Sunday, April 25. The Grass Is Back. The Steaks Are A Hit. I was still full from last night's overfeed when the Marys started whining about hunger. This was around ten in the morning. The dinner would be those beautiful ribeyes I bought yesterday. I was thinking about something like three in the afternoon. Any thoughts I may have had about holding the girls off till then were dashed by the increasing stridency of their yearnings.
I fired up the Big Green Egg at around noon. I think my charcoal lighter may have died in the process. It's an electric coil you insert beneath the bed of charcoal and plug in. It takes about eight minutes to get the pile going. It works better than any other strategy, and I've used them all. But after awhile the thing burns out. Well, I got six years out of it. That's two coil burnouts in one week. A few days ago my toaster oven blew out its upper coil. Damn! I've only had that thing since 1982! But it's been plenty ugly enough to be replaced for at least ten years now.
With the fire as hot as I could get it, the steaks got crusty in about four minutes per side. They were a little overdone for me, but perfect for the Marys. I liked them too. Juicy even at medium. No sauce needed. I'll try the sirloin strips next time.
The mashed potatoes weren't as good as usual. Mary Ann boiled the hell out of them, like she boils everything. (She boils eggs until all the water is evaporated. Really.) The broccoli was similarly cooked until it gave up the ghost. Why don't I cook it all myself? Too much other work. I am plowing through financial reports for submission to the colleges, who are willing to help us with the tuitions, but only if I'm willing to do the equivalent of two income tax returns. And I haven't finished the first one yet.
The girls took off shortly after dinner. To take a break from the hours in front of the computer, I moved my car into the empty slot in the carport for reasons to be explained later. When I did, I saw a puddle of oil on the ground where the car had been, with a line of oil leading to it. I didn't turn the engine off, but drove straight back to Five-Minute Oil Change. This has happened before, and yesterday the guy doing the servicing took so long to replace the filter that I had a suspicion that it might happen again. For unknown reasons, my PT Cruiser's turbocharged engine requires a beefier oil filter than the book calls for. The problem was caused by the attendant's actually looking in the book instead of replacing the old filter with one just like it. It took them an hour to figure all this out, but that seemed to fix it.
Back at home, I pushed the lawn tractor over to the carport and jump-started it from my car. Having to jump-start the tractor every time I use it is one of many trashy behaviors forced upon me by the extreme expense of my children's education. I do know that the tuition will return greater benefits than keeping up lawn-care, charcoal-lighting, and bread-toasting appliances to factory specs. Or a PT Cruiser, for that matter.
It took me about two hours to cut the grass. This was the first trim of the new year, weeks overdue. The first growth on the lawn every spring is not grass, but an assortment of weeds that grow at an astonishing pace and make our house look abandoned. The transformation wrought by the tractor was gratifyingly thorough. Really, the main lawn has become beautiful in the last few years, the grass coming in thick and soft. While I rode around satisfying my soul with this task, the queedle-deep bird serenaded me and his potential dates for the season. It was all just what I needed.
