You’ve probably heard a lot of people tell stories about their “Lucille Ball Moment.” It makes me rather sad to say that my moments are more like Ethel Mertz. Not that an Ethel moment is a bad thing to have, it’s just not as glamorous as a Lucy Ricardo moment.
Ethel and I have a lot in common. We’re not tall, we’re not thin and we don’t have red hair but what we do have is a fierce loyalty to our friends. One big difference of course is that Ethel is a character in a tv show from long ago and I’m still hanging around in the real world.
My friend Ros, the photographer who took the photos of my chocolate cheesecake, sent me a message through Facebook the other day and asked if John and I wanted to meet at a park for brunch on Easter Monday. For those not living in Australia, the Easter weekend goes from Thursday night til Tuesday morning. 4 glorious sun-filled days.
I said we’d love to and we decided to bring the dogs along and we’d take them to the beach for a run and after a teensy bit of back and forth, Ros was going to let me know. The weekend progressed, parties, wine, food, fun, great weather and a little bit of work done too and by Sunday night I hadn’t heard from Ros. So I did what any normal person would do. I worked til 3am.
At 8am John hops on the bed and said, “I’m hungry, want to go out for breakfast?” Up like a shot I said, “Ros! We’re supposed to meet Ros for brunch!” You know that foggy sense that you get when someone wakes you up right in the good part of your dream? That’s what I did and I was running around the bedroom sort of awake, mumbling about Ros.
“So see if she’s left a message on Facebook.”
Good, I had a plan and I was slowly beginning to wake up. My hair was standing on end and I must have looked a fright but I went to my computer still in my nightgown and yes, there was a message. First one was where to go and second one was, “no, we can’t go there, so call me.”
Uhhh, no phone number. I knew I had it in my mobile phone but where was my phone? I’m horrible at a mobile phone. I rarely know where it is and there should be a law against people like me.
“Jooohhhhnnn!!”
“What?”
“Have you seen my phone?”
“No.”
“That question was supposed to be answered with, ‘no, but I’ll help you look.’ ”
“yeah, okay.”
I looked everywhere. Well, it couldn’t have been everywhere because I couldn’t find it. I was beginning to stress because here lovely Ros was waiting to hear from me and it was inching toward 9am and I still hadn’t found the phone with her number.
Then I thought, “I wonder if I left it in the bag I took to the nose to tail class at Freestyle Escape?” Nah, that was 2 weeks ago, surely not.
Surely was. I hadn’t touched the phone for 2 weeks and definitely no battery.
John did the manly hooking it up to the charger and it was so dead nothing happened for a while. (ever notice that men think you need help putting the phone on the charger just because you had no clue where it was?)
I did some pacing and some toe tapping and then I could get on the phone. Was her number there? No. Major Ethel moment. I went to her website at Eagleye Images and was there a phone number? No. I’m now into full Ethel mode and John said, “Facebook?”
I’d already sent her a message but I wondered if her phone number was on her profile. It was. We met at La Balsa Park about 5 minutes from our house and we brought Charlie the wonder dog and she brought Rusty the most beautiful and beautifully tempered dog in the world. He’d been bathed and brushed and he was gorgeous. As you can see, while Charlie had been bathed, he needed a brush and a clip but I was going to wait until it was time to get the sand out of his fur. Charlie is a swimmer.
In less than 10 minutes I’d cleaned the bbq for Ros. Again, if you’re not from Australia, you might not understand the public bbq. It’s an electric plate with a hole in the center so you can clean it and a button to push to turn it on and it’s free. They have them in parks all over the country. No charcoal needed. La Balsa Park at Point Cartwright must have 5 of them at least and there’s always a water tap and a garbage bin nearby. It’s a very civilized way to spend Easter Monday. (or any other day)
While I was doing that, John and Ros unloaded all the goodies and Ros began cooking. She’d seen a recipe in her local newspaper by a friend of ours, Lizzie Moult from StrayedTable.com for corn fritters. I’ll be honest and admit that I’d never had a corn fritter in my life.
She cooked bacon too. Okay, she did nothing but fry the bacon but the fritters definitely made up for the lack of bacon creativity. To jazz the fritters up for Easter she put in a bit of cumin and served them over a bed of rocket and baby spinach. I brought some homemade tomato relish I’d gotten at the local farmer’s market and John grated some parmesan. We’d also stopped at the market and got some fruit.
After doing the heavy lifting, advising and cheese grating, John decided it WAS a holiday and began reading the paper. As you can tell, Charlie and Rusty were a bit unsure of each other. Charlie is afraid of dogs bigger than he is due to a bit of an altercation when we first moved here. The two got on just fine with nary a woof between them. Rusty stayed right where he was in that photo. Charlie wrapped his lead around the legs of the table, sat under the table and made sure we knew he was so abused because he couldn’t run around. Laws, Charlie, laws.
That was before he found out he was going to get bacon!
The corn fritters were delicious. After we finished eating, cleaning up and packing away, we took the boys down the path to the beach where they splashed in the surf and got all sandy. It’s what dogs do up here. The sidewalk/footpath in the photo below goes all the way to the end of those trees. That’s the river’s mouth to the Pacific and to the right of that is the off-leash dog beach.
I don’t have Lizzie’s fritter recipe but hopefully she’ll see this and pass it along. Lizzie heard the call and gave us the link to her recipe. Here’s her version so click the image below to go over to her site and get the recipe. You won’t be sorry!
