Delia’s Totally Awesome Green Chile Deer Jerky: More addictive than crack but less likely to get you arrested.

For the last few years, I’ve made up a big batch of venison jerky for our annual deer hunt (Arizona Coues Whitetail, not Bambi, Rudolph or any of the non-predator cast from The Lion King), and as I’ve fine-tuned the recipe each time, I think I’ve finally created a jerky recipe worth sharing with the world.  Or at least with the 4 people who consistently read my blog.

A little background first.  This is a hunting family, so I’ve always made jerky with deer or elk, trimming and grinding the meat myself.  Several years ago, my husband got me a Jerky Gun for Christmas (same size and general appearance as a plastic caulking gun) and it revolutionized my jerky efforts.  If you are serious about your jerky (or just a hillbilly gear-freak with a freezer full of deer steak that your family refuses to eat), you GOTTA get yourself one of these jobbies.

You will also need a dehydrator – you can use your oven, but the dehydrator is much more efficient and produces a better jerky.

Happy little jerky strips and green chile

In terms of ingredients, I have a hard-core addiction to the unbelievably fabulous green chile carne seca sold at the Chevron Station outside of Alcalde (just north of Espanola) in New Mexico so I made my first batch using the ingredient list from their label.  I don’t think that’s stealing. . . .  besides, no matter how good mine is, it will never approximate their dried meat ambrosia!  Anyway, I’ve tweaked my recipe enough now that I think it’s sufficiently different enough to avoid legal action.

The jerky recipes in the dehydrator book (and on most jerky-making websites) call for either jerky cure (which you buy from the dehydrator people or at some place like Cabela’s) or a fair amount of sodium nitrite (which is also in the pre-made cure).  The cure or nitrite is to help prevent the growth of bacteria during the initial drying period.  Remember, you’re putting strips of raw meat into a warm (160 degree) environment for 4-6 hours – the perfect breeding ground for evil food demons if you aren’t careful.  The problem is that sodium nitrite is really rough on your innards, and can give some people very painful heartburn for hours after ingesting.  I had a problem with GERD when I first started making jerky and I can tell you that nitrites made me feel like I’d swallowed half a can of Drano.  I did some research and found out that – believe it or not – raisins added to jerky can inhibit microbial growth.  This was from real sources like smart people at universities, food science people, and the raisin people (who have needed a PR boost ever since the damn fruit roll-up people took over the “healthy” snack market with their lurid sheets of sugary jello paste bereft of any actual fruit).

I first started using raisins two years ago and that’s when I really got people hooked – even my father-in-law, who has a pretty high standard for vital hunting provisions like jerky.  My combination of herbs and spices, green chile and raisins seems to satisfy some primal yearning in the most urban sophisticate.  Not that I know any of those.

Since then, I’ve managed to turn at least a dozen normally respectable people into complete jerky addicts.  Because they’re all a bunch of cheap bastards and always get their jerky for free, I don’t think I’m endangering my fledgling jerky-pushing syndicate by releasing the magical formula

OK, enough blabbing, here’s the first public appearance of Delia’s Totally Awesome Green Chile Deer Jerky.  You can thank me later.

• 8-9 pounds carefully-trimmed, ultra-lean game meat that has been frozen for at least 60 days* (I forgot to mention this recipe is for a shit-load of jerky, just do the math and reduce proportions to whatever amount of meat you have)
• Kosher or any non-iodized salt (I prefer coarse or Kosher salt, but a finer grind is ok)
• 12-14 dry ounces of raisins, soaked in 2/3 cup of hot water, drained and pureed to a paste
• 8 tsp garlic powder
• 4 tsp each: finely ground black pepper; onion powder; mexican whole oregano
• 1 tsp ground red chile (I used hot, but medium would be fine as well)
• 1/2 to 1 cup hot New Mexico Green Chile (you can use Hatch if you must, but I much prefer the hotter, and far superior Espanola Improved), roasted, peeled/seeded and chopped ultra-fine

*Game should be frozen for at least 60 days before turning into jerky so that any parasites or other unwelcome beasties will be killed off.  And don’t make that face at me – all animals, you included, have some type of internal or external hitchhikers – just grow up and deal with it.

Make sure you trim every bit of fat and connective tissue from the meat.  Fat will go rancid and the other stuff is just gross – I don’t care if it’s going to get ground up – get rid of it.  I used a couple of roasts, some steaks, backstraps, and a loin – about 12-15 pounds untrimmed.  There was some freezer burn and questionable areas so I just cut those completely out to be safe.  Err on the side of extreme caution when you’re planning on feeding people dried raw meat. . .

Run the meat through the coarse attachment of your grinder (I used my trusty 15-year old KitchenAid standing mixer with a grinder attachment – damn thing has paid for itself five times over), mixing up different cuts as much as possible.  After you’ve ground all your meat, mix in (yes, with your clean, bare hands you sissy) the salt.  I added 4 teaspoons to my 8-9 pounds of ground meat, but probably could have doubled that.  I think a safe estimate is 1/2 to 1 tsp per pound.  I thoroughly mixed the salt in and then left the meat, covered, in the fridge overnight to cure.  This may be unnecessary, but I felt it would give the meat a chance to rest and the salt to dissolve.  When I took the meat out I ran it through the grinder on coarse one more time.

Blend your dry spices.  Sprinkle over the pile of meat and work in.  Add the raisin paste and the finely-chopped green chile.  Mush the whole pile around a bit and then run through the grinder using the fine attachment this time.  This helps incorporate all the seasonings equally and just to be safe, I made sure I was taking lumps of ground meat from different parts of the bowl and mushing them into the grinder together.

Jerky Gun and Gigantic Pile of Raw Meat

I like a fairly seasoned jerky, this is really a personal choice, so you’ll have to experiment.  If you aren’t sure, mix half of the seasoning ingredients into the meat thoroughly and make a little patty to cook up and taste.  You can always increase salt and seasonings, but you can’t take them away (unless you have more meat to grind up) so be conservative if you are at all concerned about it being too spicy.  But it’s jerky, for Gods’ sake – let it have some personality!

About the raisins – all the smart jerky-science guys agreed that a jerky mix of 10% raisins was both effective at inhibiting bacteria growth and tasted best.  Since I had about 8-9 pounds of meat, I used about 13 – 14 ounces of raisins.  Use more if you want sweeter jerky.

Make sure you taste your green chile before adding it.  I had some fairly hot chile, but still ended up increasing the total amount to about a cup and a half.  Also, when it’s ground in with the meat, you kind of lose it visually.  I added the last half cup or so after I’d finished grinding so there were some visible pieces of chile and seeds – just gives the jerky a better look.  You can see some seeds and bits of chile in the photo above.

When you have the right balance of seasonings, it’s ready to dry.  It will take at least 4 hours (and up to 12, depending on the thickness of your strips and the humidity) so plan accordingly.  It won’t hurt to sit another night in the fridge if you don’t have time to babysit it.  You don’t want it to dry too much or it will turn into black little jerky crackers, so make sure you’ll be around when it’s done.  Load up your jerky gun and fire away.  If you’re making patties or strips by hand, go for uniformly thick pieces – about 1/8 of an inch and no more than 1/4 inch.  The jerky must be dried at a temp of no less than 160 degrees – but much hotter than that and you’ll be baking it. Again, a jerky gun and dehydrator really takes all the guesswork out of all this crap.

When it’s done (pliable, but not mushy), put it into ziplock baggies and keep out of reach of any felines or canines in the house.  It doesn’t need to be refrigerated unless you aren’t going to eat it for a while (like more than a couple of weeks).   But leaving it that long would just be stupid.  Save yourself from ignominy and embarrassment and just dive right in.

Toro is always willing to help clean stray bits of meat off the floor. . .

 

 

 

Forgive? Or F*** Off?

I recently found myself in the awkward position of having to deal with a person I had hoped to completely cut out of my life.  This person, who used to be a very good friend, did the unthinkable by shacking up with a mutual friend’s husband – destroying both marriages in the process and condemning the children of those marriages to an eternity of custody battles, visitation schedules and shuttling between two households.  (See “Betrayal” for the whole sordid story.)

Knowing it was only a matter of time before I bumped into her again, I would occasionally run possible scenarios in my head.  Given my professional position, screaming “SLUT!” every time I saw her was out of the question.  I knew that I was going to have to deal with her at some point, and I knew that there would most likely be other people around and, perhaps also a court reporter, so I would be forced to communicate in some manner that wouldn’t damage my reputation.  Or ability to earn money.

The time finally came when my husband (who works in her office) reported to me that she’d be working this weekend, so I would see her, if only for a few minutes, and have to at least address her in the context of a hearing.

Yesterday I drove to work running through more imaginary scenarios: what I would say, whether I would look at her or not, how I would pitch my voice, whether I would get caught slashing her tires. . .  It struck me that I was preparing to act defensively – as if I was the one who had done something wrong.  

“YOU DIDN’T DO ANYTHING WRONG YOU IDIOT!!”  I screamed at my image in the rear-view. “WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM??”

She is the one who did the bad thing.  She is the one who should feel that she has to be defensive because everyone’s against her (or at least many people are against what she did, most folks wish she and the other guy would just go away and some people still have lunch with the two of them).  And most importantly, she is the one who should be worried about having to deal with me – the person who sent her and lover-boy a kiss-off letter telling them they were both dead to me and comparing them to sewage.

And she isn’t.

And that’s why I was having such a hard time asserting my “rightness” in my imaginary scenarios.  The two of them didn’t skip a beat after dropping the bomb of their “relationship” on the community.   She never made any attempt to salvage our friendship, he never apologized to his ex-wife, and as a couple, they have never, ever, not once, made anything coming close to an admission that what they did was just wrong.  Not even in the context of “we know how it’s making everyone feel, and we’re sorry about that, but we’re in love.”

They do not acknowledge anything outside of their bubble.   When they got engaged (her second, his SIXTH), she was actually walking up to people at work and flashing the back of her left hand in their faces so they could see her ring.  Ignoring the fact that many of the people she was blinding with her new bling were still friends with the wronged ex-wife.  If either of them are in any way aware of how much they are despised in their professional community, they aren’t showing it.

So I wasn’t really surprised when her bubbly demeanor this weekend seemed untouched by my refusal to acknowledge her or my terse response to her question about my health.  (I was irritated that she knew I’d been sick – no idea why, but it bugged me)

After my final encounter with her ended and I headed back, my mind touched briefly on the idea of forgiveness. 

As in: can I ever forgive her for this?  Is this something forgivable in my moral universe?  If my friend (whose husband this one was now engaged to) ever forgave her, could I?  Should I?

To forgive is divine.  But under what circumstances?   When do you forgive another?  When I think of someone forgiving another person, I see the “transgressor” as someone who sees they have done something wrong and want to get back into the good graces of the “forgiver.”  I don’t see forgiveness as something that you bestow upon some unwitting dupe like tossing coins into a transient’s cup.  In other words, I have always felt that forgiveness has to be asked for before it “should” be given.

Because, I reason, if you forgive someone when they haven’t asked for it they may think you now agree with, or at least support, what they did against you in the first place.   If someone hasn’t asked for forgiveness, isn’t it usually because they don’t think they did anything wrong?  Can you even forgive a person who doesn’t think they need to be forgiven?  (And I don’t mean “forgiven” in the celestial sense – I mean forgiven by one of us stinky mortals down here)

My husband has always teased me for my old-fashioned and often naive insistence that people realize when they’ve done something wrong (it’s probably why I’m in this profession).  I also want them to feel at least a little badly about doing whatever it was  – recognition and repentance – that’s what I’m all about.  And I didn’t even go to Catholic school.  This is clearly part of that.

This woman who used to be my friend will never realize (or admit) she did anything wrong here.  Although her actions in the past year have left me dumbfounded, I do know her well enough to know that when her fiance dumps her (and since she’s number 6, it may not take too long for that to happen) she will be angry with him and blame him for everything, but never, ever will she blame herself for anything.  Never, ever will she say out loud “I really screwed up.”  Never, ever will she go to the current ex-wife (number 5) and ask for forgiveness. 

So, in my moral universe – never, ever will she get it.

 

Surfing in a Bucket

I have a really bad habit of scrolling through Google News for great lengths of time when I’m either bored or can’t think of anything to write (or am trying to ignore work that needs to get done).  It’s as if my internet world is limited to that carefully-divided page of news tidbits and celebrity gossip and I can’t move out of it except to follow links to a particulary news agency’s website. 

I hate when I do that.

Just this second, I was doing it again – scrolling all the way down to the bottom and then slowly back up again to see if the headline for Obama’s declaration of a flu emergency had changed in the 4 seconds it was off screen. 

I could even hear my inner voice justifying my mindless trolling because I’m coming off a horrible viral infection that knocked me flat for a week.  Recuperating from being sick = permission to bore myself to death.

For whatever reason, I never think to truly “surf” the internet, but intentionally limit myself  to the Google news page.  I think it goes along with my concern that I might be caught doing something frivolous.  By whom, I’m not sure.  I’m 42, for gods’ sake!  I can do whatever the hell I want with my computer time!  Dammit!

That’s it, I’m closing this tiny excuse for a post and I’m going to make up some Google search for something totally silly.

 

Just put me in charge already

WHEREAS the Undersigned has worked for THE MAN in various capacities since time immemorial and is intimately familiar with the inner workings of governmental bureaucracies; and

WHEREAS during that time THE MAN has not improved its ability to carefully and wisely spend or save money; and

WHEREAS it is time a small amount of common sense force its way into the astoundingly inefficient and blatantly consumptive morass THE MAN has become, the Undersigned shall heretofore be made Supreme Dictator and President-for-Life of the managerial aspects of all governmental agencies. 

(Note that Undersigned has no knowledge of, nor interest in, such flim flam as foreign policy, domestic issues, military concerns, what really goes on in the Treasury, where Congress is located, or how to run a country and, therefore, will not be responsible for such minor details.)

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED THAT THE FOLLOWING POLICIES TAKE EFFECT IMMEDIATELY:

1.  OFFICE KITCHENS: Every governmental office will be supplied with an employee kitchen containing at least one of the following:

- Refrigerator that automatically disposes of all plastic containers, paper bags, to-go boxes, opened soda cans, tiny packets of soy sauce/parmesan cheese/crushed red peppers/salt/pepper, half-eaten sandwiches and salad dressings with expiration dates that begin with “19–” each and every Friday.  Justification:  Since Barbara always ends up cleaning out the fridge every three months, she invariably spends at least half a day doing the job – and the other half complaining to everyone else what slobs “some of the other people in this office” are.  This will save one 8-hour work day at Barbara’s salary or, approximately $1600 per office per fiscal quarter.

- Filtered Water Dispenser.   City governments that previously removed water coolers from employee kitchens in order to force employees to drink city water, in a misguided attempt to convince tourists that the city is so great its water tastes just like bottled water, must replace them immediately.  Because, face it, city water tastes like city water and we all want our mineralized and reverse osmosized water, not your chlorinated, muddy crap.  Justification:  This will eliminate approximately 1 billion empty water bottles from local landfills in addition to improving employee health since they will drink more water if it doesn’t taste like someone has already consumed it.

- Garbage Disposal.  Signs telling people 1. “your mother doesn’t work here” and/or 2. “please do not put food down the sink” are amusing to everyone except the person who printed them up and are also completely invisible to most men.   Justification:  This will save at least $1350 yearly per office as it will no longer be necessary to have Maintenance take the sink apart every time Ken mashes what’s left of his Ramen noodles through the strainer with a plastic spoon.

2.  BATHROOMS:  All governmental office bathrooms will be equipped with the following:

- Very loud and powerful fan to cover up otherwise embarrassing noises and smells that may emanate from said bathroom while an employee is occupied within.  Justification:  This will save both money and increase productivity since Robert will no longer feel it necessary to leave the building so he can use the public toilet in the convenience store next door merely because it possesses a single-seater with a loud fan.

- Extra powerful flushing toilets (Lowe’s has one that allegedly will flush a bucket of golf balls.  That would do).  Justification:  Should be obvious, but see below.

- Heavy duty toilet plunger and toilet brush.  Justification:  If the office is not possessed of a powerful-enough flushing mechanism in the toilets, many calls to Maintenance for “clog” removal must be made.  A plunger will help eliminate most of these Maintenance costs.  More importantly, however, it will reduce lost employee time that occurs when either of two things happens: employees with gastric distress issues are forced to hide in the bathroom until everyone has gone home, or the toilet becomes so plugged up it floods the entire building and everyone has to leave so the Haz-Mat team can come in to clean up.   The toilet brush assists in situations when a dozen or so coutesy flushes still haven’t done the trick, thus forcing the trapped employee to sneak out of the bathroom via the ductwork in the  ceiling in order to avoid the embarrassment of being known as the person who left the bathroom “dirty.”

- Small cabinet containing the following:  extra-strength air freshener, extra toilet paper, small first aid kit, box of safety pins, small box of feminine necessities to be replenished as needed by users of said box of necessities.  Justification:  A supply of inexpensive items that can reduce the number of times employees need to leave the office due to a missing button, cut finger or lack of preparation for regularly occurring “events” can greatly increase productivity and reduce the likelihood that the employee who leaves doesn’t return until the next day.

3.  IN THE OFFICE:

- Computers –  In General:  Everyone employed by any government agency shall be fluent in the office email, word processing and any other computer program they use regularly as part of their job.  Regardless of the attempts of many upper-level management personnel to deny/forbid/ignore their existence, computers are here now and they aren’t going away so figure out how to attach a file to your own damn email and leave the receptionist alone. 

Government offices will immediately discontinue the practice of purchasing expensive, counter-intuitive and cumbersome computer programs without first testing the program out on the employees who will actually be using said program.  It is assumed that the employees using the program do not include employees with titles that begin with “Senior,” “Head,” “Chief,” or the like.  As their level of responsibility requires them to mindlessly agree with any proposal the person above them supports,  input from that class of employee is useless and should be avoided at all costs.

Effective immediately:  All government offices will remove Windows Vista from all working computers and burn all backup copies and installation disks during a bonfire at the next pot luck.  The entire IT department will be given that day off in appreciation.

Justification:  Implementation of the above three policies will result in approximate savings of $1,000,000,000 per office, per agency per year.

- Computers – Internet/Email:   Employees will be trained in the appropriate use of “Reply to All.”  Setting ones Automatic Vacation Responder to “Reply to All,” thus causing an infinite loop of ”Reply To All” responses to every office-wide email and tying up the entire IT department for half a day will be grounds for public flogging in the conference room. 

Employees are also expected to know what the Internet is and how to locate important and useful things other than their own Face Book page and “cute pictures of kitties,”  using a Google search.

Employees are forbidden from printing out every individual email in any conversational thread.   The following types of emails are also not to be printed out under any circumstances:

• Announcements for any upcoming retirement party, birthday party or baby shower;
• Any email from HR, Admin, or IT that begins with the line “for your information only” or “just a reminder”;
• Notifications about any planned computer updates or outage, electrical outage or plumbing shut-down;
• Results from any of the expensive, self-promoting, inaccurate myriad Employee Satisfaction Surveys that will be run throughout the year;
• Any appointment, date, meeting time or other calendar item (THE MAN spends millions of dollars a year on personal calendars, calendaring programs, and desk and wall calendars for its employees.  It is assumed that appointments, dates, meeting times or other calendar items will be memorialized on one or more of these calendars, thus obviating the need to use an entire sheet of pristine paper upon which to print said calendar item prior to entering said calendar item into or onto an actual calendar); 
• Any email consisting of 2 (two) lines or less;
• Any email printed out for the sole purpose of being read later;
• Any email that contains 35 pages of forwarding addresses.

Employees with a stack of 20 (twenty) or more of these types of emails in their possession will be assigned the job of retrieving recyclable items out of all office garbage cans for the 30 (thirty) days following discovery of the infraction.  Justification:  This will save approximately $23,576.25 in printer paper costs per office, per year.

Employees may use the computers for limited personal things (since it will happen anyway and sometimes THE MAN knows when it’s been beat) but are asked not to forward every single post from “I Can Has Cheezburger” to everyone in the office, and to refrain from stalking ex-girlfriends on the internet while they are at work.

- Other Equipment:  All employees, regardless of job title or station, shall know how to change the toner, replace paper, remove paper jams and operate the copier, printer and fax machine.   They will also know where paper and toner supplies are kept.   It is no longer permissible for upper-level management personnel to stand in front of a copier that is out of paper and scream their secretary’s name until the paper trays are refilled.  Justification:  This practice will result in a savings of approximately 114 man-hours per month – 57 each for the upper-level management personnel and for his/her secretary.  Since it has been obvserved that after screaming for help with the copier, the upper-level management personnel has a tendency to stand motionless in front of the copier while the secretary replaces the paper and clears any jams caused by the upper-level management personnel’s attempts to fix the empty machine by punching all the buttons, it is necessary to double the hours.  This will save approximately $116,280 per office per year.

- Personal Matters – Dress Code:  Due to their confusing, contradictory and conflicting contents, dress codes are hereby abolished.  All employees are expected to wear clothes to work.  Any items that appear to be anything other than clothes (e.g. pajamas) are not to be worn to the office.    Employees are encouraged to look at themselves in the mirror before they leave their homes in the morning and ask themselves if they would wear their current outfit as a guest on “The O’Reilly Factor.”  It is also requested that employees refrain from wearing anything purchased at “Forever 21,” “Charlotte Russe,” or “Hot Topic.”

NOTE:  Supervisors or other employees are specifically protected from Hostile Work Environment claims if their comments to or about another employee consist solely of complaints regarding the other employee’s obviously inappropriate attire.  Photographic evidence may also be collected to support this defense.  Justification:  This practice will save approximately $1,275,546.65 per year.  This amount includes the money and time spent printing hundreds of copies of confusing dress codes and sending out updates every 45 days; the amount of productivity lost by employees gossiping behind closed doors about the offending clothing item(s); the amount of time spent by supervisors meeting behind closed doors and playing “rock, paper, scissors” to determine who will be the one to tell the offender that her caesarian scars are showing;  and the time spent documenting exact conversations with others in anticipation of lengthy and pointless litigation. 

 - Personal Matters – ID Badges:  Employees are limited to 5 (five) pieces of flair on their ID lanyards.  All flair must be non-lethal and securely attached in such a manner as to eliminate accidental discharge of said flair into the shredder, garbage disposal or toilet.  Justification:  Employee injuries and sick days due to back injuries incurred when lanyards are overloaded with flair will be virtually eliminated.  Shredder malfunction as a result of angel pins, pink ribbon tie tacks and clip-on bling will also be greatly reduced.  This will result in a savings of approximately $437 per year.

The above preliminary policies for government offices will result in a nation-wide savings of approximately $723,568,021,401.93 per year.  It is anticipated that the entire National Debt will be cleared up by December 2010 if all policies are immediately implemented and adhered to.  The Undersigned will humbly accept any nomination for Queen of the World subsequent to the occurrence of that event.

IT IS SO ORDERED THIS         13th       Day of     October    ,   20  09.

/S/ Honorable, Poo-bah and Mighty Slasher of The Bureaucracy, Delia.

 

Back to Year One

(sung to “Oh Tannenbaum”) Oh i-iCal, Oh CalenGoooooo, Oh Outloooooooooook - how I will miss theeeeeeee (but not reeeeeeeeeallyyyyyyyyyy).  For I have forsaken theeeeeeeeeeee (at least for the time beeeeeeeeeing), and have returned to my olllllllld flaaaaaaame, Mr. Daaaaaay Ruuuuuuunner. . .  

. . . it sounds better when you have the full German chorus singing backup.

Yeah, after a couple of years diddling around with various digital calendaring systems I’m back to paper.   Back to mechanical pencils and tic-tac-sized erasers that always break in half while you’re trying to erase and negotiate traffic at the same time. 

Back to lugging around a bible-sized refillable calendar that matches my current purse but will almost certainly clash with the next one I buy (a girl can only have so many baby-shit-green purses).

Back to spending hours in Staples every 3 months or so, agonizing over the 453 different calendar options, terrified that I’ll pick yet another one that I hate.

But also back to feeling like I really control my calendar.   And when I say “control,” I mean as in I possess it and hold it in my hand – “control,” as in I exercise complete dominion over my schedule and accomplish everything I set out to do?  Not so much.

Although I always felt terribly important and 21st century when I whipped out my iPod Touch every time I had to check a date with someone, I never could get over the idea that my entry into either iCal or Google calendar was subject to the whims of whatever poltergeists lurk in “teh interwebs.”

And I did lose dates a couple of times – both with iCal and Google.  Now there’s no way to prove that, since the Digital Constitution forbids computers from admitting responsibility for any error and requires blame to be immediately assigned to the closest human, but I KNOW I entered those dates.  And I’m pretty sure I wasn’t drunk when I did it. 

That didn’t happen all that often – although it was always spectacular when it did since my job isn’t one you can call in a temp for – and I always looked and felt like a total ass explaining to the chief clerk why I was presiding in one court when I was also booked for another court at the same time.  If I’ve learned anything in my career it’s that you do NOT piss off the support staff.  They run the damn place and can make your life absolute hell if you start getting too big for your robe.  So when I put a clerk in a position where she had to scramble to find coverage because of my screw-up, I might as well have just told her to take her court and shove it. 

(And the whole syncing issue is another post entirely, suffice to say that if you don’t trust your calendar, you might as well not have one)

So it wasn’t really the missing dates (I SWEAR it wasn’t me – it was the friggin’ computer!) that caused this tectonic shift in my life.  The plain fact is that although I love my MacBook Pro with an unholy passion and have my iPod surgically attached to my wrist – I’m still an old-fashioned girl when it comes to the written word.

Whether it’s reading a book (I don’t care how snuggly the word sounds – I just do not believe you can cuddle up with a good Kindle on a cold, dark night), or scheduling a root canal, I want my words to be on paper.   And I want to be able to hold that paper in my grubby mitts.

Plus I just like writing stuff down.  And you can’t really do that with your iPod.  “Things,” “Evernote” and ”Notes“  just aren’t the same as a blank piece of paper.  Especially since I have crap scattered all across all three apps – never sure where I should put what I’m thinking about at that particular second (they didn’t have a “Toilet” app for shit thoughts. . .).  

As I write this I realize that moving my calendar function away from my iPod means I’m eliminating yet another reason I bought the iPod instead of a cheaper (and universally compatible) MP3 player.  Hmmm. 

Of course my “writing” writing (like this post, which is arguably written communication of some form, regardless of its merit) is all on the computer.   However, I’ve been using a keyboard to try the patience of many an unwitting (and unwilling) reader since I broke out in hives during my first timed test in Miss Johnson’s 9th grade typing class, so that doesn’t really count.

My new, but admittedly archaic, calendar has only been in use for a few days now, but something in my psyche likes having the paper in front of me, with entries written in my messy but familiar block print.   And I’ve timed it perfectly so that I’ll have to start over with a new system in January – even though the one I have now is unnumbered “for your convenience” and I could use it until I run out of pages, I know I’ll get tired of writing months and days and switch to something pre-numbered.  Just ‘cuz it looks cooler.

Even if it doesn’t do all the great things my digital calendar(s) did, my paper calendar has one very important trait that iCal and CalenGoo will NEVER have:  any customization requires a trip to OfficeMax.   Given my weakness for (addiction to) the office-supply store, I think this is going to work out just fine.

 

Delia’s Famous and Completely Underwhelming Chicken Soup for the Soul

We were finally able to sleep without the A/C on last night and the temps are hovering around the low 80s today.  In Arizona, that’s what we get for Fall, so I’m reveling in it.  Cool weather (or, anything below 175 degrees) always makes me want to cook.  It’s not cold enough to trigger my OHBD (Obsessive Holiday Baking Disorder), but it is cool enough to turn my culinary thoughts to warming, comforting dishes like roasts, stews and the obligatory simmering pot of chicken soup.

Ignoring the fact that all I had in the fridge was a third of a bag of baby carrots, a soft and wrinkly white turnip that looked more like the bald pate of some snowbird from Minnesota than a vegetable, and a frozen-solid chicken, I pulled down my trusty James Beard “Theory and Practice of Good Cooking” and located his “Pot au Feu” recipe.

I’m not sure why I even bother with recipes in these situations – I always end up distorting them beyond recognition so that the finished product bears no resemblance to what the original recipe-writer intended.

In this case, not only was I missing important aromatics like celery and leeks, but James calls for a marrow bone to be poached along with everything else.  Marrow Bone??? Pffffhhhht!  Who the hell has marrow bones on hand?  I mean, I’ve got a bag of frozen deer ribs from the Clinton administration, an ancient package of something that says “Game Bones for Stock,”  and a bewildering array of anonymous lumps wrapped in butcher paper that I’m assuming are elk and deer cuts, but nothing even remotely close to a marrow bone.  I don’t think.  Jeez, there could be a dead body under all that stuff and I wouldn’t even know.  Anyway, I thought marrow was in all bones, so I’m not sure why the specific “marrow bone.”  It’s chicken soup, for cryin’ out loud – that implies no cows involved in the making!!!

Of course,  since he was the Dean of American Cooking, James knew what he was talking about.  How many times must I be disappointed by my failures before I stop ignoring his recommendations and go buy some damn marrow bones?

This time, I got the chicken into a large-ish metal bowl and filled the bowl with cold water.  Then I turned the water down to a trickle to keep the water in the bowl moving.  Alton Brown told me (personally, on an episode of Good Eats a few months ago) that if the water is moving, it greatly aids in the defrosting process.

Interesting that I carefully follow the recommendations of some upstart who has a TV program and ignore the advice of the man without whom Alton Brown would just be another frustrated camera-man filming local beauty pageants and soap operas.

James’ Pot au Feu recipe is designed to be served as sort of a composed stew-thing.  After the chicken and veggies get down and intimate in a pot of simmering water, you cut the chicken up and put pieces of chicken and chunks of veggies in bowls, ladling the flavorful and fragrant broth over the top.  Other than serving the chicken on the bone (blick!) I was going to follow the recipe.  Oh, except for the missing celery.  And the missing marrow bone.  And the missing fresh parsley.  And the missing thyme.  And I wasn’t making the cabbage rolls to serve alongside.

But other than that, I was going to follow the recipe exactly.

The poaching went extraordinarily well:  truss chicken, into pot with whole veggies and aromatics (which, in my case was limited to my sad onion stuck with some cloves, 10 baby carrots, one middle-aged potato, the afore-mentioned mushy turnip, and celery seed since I didn’t have anything else), bring to boil and lower to simmer with lid on for 50 minutes.  I took the veggies out after about 30 minutes and kept them warm in a bowl.  After 20 more minutes, the chicken was perfectly cooked.  Despite my inner Chef Boy-Ar-Delia screeching that there wasn’t going to be enough flavor in the broth, I felt triumphant.

I let it cool for a bit before taking the meat off and when I cut the breasts off I was dismayed to see a lump of brownish-red crumbly stuff in the cavity.  Clearly a disintegrated liver or kidney or some other chicken innard.  Shit!  I thought the package said they took all that junk out!  I looked into the pot and saw a layer of brown crap in my otherwise beautiful stock, hovering menacingly just above the bottom of the pot.  Ugh.  Nothing like boiled-to-death chicken kidney to whet your appetite.   A slightly funky smell wafted up from the stock.

I gingerly tasted the stock and was relieved to find that there was no icky parboiled-liver flavor to it.  In fact, there was really not much flavor at all.   The smell said “chicken soup” but the taste said “faintly aromatic hot water.”  The missing marrow bone drifted into my consciousness again.  This time it was laughing at me in smug marrow-boney-ness.

Everything was cooked perfectly, so there was no way I was going to put it all back in the pot and try to leach more flavor out of it.  The bones that I had cleaned of edible meat parts were all infected with mushy, crumbly  chicken guts so they were going straight into the garbage (much to the dismay of my dog-posse, who had been stuck to my side through the whole process, vainly waiting for me to give up and just toss the entire chicken on the floor).

I told myself it would be a nice, light (uhh, TASTELESS?) change from our normally heavily-seasoned and often fat- and cholesterol-laden dinner fare.  I carefully spooned the clear broth out of the pot and pitched the murky brown sludge at the bottom.

When I got it ready to serve, the soup looked so forlorn and meek that I bulked dinner up with a small plate of crackers and assorted cheeses.   After his first taste, my husband silently took most of the cheese and crumbled it into his soup.

I ate mine because I was hungry, but it was as inoffensive and bland as a sheet of typing paper.  And had about the same flavor.  I spent over 2 hours on this crap and created something that a hospital cafeteria would consider too flavorless to serve to patients.   My inner homestead housewife forced me to put the rest of the soup (yes, I made enough for a small battalion of people with no taste buds) into a plastic container and stick it in the fridge.

Today, in the clear light of the morning-after-yet-another-culinary-debacle I know what I must do:  First, I MUST make it up to both James AND my starving husband and make something for dinner containing butter, cream and a marrow bone.  Second, I must remember to puree the dreck in the fridge so that I can use it for dog food.  I may have to liven it up with Mrs. Dash.

 

Bed Linens and Pudgy Forearms: the impossible quest to make Delia a Better Person

That damn woman popped into my head again the other day, while I was unfolding the top sheet to make the bed:  “Oh, how funny!  You’re putting the sheet on upside down!”

“Shut up!”  I hollered aloud to the empty room.  “Just shut the hell up!  What the hell is your problem anyway??”

Of course, she isn’t the one screaming at the bedclothes. . . 

I defiantly tucked the offending sheet in under the mattress and finished making the bed, covering it with a reversible quilt – HA!  now who’s upside down you anal-retentive harpy-in-my-head??  Huh??

To be perfectly fair, I’m pretty sure she’s not really a harpy, and as for anal-retentive, I’m actually the one hanging on to an offhand comment made over a decade  ago. . .

Here’s the backstory:  About ten years back I was visiting a friend in Tucson.  A group of us were staying at her house for a big girly slumber party and I was helping make up beds on the floor so we could sleep off the gallons of wine we had consumed.  I grabbed a sheet, shook it out and was draping it over an air mattress when one of the other girls burst out laughing:  “Oh my God, how cute, you’re putting the sheets on upside down!”

“Huh?”  I had been drinking, but I wasn’t that drunk and I couldn’t figure out what “upside down” meant in the current context.  I had the top edge up by the pillows and the smaller seam was at the bottom of the “bed,” so I was thoroughly confused.

“Look,” she grabbed the sheet from me and flipped it over.  “The print goes on the underside so that it’s showing when you fold the sheet down.”

I had never heard of such a thing.  But as I quickly thought about it, wouldn’t you want the print to be on the top side so that anyone inspecting your bed would be able to see the print on most of the sheet instead of just the little bit at the top, under the pillow?  What happens when you actually get into the bed and pull the covers up over your shoulders?  Doesn’t the bit that was folded over get unfolded, thus displaying the unprinted side to any onlookers?  And who the hell is so wrapped up in precision bed-making that this matters anyhow?

She was so adamant and, in my foggy memory, so right that I didn’t dare ask why we cared about such things when we were just piling blankets and sheets on the floor so we could all pass out in relative comfort.  However, I recall making the remainder of the beds as she ordered, feeling completely inadquate as a wife and maker of beds.  

Now, everytime I make the bed, her voice peals out in my brain – calling me on my egregious bed-making error, trying to correct my lamentably unsophisticated behavior and truly, just trying to make me a better person. 

As silly a detail as this is, bed-making gal is firmly settled into my choir of inner critics.  She keeps company with miscellaneous teachers and mentors, a large and vocal contingent consisting entirely of my grandmother,  and, perhaps the worst one, rolled-up-sleeves-girl.

Rolled-up-sleeves-girl was my best friend in high school.  A year behind me in class (but about my age), she was everything I was not: pretty, well-dressed, confident and popular with the boys.   I didn’t want her homelife (which I suspected was pretty sordid) but I did want boys to look at me the same way they looked at her. . . with avid, leering interest as opposed to mild, sneering disgust.

I know that as a teen Svengali, she tried very hard to make me a popular cute girl, but I was a hopeless case:  my hair never feathered properly (this was the early 80s), my mom wouldn’t buy me the “right” Nikes, and I insisted on rolling the sleeves of my white button-down shirts up over my elbows.   

She finally got me to quit this last foible (and the only one I had any real control over) when she informed me that the reason the impossibly cute boy from another town that we had met at a speech tournament in Riverton (and who, until that very second, had been writing me ardent letters with hearts and smiley faces all over them – almost like a real boyfriend) liked her better than me was that, and I quote: “he thinks you should dress cuter and he doesn’t like the way you roll your sleeves all the way up so your pudgy forearms are sticking out.” 

Pudgy.  Forearms.  Dear God, was that what he said?  To her?  We were talking on the phone when she told me and I immediately willed the handset to turn into a bazooka and blow off my head like in the cartoons.  I was horrified and mortified and every other kind of “-fied” that a dorky high school girl with no self-esteem could feel in such a situation.

Of course he would like her better.  What cute boy in his right mind would want to be seen with a girl possessed of the dreaded pudgy forearms?  Of course he would want to date the much more attractive and fashionable best friend.  So, bowing like the whipped and servile cur I was, I wordlessly relinquished my “hold” over the impossibly cute Shaun (or Sean or Shane) Donahoe and allowed the two beautiful people to do whatever it was that beautiful people did when they were 14 and lived in small towns in Wyoming, separated by hundreds of miles of sagebrush and antelope.

It wasn’t until I told this story (for the first time ever) to some girlfriends a couple of years ago that I realized the truth:  the impossibly cute Shawn (or Shane or Sean) Donohoe never said anything about my pudgy forearms, and probably didn’t even realize they existed.   As one of my friends yelled:  “Seriously, Delia, what straight 15-year old boy talks like that?”

Huh?  Oh!  She made it up!  Well, not the part about my pudgy forearms, (although I prefer to say that I’m sturdy), she made up the part about him saying that!  DUH!

So, she got what she wanted: the impossibly cute boyfriend who lived in a different town and a lackey/girlfriend who finally quit embarassing her with her tightly rolled-up sleeves and bulging forearms.  Me? Well, I got a little rude awakening about my fashion naivete and, later, got the hell out of that town and out of that friendship. 

Some 25 years later, I cannot put on a button-down shirt without hearing her say “pudgy forearms” in her high-pitched baby-talk lisp.  Even though I finally figured out that I had been rather heartlessly duped, and even though it turned out that Shane (or Sean or Shaun) Donahoe was NOT the love of my life, I just can’t get that bitch out of my head.   Those sleeves never get rolled up more than one or two turns.  OK, girlfriend, you won.

On the other hand, I can make my bed confidently, refusing to put the top sheet on the way bed-making gal told me to, telling her I LIKE my sheets to be upside down.  Then I laugh maniacally, imagining her sitting in my choir of inner critics, squirming in discomfort at my reckless abandon with the linens.  It’s the little rebellions that make it all worthwhile.

 

The Storage “Thing”

After recuperating from the kiss-off letter I got from the job-of-my-dreams a few days ago (9 days 2 hours and 15 minutes ago, actually), I’ve been immersing myself in household projects: stuccoing (is that a word?  it really doesn’t look like a word – looks more like a sound effect . . .), painting, building shelves and refinishing various pieces of furniture.   It is this last part of my project – furniture – which has sent me all over the county looking for credenzas, hutches, armoires and other things with fancy names that all mean “Storage Thing.”  More precisely, I’m looking for a Storage Thing I can afford since I am still not endowed with a REAL JOB.

In a moment of pure serendipity last week (perhaps the fates thought I might need a little picker-upper after having my TENDER AMBITIONS SMASHED TO BITS ON THE ROCKY SHORES OF REALITY AND REJECTION!!!!!!) I came across a piece of furniture at the Salvation Army of all places, that perfectly met my need for a 7-foot long Storage Thing that would fit in our foyer.

I had just about reconciled myself to the idea of spending $600 on ready-made cabinets at Lowe’s that I was going to have to install myself when my inner tight-ass whispered that I should look around just a little more.  The Sallies was the last place on my impromptu itinerary of consignment stores and “estate” sales (if it’s being held in a trailer, is it really an “estate” sale?), and I mentally braced myself for one more unproductive stroll through a linoleum-floored cave full of polyester blends and shitty pieces of Sauder put-it-together-yourself furniture already crumbling into shards of cheap particle board held together only by torn and peeling sheets of vinyl laminate, dried boogers and sheer desperation.

The existence of two desks that appeared to be bona fide antiques in the furniture area of this store raised my hopes a bit – this could be one of those magical Salvation Army stores that gets quality stuff from the rich folks in Scottsdale and Paradise Valley instead of the dingy cast-offs the people in the Section 8 housing didn’t want anymore!

Whipping out my tape measure, I started looking for the elusive 84-inch Storage Thing made of real wood, vaguely rustic, and featuring no chrome, no glass, and absolutely NO design elements resembling either a Kokopelli or howling coyote wearing a bandana.

I walked past a promising entertainment center (technically not a Storage Thing) on my first pass through the furniture but came back to it after having an internal cage-match about purchasing one of the cute desks.  “I don’t need another antique desk,” I said to myself through gritted teeth, “I need a Storage Thing.  Focus on storage.” 

It’s usually during these episodes that the Death Star battle in Star Wars leaps to mind and I become poor doomed Porkins with the droning voice of Flight Leader in my ear:   “Stay on target . . . stay on target. . . stay on target.”  

(Geez Lucas, ya named the fat guy “Porkins?”  I guess we shouldn’t have been surprised that you later birthed the abomination Jar-Jar Binks from your whithered loins.)

 My internal dialogue often breaks free into spoken word, which is useful for keeping salespeople away from me but gets awkward when it sounds like I’m answering myself.

After applying my tape measure to all pertinent sides of the entertainment center (and deciding I could sand off the whitewash that covered the wood and screamed “I’M FROM 1993 AND I’M SUPPOSED TO MAKE YOUR PRE-FAB PULTE HOME LOOK SOUTHWESTERN!  PLEASE IMMEDIATELY PLACE A WOOD CARVING OF A COYOTE WEARING A TURQUOISE BANDANA IN FRONT OF ME TO COMPLETE THE EFFECT!”) I thought I may have a winner. 

It was in three pieces (two tall cabinets and a shorter cabinet that would sit in the middle and act as the altar upon which the Holy Grail of a Sony flat screen would be reverently placed), made of real wood, had nice rustic lines and, better yet, there was a stamp on the back that said “Made in Mexico” - meaning that it was probably made by actual Mexicans (or at least by Guatemalans whose country is so far in the shit that they flee TO Mexico for work.)  This would assist me in reaching the “Mexican-Farmhouse-if-it-was-owned-by-upper-middle-class-Mexicans-who-don’t-actually-farm” look I am going for. 

The price tag said $160 – a good deal for this solid piece of furniture  to which I could easily add shelves and turn into a Storage Thing.   Since I had been thinking about spending 5 times that at Lowe’s (a big box store – booooo), I had no reason not to plunk down this paltry amount and have it go to a rather decent charity that helps locals.  Sold!

If I had any reason to doubt that the fates were giving me a break, it was gone when the nice lady at the cash register told me that it was big discount day, so I was getting the whole damn thing for $100. 

Two mildly beer-soaked dudes helped me load it into the FJ (I actually had to make two trips because they convinced me not to tie one of the tall cabinets to the hood – like the trophy buck I felt it was), and suffering only one blood blister, three ugly bruises to my shins and several thousand splinters embedded in my left hand, I was able to wrestle  all seven feet of my Storage Thing out of the FJ and onto the porch myself. 

Today I bought new door pulls (the cheesy, stained and chewed on (huh?) wood ones just aren’t cutting it) and extra sanding disks and tonight I attack the whitewash.  I’m pretty excited about my new Storage Thing – I think it will look great in the foyer, will hold lots of crap that I refuse to toss and, most importantly, will remind me that when things look their worst, nothing brightens my outlook like a wildly successful extreme bargain shopping trip that results in me coming home with someone else’s cast-off crap that I can spend the next four days screwing around with.  

Ahhh, there’s just nothing like it.

 

You are eminently qualified. . .

. . .but we’ve decided to go with someone else.  Thank you for your time.

When I first looked at the envelope and realized the letter was from THEM – the people with whom I had interviewed on the day which shall henceforth be known as “Faceplant in Macy’s Day,” my gut twisted.  I knew that if they had decided to hire me, they wouldn’t have done it via snail mail.    I said so to my husand before opening it. . .  but I said it hopefully, as if he could change the contents of the letter by telling me that it was common for companies to contact new hires in this manner.

“No,” he said, putting his arm around me. 

We were in the canned goods aisle when I tore open the envelope and skimmed the letter so bursting into frustrated tears was not an option.  I set my jaw and swallowed hard a couple of times before I could say anything.  He gave me a big hug and said what I wasn’t able to articulate at that precise moment:  “That sucks.”

When I had retrieved the mail from the Postnet place next to the grocery store five minutes earlier, a kiss-off letter was the last thing I was expecting.  I had been happily working on some major home improvements all week and was taking a break to do a little shopping with the hubby; I was sweaty and covered with stucco, and professional rejection was the furthest thing from my mind.  Besides, they told me they would call me one way or the other.  For the last four days, I optimistically carried my cell phone around in my paint-splattered cargo shorts, waiting for the promised call. 

It’s almost a week later and I still haven’t gotten that call.  The adult in me says to move on; the little girl in me has her bottom lip stuck out and her feelings hurt.

As with my last unsuccessful bid for a REAL JOB, when I applied for this one I was told by all sorts of people “in the know” that I was perfect for the position; that I was definitely one of the top applicants; that the people doing the hiring were glad to see that I applied; that I was a shoe-in; that they’d be fools not to hire me.

All of that stuff is really great to hear – encouraging words from people you respect do wonders for the ego.  Of course, having to schedule a pee test for the pre-employment drug screen would have been preferable to a thousand words of praise and adoration.

For most of the 13 years of my professional career, I never had much trouble finding employment.  I had a great reputation as a prosecutor so when I switched agencies, getting hired was not an issue.  Now however, stepping out of my comfortable niche, I find myself  in an unfamiliar environment where my previous status as Beloved Golden Child means little to potential employers.  Shaky territory where the focus is not so much on my personal work ethic or sense of professional responsibility but instead on my current attempts to find employment outside  of the courtroom.

All of a sudden I have to explain why The Law Office Of Delia R. Neal, LLC came and went within 18 months (I had no idea I’d hate private practice until I actually did it, duh!); why I worked for three different agencies in 9 years (4 years each at two agencies and 9 months at the last one – ok, I’ll give you the nine month stint but quitting a job after sticking around for four years is “bouncing around?”  really?); and why I think I should be hired for a position with a county agency when I don’t even reside in that county and other applicants do (all right, I got nothing for this one).

Regardless how well-thought out my answers to those questions were. .  . I just don’t think there are “right” answers, or answers that everyone on a hiring panel is going to be comfortable with.  The last couple of years that I’ve spent in mid-life crisis career transition  seem to be overshadowing the full decade I spent serving the people and working in the trenches.    My work experience is not seen as “broad” or “well-rounded,” but flaky and flighty – the career path of a ditzy bimbelina who jumps ship at the first chance for a shinier, prettier job elsewhere.

I know that I made the right decision when I left my last “real” job – and I’ll never regret the 2 years of emotional hell and anguish that immediately followed.   I faced down my biggest personal demons and came out of the whole mess in one piece – mature and thoughtful and no longer a slave to my nonsensical fears and self-inflicted neuroses.  It was one hell of a time, and worth every tortured minute.

However, explaining all of that to an interview panel is not something I think would be in my best interests.  Or theirs.  They’ll just have to wait for the book.

So I’ll send in my next round of applications and, hopefully, get invited for a couple more interviews.  And I’ll practice answering those questions that I know everyone in the interview is dying to ask.  One of these days I’ll have to get them right.

 

That’s what I get for thinking. . .

I had an interview last week for a job that I really want.  I mean – REALLY.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy what I’m doing right now (wandering the earth like Kane, judging the masses and putting a trillion miles on my battered Matrix), but I’m really ready to go back to the “normal” professional world where I get to work in an office that isn’t doubling as a walk-in closet and use a bathroom that someone else is paid to clean (and in which the toilet paper magically replenishes itself every Monday).

After sitting at desks that belong to other people for the last two years, I am tired of feeling like a vandal every time I furtively open a drawer trying to find a pad of sticky notes or a pen.  I want my own desk and my own sticky notes.  I am tired of using my purse as a portable office and I’m pretty sure my neck issues would clear up if I could take the five extra lipsticks, two granola bars, half dozen blue gel pens, travel-sized deodorant, half-empty pack of gum, ziplock baggie of tea bags, ziplock baggie of girl-stuff, mini notebook, Swiss Army knife and four-pack of highlighters out of my purse and put them all into the middle drawer of my desk in my office where they belong.

Yes, I think it’s time I got a “real” job.

So I was very excited to get this interview.  My last interview was a rather disastrous affair (which I will have to recount some time after the statute of limitations has run) and, much to the general shock and dismay of the other employees there, was not a slam-dunk for me and did not result in my becoming a member of that “team.”  My pride and feelings were both hurt after that, especially since I had been a front-runner for the position and especially since I told a number of people that I was the front-runner.  Gah!

But since my last interview was such a bummer, I felt that I deserved to do everything I could to make this interview better.  I studied the office history, read up on general operations and personnel, and decided I was going to get a new suit.

Being more of a pants-and-blouse person, I only have one complete suit from this century and I would be damned if I was going to wear it, yet again, for this really important occasion.

My interview was scheduled for 3:30 in the afternoon and I had a lunch date with a girlfriend at noon.  Perfect.  To force myself to go through with buying this desperately-needed new suit, I wore causal clothes to lunch and didn’t bring any back-up clothes.  I didn’t want to chicken out and fall back on the faded, frumpy black shroud that I’d been wearing to every single trial and formal business meeting for the last five years.

I strategically chose to have lunch at California Pizza Kitchen at the Biltmore in Phoenix – right next to Macy’s.  My girlfriend was very encouraging and thought that my plan to purchase an entire outfit two hours before an important interview was insane, but commendable;  plus she was willing and eager to support any endeavor that included pouring money into the cash registers at any reputable department store.  Just doing my part to stimulate the economy, Mr. President. . .

After lunch I wandered through the chrome-and-glass doors of Macy’s and right into a gigantic sale.  Coincidence?  I think not.  I was further convinced of the karmic convergence of the shopping gods when I stumbled across three designer suits that not only averaged $100 a piece, but were also all size 6.  Oh shut up –  I know better quality clothes have more “generous” sizes,  just let me have my little moment with my size 6 pants.   A girl can dream – even if she refuses to diet, she can still dream. . . .

Of the three suits, I decided that I would wear the dark brown one to the interview and quickly found a shockingly-lime green top, matching earrings and even a pair of brown wedges that didn’t look like my mom’s shoes.   Macy’s is such a wonderful place, like Candyland for big girls.  Realizing I only had an hour to make my purchases, get changed and then make it back downtown for my interview, I signed my life away on a credit application, ignored the total amount I had spent and dashed for the ladies’ room.  I commandeered the handicapped stall so I could dress without dropping anything into the toilet.

Ripping the tags off with my teeth, I dressed as quickly as I could, tossed all my old clothes into the Macy’s bags, and hoped I didn’t look too much like either a shoplifter, or some crazy broad changing into her newly-purchased clothes in the bathroom.

The suit looked good on me and, for the first time in a very long time, I felt like I had it goin’ on.  My new haircut was working, my lipstick sort of matched and I thought I looked pretty damn good.  Feeling confident and just a bit smug (an alien emotion for me) I walked briskly out of the bathroom in my completely new ensemble, imagining that I looked quite smart and professional to the midday shoppers in their capris and tank tops.

It was one of those rare moments when I felt so much a part of the big world:  I was in a gorgeous new suit, I had three big Macy’s bags and my knock-off designer purse and I was conscious of sailing through the store like a woman on a mission; a fantastically professional-looking person with an important destination; someone with a purpose.  I felt like I was in an American Express commercial.  I was a star, a star, a bright shining star.

And then I fell.

No, not figuratively like a shining star falling out of the sky:  I FELL.

I had just passed the escalators, conscious of a woman walking next to me (in shorts and a tee-shirt – pfft, how plebian), both of us heading for the doors, when the heel of one of my brand-new shoes skidded on the glossily-buffed floor.  I had enough time to blurt out “Jesus Christ!” before I was airborne – then I landed firmly and loudly on my knees, both arms (laden with bags) flailing out to the sides and my ass up in the air like a skateboard ramp.

The noise of someone falling is unmistakeable, and the flurry of movement hard to ignore.  The woman had stopped and was looking at me with real fear in her eyes, “Are you ok?”  she asked tentatively.

“Did anyone see that?”  I tried to laugh, realizing that my left knee was painfully crunchy and feeling the sweat of embarrassment begin to run down my face and neck.

She asked again if I was ok and I awkwardly got to my feet, never having lost grip of any of my bags.  Mortified beyond words, I mumbled something about trying to do too many things at once and she and I both resumed our brisk walk to the doors.  She was trying to be polite (I’m sure thinking what all of YOU are thinking:  God I’m so glad that wasn’t me) and I made a joke about being on YouTube before midnight.  Everything hurt, especially my knee, which was now threatening to pack up and go home.

As I breezed by the men’s shoe department, attempting nonchalance, I noticed a salesman standing with a shoe in one hand and a sock in the other – staring at me open-mouthed, with a look of abject horror on his face.  Must have been an impressive show.

I went as quickly as I could to my car, sweating buckets now that the adrenalin dump of the fall was over with (and now that I was back out in the 100-degree heat), cursing at my clumsiness and feeling for rips or tears in my new suit.  Miraculously, the only damage was a small scuff in the knee which, when I looked closer, resembled a glossy skid mark.  I was going so fast and hit the floor so hard that I melted my pants.

After ascertaining that I wasn’t bleeding anywhere, I screeched out of the parking lot and onto the highway.  I made it to my interview with 15 minutes to spare and spent that time trying to remember everything I wanted to discuss (and trying to forget my Inspector Clouseau impersonation in Macy’s).  An hour later, I limped out of the interview not really knowing how it went or whether I had said everything I wanted to say, or even whether I had made a good impression on the 7 people who interviewed me.

Now, over a week has gone by and I still have no idea whether or not I got the job.  On the other hand – I have three new suits, I’m pretty sure my knee isn’t broken, and I’m almost positive I’m not on YouTube.    I really can’t ask for much more than that.