Pea Pods, Chipmunks, Hissing Cat, and the Argonauts

It's about an hour before the Argonauta Book Club and I'm pooped.  What a day!  I'm glad I only have to host the club once a year; it's a lot of work.

I've got two different kinds of cheeses and basil and tomato crackers.  I've got salsa and chips.  A big bowl of grapes is the centerpiece.  I've got honey roasted peanuts, chocolate almonds, and unsalted peanuts.  I've macaroons and hermits.  A mile high apple pie will be served last.

I'm also trying something I'm not sure about.  See the picture.  That's a picture of either snow peas or snap peas.    I read a recipe somewhere and thought it was simple enough not to copy it down.  I made an onion dip to stuff the peas.  But when I opened the peas there were seeds in them.  Do I leave them in?  They were soft and I ate some.  But I chose to take them out.  Get that--I bothered to take out these itsy bitsy peas, out of their pods.

So I hope Jayne is the first member to arrive.  She's a gourmet cook and will tell me.

As I looked over the snack food, I checked what I had to drink: coffee, tea, apple cider, and Chardonnay, Merlot, and Sangria.  Mmmmmmm.  Most of the ladies drink Pinot Grigio.  So I ran out to Liquor World.

While I was gone, all hell broke loose.  Out of the corner of my husband's eye, he saw a chipmunk run across the living room.  A CHIPMUNK!  


What if that happened during Book Club?

Luckily, the chipmunk ran out to our screened porch--where the cat was.  Hubby closed the sliders so the chipmunk couldn't get back in the house.  He then open the screen door, so the chipmunk would run out.  The cat caught him and dropped him at hubby's feet.  Hubby picked up the cat and opened the slider and threw the cat in the house.  (And she's been in a "piss ass" mood ever since.)  Anyway, back to the drama on the porch.  That stupid chipmunk would not run out the opened door.  Hubby had a dickens of a time trying to shoo it out.  At one point the chipmunk sat down in the middle of the threshold to the door.  What a dumb ass!  That chipmunk ran around the porch, up the grill, across the table, until hubby threw a towel over it.  He scooped it up and brought it outside.

The cat's been looking for it, ever since.

I came home to listen to this tale.  Can you imagine if that chipmunk ran across the floor in the middle of our discussion of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand?  This meeting would be the topic of discussion amongst my friends and I, for the rest of our lives.  Never mind my worrying about taking peas out of pods, or not.