Queen of Rambles

I feel like such a fraud right now. I’m serving a large, southern style dinner tonight. Yet here I sit, typing an entry. There will be fried chicken and potato salad, both prepared by the Amish, fresh tomatoes prepared by mother nature, southern style black eyed peas prepared by a canning company and fried okra prepared by yours truly. That’s a lot of meal with very little prep work. Dessert, half a strawberry-rhubarb pie and half a peanut butter cake was also graciously prepared by the Amish. My grandmother would be having seizures if I called her and told her I was serving a meal mostly prepared by other people. My mom would give me a high five and ask if the fried okra was really necessary.

I thought about making mashed potatoes and gravy, but peeling potatoes? Do I really want to do that? Nope. I thought about making buttermilk biscuits, but with all those other starches would it really be necessary? I don’t think so.

So here I sit in a pre-dinner stupor wondering when people are going to want to eat. One house guest is on the balcony reading, one is MSNing and one is taking a hot bath. At 6 pm. I’m glad she’s out of my hair, but it just seems a little strange.

I had a really easy day because they spent the bulk of it off touristing and Erik took a nap, so I finally had precious, precious alone time. I needed it. I can be more sparkly and gracious this evening, as long as people stay the hell out of my kitchen.

So shall we talk culture clashes?

Any of my VERY longtime readers (Heather and Kisha and my FFF buddies) will remember I used to talk about the complete lack of customer service in Sweden. I would become enraged at what I viewed as rudeness and disrespect. I suppose it really is a cultural difference even though I was never able to understand it because my sister-in-law becomes ENRAGED by the customer service levels here in America. If a salesperson talks to her in a friendly manner she gets huffy and won’t by anything from them if she suspects they might get a commission. How dare they LIE TO HER! Because, indeed, Swedes view friendly chit-chat as lying. I guess. I’ve heard this before but have never understood it. If the cashier asks how you are doing, but doesn’t REALLY care about how you are doing, it is a lie and how dare they lie! I can logically with my brain sort of comprehend this idea, but I’m such an American that I can’t process the idea and really make it make sense in any meaningful way.

Also, you should have seen the scene she made in Hannah Anderson when the cashier asked me to spell my last name and I spelled it the American way instead of the Swedish way. There is nothing wrong with the Swedish way, except for one tiny little detail. It has a letter that doesn’t exist in the English language. Heck, it has a letter that I can’t even SAY or HEAR or UNDERSTAND. For the curious, it is an A with a little circle above it. It mostly sounds like an O so I suppose a more proper way to Americanize our name would be Polsson, but that’s just weird so we stick with the A minus the ring and people still have trouble spelling it but it works. So I’m trying to spell my name and she’s flipping out, telling the cashier it is wrong and it must be spelled right at a Swedish store and the little Chinese gal checking us out is confused and I am irked and it is FUN FUN FUN. But now Erik has a shirt that says Malmo on it so everyone is happy even though I compromised and got him a size 90 even though I know he needed an 80 but my SIL wanted me to get him an 100. The 90 will probably fit him by mid-winter, I suppose.

Bitch bitch bitch. Is that all I do?

Seriously, they are really nice people but I have to get some of this out of my system. My SIL is a lot of fun, but I think I need to take her in much smaller doses.

Soooooooo. . . should I go fry the okra? It’s a good thing Erik took a nap today because I don’t think we will be eating before 7.

Now for a vote: Do you prefer triple berry (raspberry, blueberry and blackberry) pie, cobbler, or crisp? Do you really make cobbler by putting some butter in the pan, mixing together sugar, self-rising flour and milk then pouring the fruit on it? Does that really make something? Is it cakey or crusty? Tell me, people! I am not a fruity dessert person. I’m going to make the brownie recipe that Sweet Pickles gave me a long time ago plus a triple berry something or other for tomorrow.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 5:13 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.