A post in which it is a fairly quiet Monday

I was up before the alarm this morning, which was good. I needed some coffee and gather-my-wits time. I was tired at work today, but I’ve certainly been in worse shape and still come in.

I took the day off for the Monday after the Hat Party. I’m doing dinner for Lady Beth the night before, and then the Hat Party on the 18th, so that’s going to be a very busy weekend. I’m going to need a day off. It should be fine, as long as I can get my hat done this weekend. I want to be able to plan menus, iron napkins, pack china, etc next week.

I had a very nice email from Lynn today with all kinds of helpful hints for my service date with Lady Beth, which I very much appreciated. I wanted to be sure to include her in this process. I didn’t want her to feel jealous or hurt in any way. It is the Domme’s prerogative what they do and don’t do, but that doesn’t mean that the submissive doesn’t have feelings. I would much rather her feel included and part of this then left out. She has been welcoming to me from the beginning about my pledge, and was lovely to me about this request for help also. I hope I get to cook for them both some time. But yeah, I need to concentrate on getting through the first service date for now.

On the way home tonight I was thinking about making egg salad. They sent all the eggs (all the ones I didn’t break, anyway) home with me from the party yesterday. I had 22 eggs left to use up (having eaten two for breakfast this morning). Egg salad is great, but I wanted something different. I first thought I would make the egg salad taste like deviled eggs (I adore deviled eggs), and then I thought, even better, fancy deviled eggs. I have this great recipe that I got on line from a wonderful website that is no longer up (the guy that ran it was a gourmet, but he was all about the fat and had a fairly serious heart attack, but I digress), but I haven’t made them in a while. The reason is that when I do I have to beg people to eat them.

These eggs are absolutely scrumptious, but they have non-traditional deviled egg ingredients in them. When I tell most people about them, they get the scrunched up “picky face” that many southern people get when you describe basically anything that their grandmothers haven't been making for at least six generations. Sigh. So I got sick of making them and then begging people to eat them. It's tiring being Sam I Am. Plus I really, really hate peeling eggs, so I just quit taking deviled eggs to parties.

I ran in the grocery store to pick up the couple of ingredients I would need to make my eggs, only to find myself in the End of Days or something. There were 8 million-bajillion people crammed in the store, all apparently buying provisions for simultaneous Arctic expeditions. So I'm standing there thinking are we running out of food? Did someone call for snow tomorrow? What the hell is the deal? The woman in line behind me noted my confusion and helpfully pointed out that it is the first business day of the month (Good Friday having been a holiday) and that food stamps and Social Security checks had arrived today. Well that explained it, but I sure didn't like it any better. The self-check was of course 50 deep - sometimes you can get out faster that way, but one woman was checking out a mounded cart full of groceries, despite the clearly placed sign that said '20 items or less'. So I got in the '10 items or less' line with a checker. I would have gotten through faster too, if my usual luck hadn't held. Of course the register broke. I don't think it's just me at the hateful BiLo near my house. I think they have registers specifically designed to malfunction at the worst possible time. So I stood there and tried to think of England (as opposed to running amok) while the checker and the manager wrestled with the stupid receipt printer for ten minutes. Sigh.

Fresh eggs are very hard to peel. It used to be fairly easy to find eggs that were a bit stale, but not these days. Apparently the eggs that James got to dye came from someplace where they had a guy poised under each chicken’s ass with a catcher’s mitt. After the eggs were caught, they were sent by individual courier to assure that they were only minutes old when purchased. The involved chickens also apparently had a measure of super glue in their feed. These shells were Stuck. On.

By the time I had finished peeling enough of them to make the egg salad; I vividly remembered why I stopped taking deviled eggs to parties. Michael actually bought me one of those Eggstractors at one point for my birthday – I’m sure you’ve seen them on television. I promptly named it the Eggsploder, because it really just blew ragged egg chunks all over the place.

So I finally sat down to my dinner of a piece of toasted sourdough bread with egg salad, and a bowl of potato salad. I thought I had tons left, and was actually trying to give it away at work today, but when I dished it out tonight I realized that there really wasn’t that much of it – just a bit more than I needed for suppers this week. I packed the rest up to take to Terry at work tomorrow.

I ate my delicious egg salad, and reflected on the fact that at times I feel very much like the protagonist in Babette’s Feast. I knock myself out trying to make great stuff for people who would really be just as happy – or happier – to live on nothing but deep-fried chicken strips and honey mustard. I also kind of feel like Squidward sometimes, trying desperately to cultivate a little appreciation for the finer things while living among folks who could really care less, and in fact think I’m odd for not being exactly the same way.

I felt kind of lonely tonight. I called to talk to Myz Shay, since I owe her a call from last week, but couldn’t reach her. I also called Jason. He would have eaten my egg salad and appreciated it. I miss him. I didn’t get him either, so I left a message. I fooled around online for a bit, and ate some more of my heart out over the gorgeous guy from Colorado I’ve been chatting with on Bear411. I also talked to a new guy on Manhunt for a little bit tonight. Capping the evening though was a lovely email from Lady Beth. I responded to her, and was content.