I hope everyone enjoyed their Easter Weekend-Kris got Monday off work (over here they do Easter Monday instead of Good Friday for the work Schedule) so he's had a four day work week that's shortly going to be done with ! We picked up a leg of lamb Friday evening and threw it in the fridge. (Sigh-I used to raise them when I did 4-H so I'm sad to say that it was pretty tasty. Just finished off the last of it today with lamb, veggie, cheese kebab wraps for lunch and leftover potato madness. Kris made two layer potato-rosti on the bottom, potato au gratin on top for dinner last night, with lardons and cheese sprinkled on top. Too yummy!) Anyway, lamb, and roasted potatoes with bell peppers, onion, garlic, salad, bread, (pickles, apples, Brie...) Yeah. We stuffed our faces. It was awesome. Threw the lamb in the oven after the church service we'd decided to attend with Kris's coworker, then in Easter Style, threw on the Ten Commandments (of course, with Charles Heston and Yul Brynner) and popped open the beers. What works better than Easter and beer? It was a great meal and we were stuffed until about 11pm when, still awake, and hungry again, somehow, Kris made us eggs and rosti. Rosti is shredded potatoes and lardons (fatty square chunks of bacon), covered in grease, and you fry it in a pan for 15 minutes or so, until golden brown and crunchy, flip it, cook the other side for awhile-but the flipping is not so easy. It comes out of the package in a rectangle shape, but refuses to stay that way to be cooked evenly. It's still good only golden on one side, of course. We're addicted to the stuff. We eat it for breakfast and don't eat again until 5pm or so. Kris's mom sent us Peeps and Easter cookies so we had goodies as well, and coworker Stephen contributed chocolate as well as more beer-we had a full meal!
Have been cycling through my stories-reading through some I haven't worked on in a year, at least, since I had a whole handfuls of things to work on for my Creative Writing course this time last year. Have also found Writer's Digest online, which led me to update my account info and put a couple of writing books in my shopping cart-it has since reminded me that I put them there, and wouldn't I like to buy them? Yes, when I transfer a few bucks to one of our credit cards to be able to do so! I will buy you, I promise!
PSA Time:
On a more serious note, folks, when I'm avoiding focusing on writing, I browse MSNBC and see what's going on with the world back home. Today I ran across the story of the young single mother who's body was found, after her car and baby girl were found the day or so before in NH. Ladies, I implore you-do something! I don't know how this young girl met her fate, exactly, though it was mentioned that her ex-boyfriend was arrested for drug trafficking, and I think, that he was the father of her child, but it's disheartening to hear that more and more often that a young woman was taken from her home, work, car, parking lot, bar, etc, etc, etc.
So please! Women, get mad. Take self defense classes. Carry prepaid GoPhones if you don't have a regular exclusive expensive cell phone plans you can afford to pay for every month. Brothers, fathers, buy your sisters, daughters, cousins, whoever you have in your family, pepper spray, pocket knives. Teach them how to throw a punch, or to box if that's what you know how to do. Men are victims of crimes as well of course but the stories every week are about so many women are going missing these days that might not have gone missing at all is someone had taken the time to teach them to defend themselves. If someone attacks you to pick your pocket or steal your car, chances are, if you can scare them off, make them bleed, they'll lose confidence and run. My driver's ed teacher told us that if we were walking to our cars late at night or in a part of town we didn't know, to hold our keychains in our fists with the key sticking out between our middle and ring fingers so that if we were approached and attacked, we had a better chance of swiping, scratching, and fighting back. Be smart, know your surroundings at night, even if you think you know them in broad daylight, ask to see a police officer's ID if you're pulled over on an otherwise deserted road. This young woman left behind an infant child, a mother, a sister, a family. So many of them do. It's beyond horrible and tragic.
I joke about that fact that I might not win a chick fight if I got into one, but I'd do what I could to leave a couple of bruises, pull some hair, kick some shins. I wish now I'd gotten some sort of kick-boxing, self-defense, some sort of classes while I was at college and wasting elective space on interior design and sewing. A friend of ours gave me a pocket knife a while back (he had plenty he didn't use, someone might as well) and I carry it downtown at night, even if I'm with my husband, and when we go to big cities here, where we'll be on the Metro, buses, etc, I carry one of his switchblades in an accessible pocket. I don't think of it as being paranoid, I think of it as having the means to protect myself from theft and harm. A good friend of mine went to school on the East Coast and a friend of ours who worked as a security guard at the time gave her a switchblade as a going away gift because he knew she'd be on the metro late at night and visiting friends in DC and NYC.
It's just pure sense and safety, gals. Take a weekend class. Talk to your fathers, uncles, brothers. Do what you need to do to become confident that you can walk to your car in a dark and deserted parking lot and handle yourself. That we all could be celebrities and travel with a grip of bodyguards 24/7 would be ideal, but we're unfortunately not all pointed down that avenue of life. It's not unreasonable to want to be safe, so take the steps to do so, I implore you all. Don't merely take your safety for granted, thinking you're not in the wrong part of town. Make yourself safe. Ensure your own safety.
Thanks for reading,
Allie H.
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