Friday Night Crockpot Potato Soup

Ingredients:

1 quart of chicken stock, homemade is best but a carton will work

1/2 packet of dry onion soup mix or one small minced onion

1 can of Campbell's Cream of Bacon soup

1 package frozen Southern style hash browns

2/3 cup sour cream

8oz shredded smoked Gouda cheese OR 8oz shredded Gouda cheese and 1 tsp liquid smoke

4 cloves of garlic, smashed

1 tsp table salt

1/2 tsp black pepper

4oz beer, the darker the better

Cumin to taste

Directions:

1. In a large crockpot mix chicken stock, onion or soup mix, cream of bacon soup, beer, garlic and salt and pepper. 

2. Add frozen potatoes and stir until wet.

3. Cook on low for the day or high for 3 hours and low for one.

4. When the soup is ready to eat, add the sour cream.

5. With a stick blender, blend to desired consistency.

6. Fold in the cheese.

7. Season to taste with cumin and add more smoke if needed.

*Feel free to garnish with chives, spring onions, or crumbled bacon

If necessary you can thin this with chicken stock or thicken it with instant mashed potatoes, but be aware that it will thicken on it's own while cooling.

It all just sucks so much

I can keep my shit together, pounds and pounds of outward pressure held together with string, 99% of the time. But the 1% of the time when it spills into someone else's radar I'm suddenly a mess who needs to get her shit together or get the fuck out.  I get it, nobody wants to see my breakdowns. I don’t want to see my breakdowns. But 3 hours of some lady crying,, or asleep in an emotional coma, within your range of vision isn't shit.  Trust me. I live with this and if you didn't trip over a corpse, you didn't see shit.

The Irony of Middle Age

1. Losing weight easily is now more worrisome than thrilling.

2. My "happy pills" bottle in my purse is now just for digestive problems. Pepto, Imodium, Gas-X, you get the picture.

3. The natural highlights I wanted when I was young have finally come in, in white.

4. I finally learned how to walk in heels and now my ankles are weak.

5. It took me a decade to lose the baby weight enough to go out without Spanx, but now I need shapewear for my upper arms.

6. The saying about women hitting their sexual peak in their 40s has come true, but I seem to have hit my 'getting tired at 8pm' peak at the same time.

7. I can finally afford to buy drugs but the only ones I seem to want are ibuprofen and digestive pills.

8. I've finally grown into my looks, at an age where I feel ridiculous if I dress sexy.

9. I can now afford cute hoodies and sweaters but all I can wear are cardigans and flannels because hot flashes.

10. I finally figured out how to style my hair / what the best cut is for my hair, and it's changing in texture and I have to use women's Rogaine at the roots.

...to be continued 

I broke my little girl's heart

I have a 12 year old daughter. A beautiful, spunky, smart, strong, determined daughter. And she has a penis, which is nobody's business but hers yet is relevant to this story.

Last weekend we went school clothes shopping across the river because Iowa has an annual sales tax free weekend. This will be her first year in junior high and her first year wearing girl clothes to school. She was SO EXCITED to pick out her new wardrobe. Gold shoes, pink sneakers, flip flops with flowers, and so many dresses. I loved watching her develop her own style because until now its been UnderArmor t shirts and warm up pants. Just to go shopping she wore a dress and a pair of gold glitter high tops. She looked beautiful and her happiness was contagious. 

Our last stop was Target, where we needed camis and jeans. And right there, by the jeans, were the Harry Potter shirts. She found two she loved -- a grey tee with a Hermione Granger quote on it and a red and white tie dye hoodie with a matching scrunchie. She's been a huge Harry Potter fan since she was a little boy. Something about the kid who never quite fit in becoming magical and being looked up to struck a chord in my little girl. And she wanted these tops. And we could afford these tops. So I laid them across the pile in the cart and then made a difficult decision. I told her that if we bought them, JK Rowling would get some of the money, probably only a few pe nies, but some money nonetheless. She smiled and said okay. Then I told her that it might be a little complicated because JK Rowling had recently been making a lot of statements against transgender women, specifically that they aren't real women and that they hurt the feminist cause. And my daughter's face fell. I explained that an author's personal thoughts didn't change what they'd written and that I, for one, was not about to let such ignorance and stupidity take Harry Potter away from me, but that I wasn't sure if we should give her any money. I asked my daughter what she wanted to do. She told me to put the tops back. I said I would still buy them for her and they'd still look good on her and that none of this had anything to do with Harry or Hermione or anyone else in the stories, but she said no. She didn't want to support anyone who thought she wasn't real, who thought she was bad for other girls and women, and who said she couldn't be a feminist.  She said she was done with JK Rowling forever.

I suppose I could have just not told her anything about Rowling's statements or opinions. I could have bought the shirts and let her proudly wear them to school. I'm sure that's what a lot of parents are doing and it would have saved my kid some heartache.  But she deserved to know. She deserved to know that by getting the shirts we would be lining the pockets of a woman who spreads hate directed, in a very real sense, at her. She already knew that we don't eat Chik Fil A, we don't shop at Hobby Lobby, and we don't get our pizza from Papa John's, and I wanted her to decide if she wanted to do the same with Harry Potter merchandise. 

I wonder if Jo Rowling knows that she makes kids like my daughter cry. I wonder if she realizes that for some, all of the strong female character role models in the world can't make up for the hateful example she herself sets. And I wonder if she sees that in this world, she's a Dursley. She's the one looking down on the different sisters and nephews just because she doesn't understand their magic.

 Ms. Rowling, in this story, you are the villain.

Recent News

Police have difficult time getting into the Chop! (Capitol Hill Occupied Protest area,  informally known as a no-police area.) SHOCKING!

Pancake syrup company decides that selling its product in a literally slave-shaped bottle is in poor taste. (Mrs. Butterworth's) SHOCKING!

Juneteenth is a holiday, as many privileged white people finally learn. Turns out the South didn't happily free all slaves upon hearing the Emancipation Proclamation. (Wait until they find out that Kentucky didn't ratify the 13th amendment until 1976!) SHOCKING!

White people who deny existence concept of unconscious racism are offended by Ubcle Ben's  company decision to remove black house slave mascot from product packaging. SHOCKING!

George Floyd Protests

I've known cops. I've dated a cop. I am not anti-lock. What I am, is anti anyone in a position of authority being on a power trip, whether it's a kindergarten teacher or an older sibling or a prison guard. I am not anti-kindergarten teacher, anti-older sibling, or anti-prison guard.

Right now there are protests, and riots, all over the country bringing attention to the FACT that black people are killed at a much higher rate than white people during what should be simple interactions with police. For what it's worth, I dont believe that the protesters are rioting, nor that the rioters are protesting. I think that anarchists, vandals, and thieves will use any excuse to hide in a crowd and do their thing. I do have one big question, though.

Why, during a time when police brutality is in the national spotlight and everyone has video cameras and access to upload on their person all the time, are there cops out there doing the horrible things that we see on the news every day now? Pulling a protester's mask off to pepper spray him from 6 inches away. Pepper spraying a child. Shooting a man in the face with a tear gas canister. Pulling people stuck in traffic out of their car and beating them. Knocking elderly men to the ground. Tear gassing people as they stand on their own porch. Smashing peaceful protesters' water bottles and milk jugs (for rinsing teargas out of the eyes) on the ground. Shooting members of the press with rubber bullets.

And they know they're on camera. They know there will be documented evidence of their behavior. And they keep upping the ante. Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into a crowd of protesters who were lying on the ground with their arms up, posing no threat. Why? Why would they not even try to hide this behavior?

Novel Coronavirus Covid19

Day 1 of the quarantine. Spent the day with my kids. Drank 2 mimosas, put Bailey's in my coffee, and I am now at the bar. Trying to maintain 6ft social distance but the people seem to mock me. A man who lives with his elderly mother says "Bring it on; I'm young!" A woman wipes her hands all over my face and jacket while declaring this, "not even as bad as the flu." [I get flu shots annually.]  A man I barely know keeps crowding me with his dancing and laughing at my attempts to turtle my head into my coat. The morons are playing Men At Work because they believe it to be an Irish band. Happy St Patrick's Day to all who survive.

Day 3. Yesterday I went to a friend's house. We sat on opposite sides of the room and talked. It was nice that she humored me even though she doesn't isolate herself.  Today is my husband's birthday and I am debating whether or not to go buy him a cake and some ice cream. The gifts Danny bought for him are supposed to arrive today but who knows. Amazon is focusing on toilet paper and medical supplies so a t shirt that says "My wife is psycHOTic" may not make the cut.  

We all have cabin fever and while I want the kids to learn while they're out of school, they are turning feral and I fear they may bite if I try to hand them anything educational. Since the stores have no medical supplies,  I could succumb to infection and die. I'm still weighing my options.

Day 6.  I'm an atheist (though not anti theist), but a lot of my friends and loved ones are Christian,  and many are devout. I hadn't thought about it, but at the same time they are praying more than ever, they cannot attend church. I understand how this can cause them extra fear and stress, and fear and stress help no one during an emergency.  So, in an attempt to feel useful during this period in which I feel so helpless, and to bring a little comfort to my friends, today I spent the money I normally would have spent at the bar for the next week or so, on prepackaged communion to hand out to my churchgoing friends. Hopefully it arrives relatively soon. I have a few people in mind to gift a couple week's worth to, but I'm sure I can think of some more. I hope so. I've got a hundred plastic shot glasses of wine and crackers to unload. 

Day 13. I make stock. I collect chicken bones and carcasses, Thanksgiving turkey carcasses and necks, whatever I can find, and I freeze them until I have enough for a batch of stock. This averages out to about 3 rotisserie chicken carcasses, or 2 medium Thanksgiving turkeys, or just a hodge podge of whatever I have. Then I put the birds in my biggest stockpot (mine came in a set of 3) with half a bag of carrots cut in half, half a bunch of celery cut in half, an onion cut in quarters, and half a package of fresh parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Plus a head of garlic, crushed, 9 or 10 whole peppercorns, and enough water to cover it all. If I have raw meat/bones, I'll roast the veg and meat/bones first. I bring it to a boil, skim off the foam,  then bring to a low simmer and leave it alone for 24-48 hours. After that I strain it into my next largest stockpot and stick that into a cooler full of ice or, if possible, a snowbank, overnight. After that I just remove the layer of fat on top and ladle it into Ziplock quart freezer bags. My last batch made 9 quarts. I boil noodles in this when my family gets sick, I use this in my potato and cheese soups, and one batch usually lasts us a year. 

I like to make stock. It's easy, delicious, and it gives me a sense of accomplishment to see all of those bags of brown goodness in my freezer.  And it is brown. This isnt pale piss yellow broth from a can

 This has the flavor from the roasted meat still left on the bone, the herbs and veggies already in it. It's more soup than both. Its thicker than broth, too. But I do it because it makes me happy and, especially in this helpless, worrisome, scary time of quarantine,  it soothes me. So that's what i did last week. I started the stock on Sunday, Tom didn't make it home Monday at all and I cant lift it so it cooked until Tuesday evening,  then it sat in the cooler outside with one of the big bags of gas station ice until Thursday evening (he was out again overnight Wednesday), and then it was in the fridge until today when we bagged it up. (If you take it off the stove and put it straight into the fridge, it will cook everything in the fridge. You need to cool it first, hence the cooler of ice.) Tonight is pizza night but tomorrow I'll boil noodles in a couple quarts, just to taste test. Lol

I need to think like an 11 year old more often.

Last night I took Tommy, my 11 year old son, Xmas* shopping for his dad. I wasn't feeling well so I just threw on a long sleeve tee and the jeans I'd worn the day before and grabbed my coat to leave. I had no bra on and believe me, it's not a good look, and I didn't even have real shoes on, just a pair of dirty black Uggs. I just didn't care what I looked like, frankly. 

Then Tommy saw me and looked me up and down and furrowed his brow. He put his hands on my muffin top (which I'm kind of sensitive about, anyway) and told me to suck it in. I told him I can only suck in my belly, not my sides. (!!!) He looked at my chest and sighed, then told me to turn to the side and looked at my mama belly and my ratty old jeans. The look on his face said he did not approve of what he saw. I started to get defensive because I was not about to be told I was too embarrassing to to go shopping with at 7pm at a Walmart, and I wasn't very happy with him thinking he got preapproval of my outfits anyway.

Then he did something strange. He grabbed my left hand and checked my wedding ring and said, "I guess it's okay since you have that on. I was worried you'd leave it at home." And then I realized that he thought I looked too sexy to go out in public! I even asked him, "Are you saying that I might attract men and they need to be able to see that I'm married?" He looked at me like he thought I was crazy. "You sound like you're taking that as a compliment. Okay then, but I dont see how it's a good thing."

He saw me, whom he apparently thinks is pretty, in clothes he saw as flaunting my figure, and got concerned that I might attract too much male attention.

I know it sounds weird, but when he thought I looked dangerously good all dressed like a schlub, it made me feel really good. I need to stop thinking I look okay despite my flaws, and start thinking that they're not flaws and that I just look good, period.

*Did you know that when you write it with an X, you "take the Christ out of Christmas" and it becomes a secular holiday?

A few of my favorite things

Long flannel nightgowns with lace at the collar
Thick heavy books that feel like you're eating them as you read
Poems by people who don't care what you think of them
Men who demand intelligence
Soft socks that don't dig in at the top
Crinkly quilts that get softer the more you use them
Cats that sleep next to you on the bed
Sleeping curled up like puppies
Thick hearty soup that warms to the core
Hot coffee/tea/cocoa/cider sipped slowly
Shoes that go with everything
Hot showers that never run cold
Big hugs from small children
Woodburning fireplaces
Pajamas with feet
Underwear that stays on the outside
Small chocolates while menstruating
Rainy weather
A soft chair
An oversized cardigan

Footy pajamas

Heavy blankets

A cat on my lap

Blowing my nose with tissues that have lotion in them

Cleaning my glasses with tissues that don't have lotion in them

Being able to tell the difference before smearing my glasses with lotion.

Crinkly beards

My tattoos

My tattoos were born when I was 13 years old.
A child with a pin and purloined ink, stabbing in secret for days, until I had . . .
a dot.

My tattoos came from different places, different people, different Mes.
My tattoos say "What was I thinking?"
Say "There was no purpose,"
Say teenage rebellion on permanent display.
My tattoos remind me "That was the boy I loved when I loved the wrong boy," 
"Don't wait to sober up in a shop of buzzing needles on your 21st birthday,"
"And never celebrate psych ward release with a haircut OR tattoo."

My tattoos are a scrapbook of bad decisions but also of who I was when I made them.
Of a hurt little girl trying to paint herself bad ass,
Of a death that never happened but still I mourned,
Of who I was and who I wanted to be.

My tattoos illustrate my life in chronological order.
The birth of my children,
the loves of my life,
the death of a parent.

So much ink stabbed into me,
violently engraved by sterile strangers' hands,
graffiti that will not wash off.

My tattoos are aging poorly, drooping, stretching, wrinkling, folding in upon themselves.
A dragon with cellulite,
a butterfly with shaving scars,
a fairy with stretch marks and all with a story or lesson I lived. 

No meaningful sleeves or spiritual back pieces,
just disconnected images from art books,
from flash posters,
from google
image
search.
None of them match because I was never the same person twice and still I'll get more
Because my scrapbook is not finished yet.

More children born,
more loves in my life,
more dead parents to immortalize on mortal canvas.
Ink will be my memory when my memory fades.
Pictures will remind me of my life when I forget my own name
and I have lived so much life to remember.

Who needs Borneo, anyway?

Beautiful, delicious, too much, not enough, those are opinions, not objective terms. I hate wine and lots of people love it. Neither they nor I are wrong because it's all a matter of personal taste. So the next time you want to start a sentence with, "I know I'm not beautiful but," or, "I'm not the sexiest but," just don't. Because for one thing, if you say that to people, they'll take your word for it, but also because you are beautiful and you are the sexiest. People find all kinds of things personally attractive and you are no less likely than anyone else to have attributes that will drive a percentage of the population crazy. There are folks who love weight, folks who don't give a shit about perfect skin, folks who hate thick hair because it gets all over everything. And their tastes are not invalid or abnormal, and they're not fetishes either. A guy who loves armpit hair, a round belly, or  frizzy hair is not a freak. He is a person with personal tastes just like anyone else. So say, "I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea but," and realize that no one is. Everyone looks hideous to someone and beautiful to someone else. Hell, I know I'm hot af because my husband tells me. Am I hot to everyone? Not by a long shot. I'm sure there are a few people in Borneo or wherever who would swipe left, but I don't have the time to worry about them. And neither do you!

Normality

I used to want to be normal but I could never quite pull it off. Too many subtleties to pick up on, nuances of accepted behavior I never really got. When I was really young and idealistic I thought that someday I'd meet someone with whom I could be normal. Where all of my coping skills like humor and hyperactivity and false affectations would just go away. And I did meet that guy, a couple times, but they didnt like an unfunny Chuck. They wanted someone who would entertain them, not depend on them. But when I met this last guy, he found me entertaining when I wasn't trying. All my social mistakes were just endearing quirks to him. So now we're abnormal together. And it doesn't suck anymore.

Dad's Porch

When I was 16 I moved out of my mom's house and in with my absentee father the next town over. He didn't really know me so we got along well without any of the baggage that would have come from him still thinking of me as a kid. He'd basically just met me as a teenager.  He was a drinker, usually passed out around 6:30 and then up again at 4:00 for work, and he spent most of his weekends either at the VFW where he taught me how to play pool, or sitting on his back porch listening to the local AM radio channel. Dad was also a nudist, so he would be sitting naked on the steps up to the kitchen door, facing the alley behind the house. I often sat with him, just smoking and listening to livestock prices, watching the weather in the back yard.
I sit on my own front stoop now, on the steps up to the door, listening to the radio on my phone and watching the weather in the front yard. I don't smoke and I'm not naked, but I feel a little closer to Dad sitting in the quiet, drinking a beer or a cup of black coffee, doing nothing but thinking. I miss that drunken, naked, old bastard. He was a decent guy when you met him as a teenager without the baggage that would have come with thinking of him as the daddy who ran out on his family. Not much more than decent, though. He was a great guy to know and hang out with, but a terrible person to count on for anything. 

For When I Die

Just a post where I'll plan my own inevitable death and funeral.

A happy morning

I went to the farmer's market this morning with Danny. I'm trying something new this summer where I keep my alarms on even with no plans or appointments.  I like having a day in which to do things so I hope this lasts. I also set the alarms to go off Monday through Saturday so I can hit the farmer's market every week. So far there's not a lot of farmers there, but we hit up the pie lady, bought radishes from the booth that had asparagus last week, and Danny bought a handmade wooden toy from the old couple who sell their woodwork there. The toy cost enough that we couldn't buy a muffin from the rhubarb stand, but the pie lady sells big chocolate chip cookies for a dollar so we gave her more money instead.  It was a great morning and I hope Tommy comes next week.

Don't Fear The Reaper

I think about death a lot, mostly my own. I know I'll die with regrets because I don't think it's possible not to, but my goal is to die with respect for myself. I want to be able to look myself in the eye and feel that I did the best I could, that I was a good person, and that I brought happiness to people, without explanation or rationalization or deliberate avoidance of the ways and times in which I fell short.

I know some people say not to regret anything because at one point it was the best decision you could make with the knowledge you had at the time. I don't think that will work for me because for most of the 90s I expressed zero interest in making good decisions. (Although I do remember one time I was curious about trying acid and then decided not to, even though Chris Lowery offered to give me some for free and sit with me through the trip. Looking back, that was a really good decision considering that he now has to tell the police whenever he moves and he can no longer go within 500 feet of a school. But still, I didn't make the decision out of any wise concern for my own safety, only because I didn't trust him not to say, "Oh look, spiders!" while I was out of it.)

I also know some people who say that they're not going to waste anymore time on negative people, because they don't need any more negativity in their lives. I don't get that one either, because I don't understand how time spent on a person can be wasted. I mean, you can waste time on impossible goals, on worrying when it can't prevent the thing you're worrying about, and on attempting to master things you don't really care if you succeed at or not. I'm talking about you, Words with Friends! But you can never waste your time on a person. People aren't goals or hobbies. People aren't things. If you put energy into being nice or helpful or supportive to someone who isn't grateful for it you haven't wasted your time; you've been kind, and you've gone good, and you've played a positive role in someone's life and someday they may recognize that or they may not but either way their reaction to you being a good person does not make being a good person a waste of time. Being a good person is never a waste of time.  Sitting around judging people and deciding whether or not they are worthy of you, however, is a waste of time. And I know that wasting that time, and being a judgmental jerk during it, is something that I most definitely would regret.

I regret mistakes that never taught me anything. I regret being mean or hurtful to people. I regret not buying that book that totally reminded me of a casual acquaintance because I thought it would be awkward to give it to them, and I regret throwing away a gift from an ex because I thought I was supposed to put him behind me once we broke up.  And I regret, more than anything else, all of the thousands of hours I spent trying to define myself, to fill different roles, to do things the way other people did them or thought they should be done. I regret trying to decide what to be rather than just being and then deciding what to do. I don't regret my past loves because I can't find it within me to regret loving. I don't regret ended friendships because I can't regret being a friend to someone.  And I don't regret my past journeys because they all led me to where I am today and where I am today is content. Content with my family, with my marriage, with myself, and content enough to consider myself happy with my life. In this way, I've met my life's goal.

I think about death a lot, but I don't fear it or dread it. I don't feel that I need more time than I have and if I were given a terminal diagnosis tomorrow I would feel sadness for my children because parental death is so traumatic, but not for a life cut short.  I certainly don't want to die now; I'm just saying that I'm not afraid of it when it comes.

Shapely

She is a sphere.
Sexy curves, lights and shadows. Rolling, dancing, twirling.
I am a cube. Still and squat, sharp corners and harsh lines.
Sitting, safe, still.
Her curves and her freedoms are everything I ever wished I could be but could not.
I am a cube, and to have her curves I would have to file away parts of myself and lose my edge.
She is the sphere that i can never be.
And as it turns out, some people prefer cubes after all.

The 4 pm Bar Crowd

The four p.m. bar crowd are tired folks, mostly men, hiding in a dark tavern from wives, long-term girlfriends, and employers they've told they were sick.
They drink flat tap beer from clear plastic cups and ignore the old woman who painstakingly makes her way down the bar, leaning heavily on her thumping cane, begging money for the jukebox. I give her a dollar and am rewarded with a mix of old country twang and Dave Matthews classics.
The four p.m. bar crowd keeps to themselves, greet strangers like me with side-eye glances, and overtip the mostly bored bartender.

"Adulting"

I am over 40 years old and my friends are either my age or older. I have friends who have never owned a new vehicle. Some who've never bought a brand new piece of furniture. And some who have no idea who to call if a washing machine or fridge breaks down. I have friends who have never successfully kept a plant alive, who don't know their own blood type (or their kids), or who can't find a vagina on a gynecologist's  chart.

So could the generation after us PLEASE stop fucking whining about how they don't know how to adult and it's all our fault for not teaching them. Where the fuck did they get the idea that you're even supposed to have everything figured out at 20?! WTF!  I've been a mom for 19 years and I still turn the socks pink sometimes, and can't always read a thermometer, and forget to set the coffee maker the night before.  Every couple of weeks I have to feel to see if a kid's nose is broken and I don't know what a broken nose feels like! But I imagine it feels different that it did before so I still check, every time. Nobody ever became an adult already knowing how to be an adult. You suck it up, quit posting memes that use adult as a verb, and go out there and figure that shit out for yourself. Because as parent, we can only teach you from our own mistakes. And when you turn 18, you get to learn from your own so make them count. And after a while you should look around and realize that you are totally in over your head and that's when you learn. You learn that dirty clothes won't stink if you freeze them and that's how you stretch it til the next Friday you can buy more detergent.  You learn that if you buy the right cut of underwear the legs are the same size as the waist and you can spin them like a pinwheel and get a few more days out of them and that you can wear the same bra for days and days. And one I had to learn the hard way, that a box of powdered RIT dye is cheaper than a whole new dress.

tl/dr.  Grow the fuck up and quit blaming your folks for not doing it for you.

Dances with Linda

My dad used to "date" a lady named Linda who was head over heels for him. They'd lived together but she'd been clingy and he ended it. He'd never been above the random hook-up though, so she still came around. And she was at every VFW dance, sidling up to our table in her bright red lipstick, smiling at him while he checked for other single ladies to pursue. Sometimes she'd end up at the house, other nights she wouldn't. And then I'd inherit her, and every time it was the same. She'd end up crying into her glass of Miller Lite, snorting her runny nose and chewing off the bright red lipstick, telling herself and me that she was strong. "I'm strong," she'd wail. "I've been through a lot worse than this and survived. I'm a survivor! I'm a strong woman who deserves better than him.He just can't handle me.  I won't settle. My man will treat me like a queen!" She'd spend half an hour on her little pep talk before she'd drink her now-salty beer and walk out the door.  She was a good lady, but she was desperate and needy. All she wanted was a man, really any man. She had all of her hopes pinned on love and once she found a boyfriend, THEN she'd be happy.
I see a lot of memes that sound a lot like Linda crying into her beer. Like sad desperate women giving themselves pep talks about the kind of man they'll sometimes get, about how guys are just scared of them for being strong. The thing is, once Linda actually stopped waiting for someone else to make her happy, she quit talking about how strong she was. She didn't need to anymore. She was being strong rather than just talking about it.