Pockets of sanity in Texas

I recently discovered Hilah Cooking on YouTube.  If you love Tex Mex, you’ll love her channel.  She’s got a new gig on Tastemade called Hilah’s Texas Kitchen.  Check out the recipe for the Grapefruit Sorbet, which looks just about perfect for a hot summer day.  She also does a Hilah Talking thing where she answers cooking questions and talks about stuff.

This Hilah Talking episode from last year is hilah-rious and gives me hope that all is not lost in Texas.

I’m going to borrow a theme from Lambert.  I’m looking for a Household Remedy for an particularly aggressive honeybee.  Every time I try to clean out my flower bed and plant the

Twist and Shout hydrangea

gorgeous Twist and Shout Hydrangea I bought last week, I get strafed by this fricking bee.  Yesterday, it chased me around the yard until I ran screaming into my house.  I thought it had landed on my shirt and in my frenzy to get away from it, ripped off my shirt and slapped my neck with poison ivy tainted gardening gloves.

Ok, you guys can stop laughing now at that mental picture of RD standing half nekkid in her gardening gloves shrieking and spastic over a bee.

The topical steroids are helping with the poison ivy blotches on my neck.

One other amusing little story.  I live across the street from another Tolkien fanatic.  Yes, yes, it doesn’t get any better.  Except last night, the neighbors were having a family party.  They were pretty good at keeping the noise down and I fell asleep with the happy chatter of people having a good time in their hot-tub across the street, only to be woken up about an hour later to someone screaming “GANDALF!!,  GANDALF!!” at the top of his lungs. For a minute there, in my semi-sleepy state, I thought I was in Moria or something.  It was very confusing.

Turns out the dog had gotten loose – and his name is Gandalf.