m giving most of that first batch away for Christmas so hey, we’re gonna need more. Now there is the zest of 26 lemons sitting in 2 liters of vodka - half 80 proof and half 160 proof. Does that mean the final product is 120 proof? No, wait. The simple syrup probably drops it down a bit. Still, it’ll knock you on your ass. Maybe the bottles I give out should have warning labels?

Apparently limoncello making is dangerous, what with the scrapes & zested fingers. Oh, don’t worry. No blood or chunks of flesh made it into the limoncello.

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You may start throwing things at me now. For the next 24 days, all I have to do is…. oh, uh, nothing. Nothing at all. Just sit around, listening to Christmas music and baking Christmas cookies.

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This apartment is part of a 2 family house. Frank’s family owned it and lived in it all his life, up until his mother sold the house & took the upstairs apartment. So you can imagine how much stuff is there in the house, accumulating over a span of over 50 years. If I get there next time, I promise to take photos.

One of the things Frank & Mel did was gather up Mel’s clothes. (Yes, she still has some stuff there.) The odd thing is the people who now own the house & live downstairs have sort of been using the upstairs apartment as well. In Mel’s room, there were things belonging to the daughter of the people downstairs. Or so Melanie claims.

As she was emptying out drawers, she’s exclaiming, “Oh, that’s where that was!” and similar things. Then she reaches in and pulls out something Frank said looked like it was from a Victoria’s Secret catalog. He looks at it and starts laughing. “Those aren’t mine!” Mel yells and throws them back in the drawer. When relaying the story to Theresa, she claimed they probably really were Mel’s. If you ever met my sister in-law, you’d see just how strange that notion is.

Afterwards was the trip to the nursing home to visit their mom. As Frank is leaving, he says good-bye to the roommate, Olga. “So you’re going to be having a party here in the room after we’re gone?”

“Yeah. Sofia,” she points to my MIL, “has a boyfriend.” MIL’s name is Lucy so I’m not quite sure where Sofia came from but, then, she calls Melanie ‘Emily.’

Frank laughed and said, “I bet you have a boyfriend, too, and after we leave they both come in here and you have a party.”

“Yes, we do. And we all crawl under the beds.”

That’s some wild nursing home, eh?

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We did carry on the Table Mascot tradition at other weddings but I think this may be the only one captured on film.

Only my family…

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Second, just want to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! Ah - one of the things I’m thankful for, right here - the Internet. Wouldn’t have met so many wonderful people if not for that. Nope. I’d be a hermit living in my little enclosed world, locked away from all human contact…

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I decided to use a box cutter to slit open the plastic. I was being real careful not to cut myself. Our family has this tradition of doing stuff like that. Well let me tell you something - those aluminum cans must be paper thin. I barely nicked the can. Suddenly soda was spraying at me. I tried to get the plastic off the case so I could grab the can and stop the spraying. That was a mistake. Apparently the plastic was helping hold the soda in the can, blocking the hole.

Yep, I have nothing better to do today than clean up coke, what with having Thanksgiving here tomorrow.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, my daughter informs me that I am failing in the whole Italian Thanksgiving dinner menu. I left one item off the menu - stuffed artichokes. I didn’t hear the end of it. “How can you not make stuffed artichokes? What kind of Italian are you?” It did not good to point out that I was making stuffed mushrooms. She didn’t care that I had absolutely no room to store and cook 14 artichokes. Nor did I pacify her with the promise to make her stuffed artichokes this weekend. Nope, I have failed.

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“Ah, you’re finally out of the hospital and on your way home!”

“Yes but there’s a little problem. Do you still have my key? I don’t have my house key and Dad doesn’t have one, either.”

I immediately did the proper thing - laughed hysterically. I pictured my father trying to climb into a window. Then, after I finally stopped laughing, I jumped into my Batmobile. I couldn’t have my poor, weak sister sitting in a car for half an hour or 40 minutes while I drove over there. Thus, the need for the Batmobile. I made it there in 20 minutes and didn’t get stopped. Like I said, though. I had it all planned if I did. I was going to be quite calm with the police.

“Hey, you can keep me here all day & I don’t mind. Just have someone drive over to my sister’s house to bring her this key. I bet you can go real fast with those little flashy lights.”

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Nicky doesn’t do anything fancy to let us know when he has to go out. He doesn’t ring a doorbell like my friend’s dog. He will either stare at me if I’m not in eye-shot of the door or stare at the door, if I am near it. I always wondered if he stared at the door long enough, if it would open on it’s own. He also doesn’t have any tricks up his sleeve to let us know when he wants to come in. Well since he doesn’t have sleeves, that would be a trick, eh? He generally just sits by the door out there and barks.

Yesterday I let him out. About 10 minutes later, I heard the door open and heard his big doggie footsteps. Theresa was with me so she didn’t let him in. I got up and walked into the kitchen. No one was there. Far as I knew, Frank was still out at the nursing home visiting his mom. Hmmm…. I guess I must have the world’s most brilliant dog who figured out how to jump up on his hind legs and turn a doorknob.

Unfortunately, I found out that I wasn’t about to win any big prize for having a brilliant old dog. Frank walked in a few minutes later. I was so disappointed. Not to see Frank, mind you. But here I thought I finally found something useful this 13 1/2 year old big, smelly, shedding dog could do other than leave giant tumbleweeds of dog fur every couple of hours and yet, not go bald.

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Moving on to the tale of how I spent my weekend & why I’ve been too busy to blog - it is because I have been running all around the house with disinfecting spray, alcohol and anti bacterial wipes. Theresa was home this weekend with a really bad cold, bronchitis and possibly strep throat. I cannot get sick. I am doing Thanksgiving. More important, Janet will be getting out of the hospital in a day or 2 and if she is feeling up to it, she will be here. She cannot be around germs. We must have a sterile environment. No germs, no sick people, not even a sneeze. I have decreed it.

Plus don’t ask me how many hours I’ve spent this weekend on problem solving web stuff. Oh, and looking through 1920 census documents trying to find relatives. My eyes are about to bug out from staring at this monitor for too many hours. I think they need a break in front of the TV. Yeah, that’ll help.

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My darling daughter is seeing a concert in the city today. The other 2 girls who are going left early because they all apparently have this thing - get into the city hours & hours ahead of time, stand around (it’s like -23 degrees out, by the way) and hope to get a glimpse of the musicians. Theresa couldn’t leave early with them because she had physical therapy. (Heaven forbid they wait for her!) Instead she was going to take the LIRR (Long Island Railroad) in and meet up with them.

Remember how cold I said it was? Her college is about a mile away from the LIRR so she couldn’t walk there, especially considering her ankle still hurts. Her friend was supposed to drop her off at the station and then pick her up when she got back. The LIRR runs on an hourly schedule and she had a particular train to catch. When she called her friend to drive her, she couldn’t get hold of him. It was getting late. Darling Daughter decided to just drive herself rather than miss the train.

Now here is the problem with that. There is a parking lot by the station. However, it is by permit only. She does not have a permit. The big question is this: Will they just simply give her a ticket or will they tow her car?

What this means is, when she gets back to that train station at oh, say 2 a.m. she will either find her car there with a big old ticket on it or she will find the car gone, in which case, guess who will be getting a phone call. Guess who will be going out at 2 a.m. to the rescue, partly because her friends are so damn unreliable that she can’t even call one of them at that hour, even though they would be up still.

So - car or no car? Stay tuned.

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Or maybe it was my grandfather. Yeah, that might have been it. He has the same name as my brother and maybe he wants me to get going on buying his great grandchildren some Christmas gifts.

They must have wireless up there, eh?

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