While thawing out, we started with our drinks and some pickings of nuts, slices of Dorothy’s delicious sausage bread and the traditional pickled herring. The few ice cubes thrown into my beverage glass didn’t help me warm up, so I took ownership of the thick afghan that was neatly folded behind Judy's sofa. An heirloom, it was crocheted by her grandmother. You’ll see the rich colors and the beautiful tassels. My afghan ended up with Chong, poor girl was freezing so Judy had to crank up the thermostat.
Celine arrived sporting a jacket which became a focus of the conversation. She modeled what is supposed to be a horse riding jacket. The vented back flap snaps open, the sleeves zip out to a sleeveless jacket and there's a few other neat features. She lost me after the sleeves part of the show and tell.
True to form, Judy and Celine started butting heads just because Judy suggested that it’s perfect for golfing. Of course Celine insisted that "It is not! It is a riding jacket that’s why it’s branded Equus!". Oh dear, and it went on so we just laughed our heads off. I found that it’s better to steer clear and butt away from this type of horn-striking attacks than take sides. Rose is new to this and I wonder what she thought of this Punch Judy Show. You read it right - Punch Judy! Capish?
Dinner consisted of fresh salad greens and saucy lasagna just the way I prefer it, with a side dish of Judy’s specialty Turkish vegetable mix. And the discussions continued, peppered with facetious remarks from Celine or Dorothy.
Topics varied from Dorothy’s repulsion for the sitcom Two and a Half Men, a show which I find very funny, to the Japanese atrocities during the war, a crash course on Philippine history, the stoicism of the Germans (that includes Dorothy herself then), our views of the Catholic church and its doctrines and the Bush versus Obama presid
ency.
The last item was quite heated as you can imagine, poor Rose was ostracized for being the only Republican in the group.
Strong points were argued, not necessarily won, but obviously were stronger than the coffee brewed using Judy's Keurig coffee maker. Quite an expensive gadget with its single-pack brewing system of K-cups. Great idea but definitely not within Kmart price range! A Christmas gift from her daughter.
It was a big production. Having the most experience with this, Chong gave us a demo on how to operate the freaking machine. She conned her boss to get one for the office, at an intentional miscalculated cost of $0.40 per cup that turned out to be actually $1.60 but the chief didn’t bother checking Einstein's math. And Chong is not about to fess up to any wrongdoing, claims "they all love it at the office, it's a tiny perk the company must subsidize".
Coffee did the trick and calmed everyone down. Judy’s apple crisp and Chong's homemade biscotti went well with this. Dorothy’s rice pudding was served with a huge hole on one side of the baking dish. She claimed she got hungry before she left home, so she just had to taste the finished product but almost devoured the whole thing. We parted ways at some point after Dorothy (the voracious reader) talked about the book The Gate House by Nelson DeMille, which she recommended as good reading material to her grandson. To her shock, after two pages into the book she found it to be too risque. How does she now get out of this awkward blunder? Not my problem! Ever heard of book reviews?
And aren't you the same Dorothy who was propositioned at the Red Light District on our last night in Amsterdam? Does your grandson know about this too?
She also complained that she's not challenged enough as a volunteer worker wheeling patients from the surgical suite at the local hospital. She wants to do more. Oy vey, were you this ambitious when you were still employed? And did you ever get rewarded for it? Yeah right, maybe in Oz land.
