Friday, April 8, 2011

My House, My Flame Stick

So, last night, I threw a wild party because my family went off to a hotel for the night because it's spring break and that's what we do, but I didn't go because I had Japanese homework.

Anyway, I stayed home, and so I was allowed to have friends over so I wouldn't become lonely.

Enter wild party.  Or, at least, the wildest party this nerd is ever going to throw.  Okay, maybe not even that. 

But it was a party, of sorts.

It all began yesterday in the afternoon.  My family had just left for the hotel, and I was alone with my own insanity.  What, you may ask, does a somewhat odd teenage girl who plans to have company over do while she waits for her guests to arrive?

That's simple:  she breaks out the board games and coloring books.  A duh.

Well, after I had emptied my bookshelf of all of its coloring books and searched the house for any and all board games that still had all of the necessary pieces, I found myself with very little with which I could occupy my time.

So, I took the next logical step in the planning of my super-awesome party.

I decided what to make for dinner.

You see, I was expecting the Stellar Miss Moon and Sassafras Jones at or before dinner time, so, obviously, I was obliged to provide the necessary foodstuffs.

But what to make?

I could use hamburger, I decided.  Anything that requires the extra step of browning hamburger immediately becomes fancier, because it requires more effort.  My sister can make spaghetti by boiling water and putting noodles in it, then adding sauce from a can when the noodles are done.  That would make a decent lunch, but I can brown some hamburger, then cook some noodles, and then cook the sauce separately, and it immediately becomes dinner-worthy (at least, in my house it does.)  I could make that spaghetti, but then I could kick it up a notch (can you tell I watched Emril a lot as a child?) by putting the spaghetti in a ceramic dish and covering it with mozzarella cheese and then baking it for a little bit.  Then it not only becomes dinner-worth, it's downright fancy.

What was I saying again?

Oh, yeah.  I was talking about dinner.  So, it was decided that I would use hamburger.  I thought of making the spaghetti, then of making spaghetti casserole (the spaghetti in the oven as was previously described.)  I decided against both of those options, the spaghetti because it wasn't fancy enough, and the spaghetti casserole because I didn't want to clean the casserole dish.

That left me without a whole lot of ideas.  I mean, I know that you can make a lot of different things with hamburger, I just lack creativity when it comes to cooking.  I had ousted spaghetti as a contender, so that left me with...what?  Goulash?  No, I didn't want to make goulash, and I wasn't even sure that we had tomato juice, so goulash was out.  What then?  Not spaghetti, not goulash, what could I make? 

Then it came to me.

Tacos.

It was perfect.  I would make tacos.  Only we didn't have any sour cream or salsa, but that didn't really matter because we still had the--nope, we didn't have lettuce either.  Hmm.  Perhaps tacos wouldn't work out after all.

No.  I would make the tacos work, dang it.

So, I raided the pantry, looking for something that would make my tacos awesome.  I found a package of Mexican rice.

I had my something.

At that point, it was around four, and the Stellar Miss Moon and Sassafras Jones weren't over yet, but it was too early to start making the tacos.  I defrosted the hamburger and began to wait.

At some point, I decided it would be a good idea to have a Veggie Tales dance party, so I did.  Then four thirty rolled around and I decided that I could reasonably start the tacos at that time.

So, I cooked the tacos and the rice and I grated some cheese, and the Sassafras Jones showed up around five, and we began eating the tacos, with the Stellar Miss Moon arriving shortly after this.

This is where my ramblings stop and the actual party begins.

So, we ate our tacos, and then we had some kettle corn while we read blog posts from Hyperbole and a Half.  After we did this, we decided to move to the living room to color and play strange card games.

While we were doing these things, I had to keep the fire going in my fireplace, because my family heats the house with the sweet-looking fireplace we have in our living room.  We managed to get the living room up to around 83 degrees (Fahrenheit, around 28 degrees Celsius for those of you who want to know) before we decided to stop putting wood on the fire because it was getting almost uncomfortably warm.  Why did I put this paragraph here?  Patience, my friend, all will be revealed in due time.

Anyway, we let the fire die down and continued to play card games and color in the coloring books, all while stuffing our faces full of cheese puffs and cheese balls and kettle corn and raisins (because I love raisins.)  After a while, we got a little cold, so we decided to build the fire up again.

Problem.  We had let the fire go for too long.  The coals did not appear to be hot enough to start more wood on fire of their own accord. 

It appeared that we would have to build another fire.  From scratch.

And so we did, but not without some difficulty first.  I went to go get the paper, and the Stellar Miss Moon threw firewood into the fireplace, which was stupid, but I forgave her because she didn't know any better. 

Anyway.  I came back into the living room with the paper and made the Stellar Miss Moon take the firewood out of the fireplace.  We began to build our fire.

Our first attempts were disastrous.  The paper burned up before we could get any firewood in the fireplace, so I had to go get more paper, then Sassafras Jones burned up the Sunday crossword, which almost drove me to tears or hysteria (I love the Sunday crossword puzzle.  It is one of the best things ever.)  After our many failed attempts, we managed to get the foundations laid for our fire.  All we had to do was light the paper.  This is where the flame stick comes into play.  You see, in my house, we use a cigarette lighter and a very thin piece of wood to light things on fire, because we don't have one of those fancy lighters with the really long neck thing.  So, I used the flame stick to try to light the paper on fire, but the flame stick went out before it ignited the paper.  So, I re-lit the flame stick, then tried again.  And failed again.

The Stellar Miss Moon:  Maybe if you gave me the flame stick...
Me:  No.  My house, my flame stick.

Eventually, we got the paper to ignite, but the wood wasn't on fire yet.  Sassafras Jones was all for putting more paper in the fireplace, but I'm pretty sure she's a budding pyromaniac, so I didn't listen to her.  Eventually, we got the fire to start again, and we went on with our party things.

This was all very boring and it took a long time for me to tell you about it.  More interesting things happened after this, including the arrival of the Fearsome Miss Ginger and the Wonderful Miss Funshine, but I think I will put those in a different post, seeing as this one is already longer than most.

Well, thank you for reading to the end of this.  More to come.  Probably tomorrow, but no guarantees.

No comments:

Post a Comment