mrs-roboto's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Organ Donation, Rabbit Poop, and Clam Digging Goddamn, I have so much too say. Life has been a whirlwind of activity as of late. The announcement on Sunday had me riding high all day Monday. I was a ball of pure adrenaline, twitching, planning, and making calls. A trip to Boston is on the agenda for the latter part of this week. That trip is essentially a secret. We want to surprise dear father-in-law. Kind of sick considering he just got a new heart but hopefully said new organ is that of a sixteen year old and it can take the shock. Oh, and we know very little about the donor in case you were wondering. I can understand him wanting to remain anonymous. I'd probably do the same. Time for a public service announcement......everybody pull out your drivers license and check that you are an official organ donor. If your not, ask yourself why. Do you have a decent reason to abstain from giving your kidneys, lungs, heart, etc. to someone who desperately needs them? I think not. I beg of you to really think about this. Organ donation is an opportunity to give another person a second chance at LIFE. Please talk to your family about your choices as well. Simply checking the box on your drivers license isn't enough. You need to let your loved ones know that these are your wishes and they should feel comfortable with this decision. Check out this website for more info. Okay, end of public service announcement. In other news, we spent the weekend camped out on Lopez Island with my cherished friend Jess and her newish beau Dante celebrating her 28 birthday. Lopez is beautiful and filled with little rabbits. Little rabbits shit everywhere. EVERYWHERE! Lesson learned the hard way, don't go barefoot on Lopez Island. On Sunday, we did a hike down by the beach where we discovered it's clamming season. Now despite not having a Washington State Shellfish Collecting License (that's the White Man's rule anyhow and I won't be a part of such foolishness), clamming tools (AKA a bucket and shovel), or any knowledge of clamming we decided to give it a whirl. And what do you know? It's easy peasy to dig up clams. You just look for a spit hole in the sand and go to town on it. At first we pulled up little ones, happy to be finding anything at all. But then Pete discovered a larger clam (about the size of a fist) and we got all competitive on each others asses. Suddenly, it was a geoduck hunt! Each of us tried to outdo the other with our largest find. The American concept of "supersizing" was in full effect. The bigger the better and all that. So we wound up with a huge bag of clams, each as big as a baby's head which we illegally lugged out of the state park and threw in our cars. Laws be damned. When we got to the ferry we divvied up our catch and waxed romantic about the delicious dinners we would prepare. On Monday, reality hit us all smack dab in the face. I had shoved our stash in some water on Sunday night and threw them in the fridge. I went to get them out the following evening and they all had opened and stuck these huge ugly tail like things out. These so-called tails looked like a full grown mans uncircumcised penis (not that my virgin eyes have ever seen one but I have a vivid imagination). I tried to get past the nastiness of this foodstuffs appearance (drink a lot of beer and everything starts to look prettier) but then the full realization came. I have no idea how to prepare clams. When I order them in a restaurant they come completely clean and shell opened with a touch of butter and lemon. It all seems simple enough. I could do this right? Wrong. After washing, steaming, and seasoning, I found the finished product to be absolutely disgusting. The clams themselves were all gooey and fleshy and of course ginormous! There were huge pockets of sand and grit within each clams stomach. Each bite was like licking Miami. Pete was on the phone as I put the meal together so rather than torture myself with mass consumption, I arranged the clams on a pretty bed of rock salt with wedges of lemon and a a ramekin of butter sauce and brought it to my fantastic husband to enjoy while he conversed with his brother. Right there the guy should have suspected something was up. Since when do I bring platters of food to my man in such a 1950's housewife manner? Ummh, since never. But I guess he was just too overwhelmed by my generosity to be suspicious. He gratefully accepted the platter and gave me a big thumbs up. Needless to say, a minute later he was spitting his food out into the air and gagging. Hee hee. I later spoke to an expert on all things clam. Lauren has been clamming since she was a wee tot and gave me a few pointers. Number one, there is a 24 hour process to cleaning out clams that involves transferring them from one pot of salt water to the next as they spit out the sand that's in their stomachs. Another tip she gave us is that you should collect the smaller ones as they are tastier and the larger ones are only good for a chowder. I guess that's true. After all, who wants to have their entire mouth filled with a fleshy, goopey clamlike substance? The size of the ones we were grabbing wouldn't even fit inside your mouth and they had this weird iridescent wormlike piece that I was unable to identify as a definitive part of the clam. After thinking about it, I fear it was actually a worm. Good thing I gave Pete all the big ones. Anyway, after much debate it was decided that clams should be ordered at a restaurant or purchased cleaned and ready to go rather than hunted. Another lesson learned the hard way. There's more I want to talk about. Like the They Might Be Giants show I went to last night or the smores we made in a big fire pit over the weekend or that my parents and sister are also traveling to Boston to meet us for the weekend or that I get to see a dear friend from college while in Beantown. But I'm short on time and still have a gazillion things to do. I feel a bit crazed but relieved and happy and lucky. I hope all is right in the world for everyone out there and if it isn't quite right, I hope for better things. I promise to return to my more snarky and cynical self in a few days but for now, I'm going to beam about my good fortune and be all bright and bushy tailed. I apologize in advance. 9:34 a.m. - 2003-05-07 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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