Grasshopper Pie

So I made this experiment the other day, and it turned out pretty good. Its supposed to taste like a grasshopper cookie. (It tastes a bit like a mint oreo.) Plus its really, really easy to make.

2 boxes vanilla cook and serve pudding (I haven't tried this with instant, so I don't know how that would taste)
Peppermint extract to taste
Green food coloring
1 oreo cookie crust
About 10 roughly crushed oreo cookies.

Prepare the pudding as directed for a pie. Once the pudding is finished, let it cool a bit, then add the peppermint extract. Add as much or as little as you want. It really depends on how minty you want it to be. Add a couple drops green food coloring. (I added two, and it turned it a nice pale green). Let the pie chill for a few hours or overnite, then garnish with the crushed oreos and serve!

The bane of my existance.

"Excuse me, do you have any samples?"

That question makes me want to kick a baby. Or a kitten. Or a puppy. Instead I grit my teeth and smile. "Why yes, what were you looking to try?"

"I don't know. What do you have?"

That question makes me want to leap across the counter, mean-girls style, and attack.

But. Instead I grit my teeth, grin even more, and list a bunch of things we have samples from. Which ranges from handcream to shampoo to perfume.

"I don't know. Just give me a bunch."

Well. Excuse me for trying to narrow down what you might like from the HUNDREDS of samples I have in WALL of drawers behind me.

Lets see. Hair mask? Yeah, your hair looks fried. Perfume? Sure. You smell a little. Stretch mark pregnancy cream? Why not! You look a little too pudgy for that shirt you wear, but hey. Maybe you got a bun in the oven. Anti-aging face creams and eye depuffers and wrinkle fighters and oil absorbers? Hell, I'll give you triple of those because honey, you're lookin' haggard.

Next time, please...just buy a little three dollar chapstick before you ask me about samples, k? You'll make me want to kill you less.

PS: I'm not this mean all the time. Just sometimes.

I guess I just have one of those faces...

I think I have one of those faces that is so open and honest that people feel compelled to tell their life stories to. It happens a lot at work. Oh, you would like some hand cream? Wait, before that, please tell me about your life from the age of 4 until now.

Case in point: This older woman came in today, and, per store policy, I automatically go over to greet her and offer her some samples, find out if I can help her, ect. This leads to a five minute grappling on her part: No, she doesn't need anything, but she really should look for some christmas gifts, but she can't afford them, and some people are soooo hard to shop for, and have I been to the new resturant, and well, her hands are really dry and do I have any samples? Why of course I have samples of some of our best selling hand creams!

(Speaking of which, stay tuned for a rant on the bane of my working existance, samples.)

I take her over, get her a couple samples and in the midst of trying to explain what each one was, she launches into her full life's story (this is pretty much verbatim on how she said it, as well.). "She has nine daughters, and their hands get sooooo chapped in the winter, and one of them was murdered last year and she was so angry at it she shut the world out but thank god they saved her grandchild but she refused to go out with her children for dinner because she was so angry so she went to church instead and the sermon was about how God understands our pain..." Now at this point she stops and asks if I am a Catholic, at which point I blink and shake my head no. (I'm not...really anything. I believe in a God, I just don't agree with a lot of religions. Nothing against anyone who does. One of my best friends is a staunch catholic.) By this point, I had felt my face freeze from that natural smile into the fake, polite, uncomfortable smile that I felt compelled to put on during her tale. She continues to explain to me how "all her anger melted away and she came straight to the mall to go to dinner with her family and that I'm a daughter of the Blessed Mother Mary and if I gave her three steps she would take a hundred for me", at which point she nods gravely, turns on her heel, and leaves the store, leaving me to stand in stunned silence.

Now. What would you do? I mean, I did feel sorry for her. I'm not a monster! But.. I'm normally a very private person. I don't go telling people about my hardships and woes right off the bat. (Give me a few drinks and then maybe I will.) Hell, I hardly tell my mother and my boyfriend half the stuff that bothers me. I dono. Its just weird.

Or maybe I'm weird.

I wish I could let go of the past. I wish I could just forget everything that my aunt did to us, because I still carry so much anger and hate over that. I don't want to feel this....goddamn GUILT over it anymore.

The last time I saw her, she was being driven away by my mother. She had lived with us for a few months, sleeping on a cot in our living room. At this point she had been to rehab once or twice. Alchoholism and perscription drug abuse.

She promised she would stop drinking. She got a job. She seemed to be getting better.

Then that night happened. It was a school night. My brother was in his room, and so was my father since he had to work at 4 am. My mother was working a double shift, and it was about 7. I was doing homework. My mother called to tell us when she would be home. My aunt was supposedly at work until 5 and should have been home by now. She worked down the street. Even walking, it would have taken about 45 minutes to get home. Mom asked me if she was home. I said no. There was a pause and my mother said "Call me back when she gets there." She had reason to be distrustful of her. My aunt had a history of saying she was one place and going another. So I waited. And waited. And waited. 11 rolls around. Still nothing. My mom calls back again. She's on the way home. I tell her Flo's not here yet. My mother does what she's done for years in this situation: decides to go to my aunt's favorite bars, see if shes there. I begged for her not to go...the bar's my aunt picks arn't in the best area in town. She went anyway. Flo wasn't in any of them. Its 1 now. I'm waiting at home, terrified, staring out the windows.

1:30. Finally. My aunt knocks on the door. She doesn't have a key. I call my mom to let her know she's here. I don't let her in at first. Finally, my mom calls and says to let her in because she's only five minutes away. I wait another minute or two before letting her in. My mom pulls in the driveway behind her as I open the door. I stare at Flo. She's drunk.

"Didn't you hear me knocking?" she asks.

I stare at her for a few seconds. "Yes."

"Why didn't you let me in?"

"I didn't want to."

She stares at me. Mom shuts the door behind us as I walk away from her. They begin their usual argument. The I'm not drunk yes you are one.

I can't take it. I forget what exactly set me off. I just remember screaming at her. I tell her she is ruining our lives. I tell her I don't care if she dies because the person that I loved is already dead and gone. The person she was is dead and gone. All my anger, all my frustration, all my hate came pouring out. Fueled by nights of listening to my mother and my grandmother cry because she's missing, by days of having to help my grandmother clean the beercans out of her drawers, fueled by the fact that she was blaming everyone I loved for what she was doing to us. I ended by telling her that I never wanted to see her or talk to her again.

But I didn't cry.

My mother took her to a friends house where she stayed for a while. She got worse. She doesn't call her daughter. She bounces around jobs and houses. She's going to die sometime in the next 5-10 years and I have to grapple with the question: Will I go to her funeral?

I don't know.

Hallelujah

I heard there was a secret chord
That david played and it pleased the lord
But you don't really care for music, do you
Well it goes like this the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ....

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah .... .

Baby i've been here before
I've seen this room and i've walked this floor
I used to live alone before i knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
But love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ....

Well there was a time when you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you
But remember when i moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah

Well, maybe there's a god above
But all i've ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you
It's not a cry that you hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah

Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ....

I've listened to this song about five times today, as well as about ten times over the past few days. It keeps repeating itself over and over in my head, causes me to sing softly as I walk down the sidewalk. It tugs at my heart, drawing out this deep...longing, in me. I think its partly the deep longing in his voice, as well as part of my own longing for something....deep. Something meaningful, and worthy. Worthy of what? I don't know. Worthy of...life? Of a story? Maybe I just want something to mean something to me so deeply it can move me to tears.

I haven't cried in years. Not really cried, I mean. I've let a tear or two fall. I remember the exact moment the last time I really cried was. I was standing at my Great-grandmother's grave, in Germany. We Germans have beautiful cemetaries, because we believe that it is a sign of respect for the living to care for the final resting place of the dead. My Great-Uncle had brought us there, my Grandmother, brother, and I. He had a little gardening kit with him: a brush to clean the dirt off the gravestone (both my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather are buried there.) It's labeled "Familie Schuber" and has their names underneath, "Hans Jakob" along with the date of his death (1987, the exact date I can't remember right now.) and "Leni Babette" and the date of her death (Mai 1999). We had stopped at the gate to buy flowers. I had gotten roses. She loved gardening and birds...and the only flower left in her garden when she died was a single, perfect rose. We approached the grave, and I set down the flowers and backed away, watching as my Grandmother took the kit from her brother and started cleaning off the grave. It looked so small. Thats when it hit me...she was gone. No matter that it had been four, five years since I had stood in the same spot at her funeral. At that point, watching my Grandmother murmur in German to the grave, I remember falling apart. I turned and ran from that god-awful spot, from those god-awful names on that slab of marble.
Somehow I ended up at the small chapel in the cemetary that her funeral was at, and by that time, my Grandmother had caught up with me, and I sobbed into her shirt for a good twenty minutes. She was gone. My Memie was gone. I would never hear her say "Ach, meine schatze." (Oh, my darling.) I would never try to talk to her in my broken german, and her to me in her broken english. We'd never go to the Gardens again, lamenting the fact that she wore high-heels on the gravel paths. We'd never have tea in the afternoons with bread with butter and honey drizzled on it.

After that cry in the cemetary...nothing made me cry. It was as if my tears were hers and hers only.

For a long time I couldn't have a picture of her in my room. I counldn't stand the thought of waking up in the morning and being reminded of her not being there. But...this summer, I found a picture of her in an album of my grandmother's. She's smiling, drinking tea, and she has her big white clip on earrings on that always made us giggle. She's happy.

I asked my grandmother for it, and I put it in a frame. She's sitting on my bookshelf, now. In front of her is a small cast-iron bird that I found at Target.

I'll never fully get over her death. I have a feeling I'll tear up everytime I think of her for a while.

At home I have her pearls she wore at her wedding. I'll wear them at my wedding, so I know a piece of her is with me. I'll wear them at my children's weddings, my brother's wedding, and my cousin's wedding so that she can be there for those as well.