My daughter and her boyfriend are coming to visit for a week. They are both in the Army and she will be deploying to Iraq in October. I can’t wait to see her but her visit causes quite a dilemma for me. I have to determine if I still remember how to cook!!

Living alone; it seems that coming home from work and cooking a meal is too much effort. You spend your evening cooking a meal and then cleaning up the kitchen. And what do you do with the leftovers? I can’t seem to master the art of cooking for one and there is always plenty left over. I suppose I would eat healthier if I did cook. It’s just so much easier to grab a frozen dinner from the freezer or open a can of green beans for dinner or even have a bowl of cereal!

I don’t think that is going to work for my daughter and her boyfriend. I know my family thinks my menu’s are quite weird. My nephew lives alone and he has a standing invitation for dinner at my sister’s or my niece’s house. I told him he is welcome to come for dinner and that I would be happy to open a second can of green beans for him or put out an extra bowl of cereal but surprisingly he has never taken me up on my offer!!

It really is hard to turn a bowl of cereal into a “Martha Stewart” event!! Even if you make some funky centerpiece or set the table with the fine china and linens and play some soothing music, it’s still a bowl of cereal. Not exactly a memorable “dinner party”. Maybe if I served a nice wine with it, but here is the hard question–What wine goes with a bowl of cereal??? Red or white? Merlot, chardonnay, chablis, zinfandel, or mabe a nice fruit wine like sangria? And does it matter what kind of cereal you are eating? Would it be a different wine for Golden Grahams that it would for Cocoa Puffs? I can’t seem to find the answer to that question in a Martha Stewart magazine!!!!

I guess until Martha decides to answer the practical questions like mine; my meals are destined to be weird and I will be considered a little quirky(o.k. more than a little) but “normal” is highly overrated!!!!

When I told you about our family card game, Shanghai Rum, I’m not sure I made it clear just how important winning (or should I say, “beating everyone else in the family to a bloody pulp”) really is. I also failed to mention just how difficult it is to win. In order to make your hand, you have to “buy” up to three cards. You buy a card when someone discards something that you need to make your hand and it is not your turn next to pick up the card. You would then “buy” the card and also the next card on the draw pile. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it. Here’s the catch! If someone whose turn is before yours in the rotation wants the card, they can buy it away from you. Given the competitive nature of the game (and in particular, the family) you don’t always get to buy the cards you need.

This is where the name calling comes into play and if some one “allows” you to buy the card of your dreams, you will owe them big time. This is a little known rule (at least in my book). So last time we played cards, I allowed my niece to buy a card she desperately needed and as a bonus she also drew a wild card. This was a debt almost too large to comprehend!!!!

But I was totally fair about it and let her know in no uncertain terms, that she now owes me a kidney! I’m not getting any younger and you never know when one of your kidneys might decide to just quit! Everyone agreed that this was a reasonable request given the circumstances. So now; I think I’m all set and can sit back and relax because I have a kidney if the need arises. Good to know.

My niece decides that she is not going to give me her kidney!!! Can you believe her weaseling out of a deal after I delivered on my part of the bargain??? I explain to her that she has no choice; after all, a deal is a deal! but she insists that she is not going to deliver. I can”t comprehend the lack of honor that must be required to cheat an old lady out of her kidney!!!!

But don’t you worry; I will get that kidney!! She will fall asleep sometime and I will take what belongs to me! I will be vindicated. Justice will prevail!! After all,”All’s fair in love and cards”.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister calls to tell me that we are getting together at her house on Saturday to play cards. I am sure you are wondering how she could have known I would be free with such short notice. When you are single, everyone just assumes that you have no life!! O.K. It wasn’t that difficult to fit in to my “busy” schedule even as I protest that I have to check my calendar to see if I’m available.

My family plays a card game called “shanghai rum” and it has been passed down from generation to generation. I can remember how we begged as children to be allowed to play only to be told we had to wait until we were old enough (and no one could ever give you the magic number that was “old enough”)! And I remember telling my kids the same thing when they begged to play. So it is a BIG DEAL in my family. It is not just a card game; it is a rite of passage into adulthood!

Now to tell you the truth, I think my kids and my sister’s kids are a lot more competitive in this card game than we ever were. This game is SERIOUS business. They can be ruthless if you take one of the cards they need to make their hand. Not that my sister, brother-in-law, ex husband and I didn’t compete to win but it was just a game!! Wait a minute-I seem to remember my brother-in-law getting out his baseball bat and threatening the next person who took his card. O.K. maybe the game has always been serious business.

This game has ten hands and each hand requires one more card played out in sets and runs and when you have six to nine people in the game, one game can run all night. Everyone is talking smack especially my nephews who are actually great friends. You wouldn’t believe it to hear them in a game though! The insults fly fast but it is all in fun. We laugh so hard we almost cry but that is just at my sister’s card shuffling abilities. Let’s just say, a career as a dealer in Las Vegas is probably NOT in her future. It can get really wild!!!! Fortunately the police have never been dispatched to break things up-yet!

Everyone has a great time(mostly whomever is winning and it better be me) except for my brother-in-law. He hates this game and is flabbergasted that there are other people in the world who know and play this game. He seems to think we are making up the rules as we go along and they are designed to make sure he doesn’t win. But he is a good sport and plays along with a minimum of card throwing. I am sure he is relieved though when the game is over and we can get down to some serious card playing (euchre). You have to understand. Euchre was his family’s rite of passage into adulthood and he loves to play that game!

So I bought my Land’s End coat and all is well. Right? Not so much. It does help to keep me warm in the winter but I can’t wear it to the store. It’s so hot in the store with that coat on that I’m sure one day I will come to on the floor and the rescue squad will be there and the paramedic will be giving me mouth to mouth! (Please God, let him be a hunk).

So one day last winter, I was home for lunch. I know-how exciting but it gets better. I come home for lunch to let the dogs out and some days (contain your excitement and jealousy about how much fun my life is!) I get out the scooper and do poop patrol in the back yard.

I cleaned up the poop and headed to the garage with my aromatic bag of doo doo to put it in the trash can. I catch my foot on the place where the concrete is just a little bit higher and splatter my self on the concrete floor. The bag of poop goes flying as I go flying. Fortunately, I don’t land in the doo doo!!!

But here is the really scary OCD part. As I’m falling, I’m not thinking; “I hope I don’t break a bone.” I’m thinking, “Keep your head up and don’t hit it on the floor or you might pass out and BE LATE GETTING BACK TO WORK!!!!!!! I’m working on the script. This will be the scariest scene ever in a Horror movie!

So I’m laying there on the floor and I’m thinking how fortunate that I’m basically wrapped in cotton batting with this Land’s End down filled coat on and I’m wondering how I am going to get up in this coat. I can’t move with this coat on and then I realize—I’m the little brother in “A Christmas Story“.

The dogs come running in and I know; “Here they are to rescue me (I always knew a crisis would bring out the Lassie in them. What is it girl? Did Timmy fall in the well?) They come running to my rescue, sniff me and look at each other as if to say, “What the hell is she doing lying on the floor and who is going to get us our treat for coming out here in this freezing weather”! Well, I’m sure they would come through if I fell in a well!!!!

But I managed to get off the floor and back to work on time which is really all that matters when you are a little OCD. And, yes, the dogs did get their treat!

I decided to move back to Ohio about four years ago to be around family. (Makes you question my sanity, doesn’t it?) I had been living in Albuquerque, N.M. for fifteen years. My ex husband told me he would place bets that I would be headed back by the beginning of my second winter here. I laughed! I was no wimp. I grew up on a farm in Indiana. I didn’t remember ever being that cold and I played in snow drifts taller than I was.

I moved in April and the first December rolled around. It’s not so cold. No problem! I can handle this. I’m a capable woman. Then January came roaring in!!! The winds howled and the temperature dropped below zero. WHAT WAS I THINKING! I’m going to die in this cold! I can’t feel my legs, my face, my body is numb. Hypothermia is setting in; how sad to die so young!!! And my sister says, “This isn’t so cold. Wait until February. That’s the coldest month.” O.K. I survived, but I don’t know how. And every winter that rolls around, I’m ready to leave for Albuquerque.

Oh, and those snow drifts sure were a lot more fun when I was a kid playing in them. It doesn’t seem so fun when your back aches and you still haven’t even shoveled a path down the driveway!!!

But I stay! (My ex husband will not get the satisfaction of being right!!!) My family laughs at me, “What’s the matter with you? It’s not that cold!” Laugh if you must but I found the solution. I bought a coat from Land’s End that is supposed to keep you warm to 45 degrees below zero. Who cares if I can’t move in it! I will survive!!!