Hot Headed!!!

(you'll have to just use your imaginations for the sounds I sort of screeched after prancing and dancing my hot footed way back inside to the house after this photo. Patio HOTTTTTTTT, owie! Also, when the temperatures read THAT high the *F* no longer stands for Fahrenheit...)

I just love hot weather.
Yep, love it.
Me and skin blistering, face melting, hair wilting weather get along like two peas in a pod. Well.... more like two peas in a pot of boiling water, far far far removed from the sweet blissfully cool serenity of their little pod.
L.O.V.E. it.
*bares teeth in an un-holy grin*
Yep, love that hot weather..... love it just like an un-invited guest who shows up on your door step and makes themselves entirely too comfortable on your living room sofa, wiggling THEIR ass into your ass's indent on your side of the cushions and lets loose a long hot winded sigh of contentment that foretells of a long, long, lonnnnng visit.
From hell.
And you can't say anything, ohhh noooo you can't dare let it know it's uninvited, unwelcome and needs to get the heck off your back cause 96 degree F just aint cool with you.
In fact, screw all of those high pressure, low pressure easterly south west winds mumbo jumbo. I know all about hot weather, when it's so hot that walking through the living room is like easing my legs in to the oven on broil, I know where that weather comes from.
Hell.
Yep, it's the warm breath of Satan sweeping across his fiery pits and up through the cracks in the earth, whipping across the oceans, up the mountains, down the valleys, across the plains and finally through my living room window. Where it finally trickles in, a limp, stagnant breeze that promises summer's gonna be one hell of a cranky bitch.
Excuse the language, it's just that the crushing, mind numbing heat that presses me further and further in to my chair until finally I feel as if I've been strained through the very fabric of the seat and am even now looking up through a sweaty cross hatched net of what's most likely polyester causes me to lose a bit of my vocabulary.
Once in 11th grade English our teacher said that people who use swear words just didn't know any better words to use. Implying I guess a lack of creativity, schooling and manners. Like I really ought to be saying, "well gosh darn it, it's like a deep hideous vat of 3 week old, fast food joint, deep fryer fat, out and about today isn't it?" That might be polite-er...but in all honesty...it just feels like hell.
Don't worry though I'm taking advantage of the weather...working on a tan? Goodness no.
This isn't tanning weather, this is crisped-to-a-golden-crunchy-exterior-that's-heading-quickly-towards-charred weather. No tan for me, I'm taking advantage of the heat by making it work for me.
You hear that never ending beating rays of sun?
Do my bidding and I shall laugh from the relative discomfort of my sweaty office chair at your huge and mighty self being relegated to menial chores like making my tea. Why don't you brew my coffee while you're at it?
And ya know what? It does!!!!!
I sit here moaning about the weather and the heat and my chair and about being too lazy to look up alternative words for hell and the sun is out there, even as my heat addled fingers fumble across my keyboard, brewing my beverages.
*muahhh ahh ahhh ahhh*

(sun coffee on the left, sun yerba mate tea on the right)

And I shall call said beverages...sun tea.....and sun coffee. So that forever more all who partakes of my iced down beverages on this day and the next shall know who had to make it.
I mean it's like getting to say you're eating Queen Elizabeth toast. Wouldn't that just be the grandest to get up and have some lovely buttered toast made by the Queen????
Ohhhh man it's too hot for toast....can't.....think...about...toast.
I just can't think at all.
Later I will slink out on to the patio, bowing under the mighty weight of heat that wants to crush every bit will power outta me and I'll snatch my bottles of steeping tea and coffee, scramble back into the shade of the house and pray like mad I remembered to refill the ice tray the last time I stuck my head in the freezer for a 5 minute snooze, aka checking to see what to thaw for supper.
Supper? Who am I kidding?
That involves solid foods, and the only supper we're having tonight is an entree of iced sun tea followed by a dessert of iced sun coffee.

(Sure it looks pretty and inviting outside but trust me...it was hot as...well I'm sure you know by now....)

A Slice Of Life.....

We accidently ate the whole pizza.
Some days are like that.
The sort of day where an entire pizza seems like a perfectly acceptable meal for a couple of starved people in desperate need of their television fix and some nourishment.
The sort of day where the afore mentioned couple have to gobble down not one but two brownies before they can even start cooking the pizza, just to appease the beast of hunger that growls ominously in the pit of their stomachs. Well, in all honesty, the first brownie was for the beast the second was for fun.
It was the sort of day where salads are left tucked cozily in their chilly beds in the bottom of the fridge because opening the door and bending over that far seems like a hell of a lot of work, no matter how good the salad.
The sort of day where the last dribbles of energy went into slicing the fresh basil for the pizza, chopping the pasilla peppers and giving them a quick fry so they'll be soft and melt in our mouth delicious with a light coating of garlic infused coconut oil.
Dicing the red onion is almost the straw that brings this camel's back crashing down in an un-lady like chocolate smeared heap on the kitchen floor. Licking at her own savory fingers that have flecks of oregano and a few rather alarming looking blotches of tomato sauce dotting the backs of her hands.
The distant mournful cry of her husband echoes her own..
"I'm hunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngry!"
The kitchen fills with scent of baking bread, compliments of the whole wheat crust that's even now rising and puffing under it's crown of sauce and toppings. The fresh mozzarella is finally relaxing, tense little shivering balls of cold are basking in the heat, spreading their arms and oozing in delight and what has to be near ecstasy in the warmth that's enveloping them. Some of them even begin a tan. Golden colour tinges the occasional little pool of mozzarella that now embraces the tomato sauce, hugs it to itself in a lovely little union of gastronomic delight.
From my semi-starved induced comatose state slumped against the kitchen table I think I hear bells.
Wedding bells perhaps? Signaling the completeness of what was once a handful of separate ingredients merging into a single, whole unit of pizza. The perfect marriage.
I shake myself awake, and realize it's not wedding bells but the timer, the pizza is done. We start to shovel slices of it straight into our greedy mouths but decide a little more torture is in order. Pizza ALWAYS tastes best after a little pain and suffering. So we moan and groan and drag out the camera and quickly snap a few mouth watering photos that has us dangerously close to drooling all over it. (The pizza and the camera)
With aching feet, that scream in it's foot language for me to sit the hell down before they snap themselves off from my legs and beat me with my own heels, we grab plates of pizza, bottles of hot sauce and sink into near oblivion on the sofa.
Our feet sigh, we sigh and turn on the t.v.
Maybe it's not an intellectually stimulating night of clay sculpting and philosophical discussions and writing reams of code for a website but it was damn near perfection.
Homemade pizza, plus me plus my husband plus the t.v. equals an experience you can NEVER get anywhere but in your slouchiest clothes at home.

An edible state of intoxication.......

Consolation du chocolat avec crème glacé.

Once upon a time a lonnnnnnnng time ago my father moved us from Nova Scotia to Manitoba, which, if you're not up to date on your Canadian provinces, is from one end of the North American continent to about the middle of fricking nowhere.
I mean I joke about my Mom living in the middle of nowhere but Gillam Manitoba really WAS the middle of fricking no where.
The sort of place that has -40 degree C temps during the winter, the sort of place with enough scary sharp toothed dogs tied in every yard to give any kid nightmares for years to come and the sort of place where big ass brown bears wander past your bedroom window.
As if that's normal, as if glancing outside and a giant hulking beast of an animal that would just as likely eat you for dinner as...well...what ever it is bears eat. Honey I guess...if Disney is to believed. Which is a little weird now that I think about it, a blood spurting human or a pot of honey..? Come on now it can't be both. I hate to be getting off track so soon in to a long winded run on sentences rant but now I can't help but wonder what was really going on between Christopher Robin and Winnie the Pooh...I think Winnie might have just been waiting for Robin to fatten up and become more of a meal....ewwww.......that's the forbidden story of the hundred acre woods that no one ever talks about, the LAST story actually.....if it were to be told I'm sure Piglet and Roo would be all "He seemed like such a nice guy, real quiet. Cuddly, always on the look out for some honey." Yep, it's always the ones we least suspect.
Well back to childhood memories that forever warped my addled brain into the shape it is today, which is vaguely walnut-y from what I've heard.
Some where between N.S. and the middle of fricking nowhere Dad stopped at a restaurant for some much needed food and we all gathered round the table and chowed down. I'm pretty sure I had a grilled cheese because after all they are the perfect diner food, simple, basic and pretty non-evil. You never have to poke about a grilled cheese when you're a child to see if some one slipped some pickled beef tongue or burnt onions or worse yet CANNED PEAS in to it. (young version of me=picky picky eater)
Anyways Dad must have finished a lot faster than us kids as he was already on to dessert and he ordered something called..BAKED ALASKA.
I in all childish innocence queried "what is baked Alaska?" and was about to have my little grey matter cells blown away.
"baked ice cream"
Huh whahhhhhhhh? Say whaaaaaahhh?
You're joshing me Dad, you're trying pull a fast one over ol' red here. I might have been only 7 but I knew that sounded insane. Ice cream plus heat equals tears from me on a hot summer day when the ice cream melts too fast to keep up. Dad's trying to tell me they deliberately melt ice cream here and he was about to pay for some????????
Dad went on to explain as he placed his order already for a Baked Alaska that I could have one too when I finished my grilled cheese and that the ice cream wouldn't be melted. It would be covered in stuff and baked, yadda yadda. I was 7, my little grilled cheese infused mind could only latch on to the words ice cream. Some sort of magical ice cream that didn't melt and would be baked and would be mine if I could just hurry the hell up and finished this now worthless, annoying stomach filling bit of fried bread and cheese. Like any child the notion of dessert filled me with a shining sparkling hope for the full glory of sticky, ooey, gooey sweet sugar anything and like any child had the immediate and clever rationale that if I eat this grilled cheese I will not have as much room for the afore mentioned dessert of my dreams to fit in my stomach. Parents burn out a little part of their brains when they have kids, it's ok. I can say this cause I don't have any kids and I can see the difference. I'm thinking it's the indignities of giving birth and raising a pooping, peeing, squalling child for the next..ohhh 20 years that deadens a tiny part of their brains, and a good thing too, cause otherwise how can they put up with a whining 7 year old at a diner restaurant with a plate of barely touched grilled cheese that will go to waste if not eaten, still has to be paid for and is now desperately wanting to change her dinner order to just a Baked Alaska.
I say thank God for what ever it is that happens in parent's brains cause if it didn't happen there'd be no worries about over population of the earth ever again if it should suddenly turn off, or on depending on your view point. People would just never have kids again if they didn't experience the mind numbing euphoria that I suppose is creating another human life. Eventually we'd just die out, all of us playing video games and drinking margaritas on Tuesdays and going to incredibly quiet movie theater premieres run by the elderly, starring the elderly and watched by the elderly.
But I was 7, and Dad was a Dad so he didn't explode and cram grilled cheese down my throat like I'd be tempted to do if I could go back in time and meet my childhood self.
I pick at my now cold, non oozing grilled cheese. As miraculous as a hot freshly grilled cheese sandwich is it loses a bit of something as it cools. It;s kind of like the reverse of ice cream. There is a definite window of good eating opportunity for both things. With ice cream it's before it melts, with a grilled cheese it's before the fat it was fried in starts solidifying, the melting processed cheese starts siezing up and the inside of your moth becomes coated with cold nasty grease that clings to gums like a second skin.
Dad has his baked Alaska by now, as I'm now going through the agonies of trying to finish the damn endless grilled cheese sandwich from hell. A grilled cheese sandwich that is clearly out to get me and kep me from getting any dessert. I'm pretty sure the cook at the diner just took a full loaf of bread, sliced it in half and jammed a block of velveeta cheese in the middle and deep fried the whole thing before slapping it on a plate and giving it to me. I'm pretty sure that sandwich was like the world's biggest fricking grilled cheese sandwich ever.
I can't recall what my Dad's Baked Alaska looked like, as I was so distracted by the G.C.S.F.H. (grilled cheese sandwich from hell). I remember it was brown, and unbelievably like it had actually been in an oven just as Dad had said. Turned out a parent wasn't lying in this instance, sure there's no Santa, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy but that ball of ice cream had CLEARLY BEEN IN AN OVEN!!!!!!!!
Hallelujah
Suddenly a wave of greyness washes over me.....time slowed down in the horrifying about to have a train wreck kind of way it does and Dad's face is anything but blissfully happy as he sets down his spoon.
I feel like I'm speaking in slow motion, under water as I ask "Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaaattttttttt'sssss wwwwrrrrrrrrrrrrooonnnnnnnggg?"
Dad raises his hand and in a surprisingly authoritative and enviable way snaps his fingers that has a waiter rushing over at break neck speeds. Perhaps he felt the wave of grey awash over him too and knew that hell was pushing against the doors and about to break loose.
I can't remember all that was said, I remember my Dad's dark scowl, the waiter's slightly appalled frightened face, the finger pointing down at his dessert and then......I remember something small and black in the pool of creamy melting ice cream. Something that most definitely should NOT have been there. Some kind of bug, or worm or insect. I can't recall, it was too horrifying to even reconcile in my 7 year old brain.
The waiter apologizes all over the place, I think the manager was called out, I remember they offered to bring out a new Baked Alaska and I remember my Father's look of incredulity of "Yeah right."
I remember the slowly dawning realization that we were now leaving, meals abandoned, and that we were getting in to the van and headed back out on to the road to the middle of fricking no where.
Wait a second......I'm not getting a Baked Alaska? I mean I know that Dad's had some critter crawling around his but my 7 year old mind couldn't quite except the fact I wasn't getting a Baked Alaska. Not today....not ever.
I never saw Baked Alaska on a menu again.
I looked at photos of them in cook books as I grew older, I read about how they were made and always, surprisingly it remains on a gleaming pedestal, untainted and unspoiled in my mind. Despite it's one and only appearance in my life, as an infested dessert the Baked Alaska remains to this day a dessert of indulgence and mystery. Hot and cold at the same time, ice cream from an oven.
I kind of wonder if I have built it up to the level in my head that no actual Baked Alaska could be as good as what I imagine it to be. I almost never want to try one, not for fear of experiencing the gut twisting stomach churning reaction my father had but because worse than that...what if it's....o.k. Just....o.k., not food of the Gods, not ambrosia or sweet fairy like fluffy confections delivered by other worldly chefs in to my eagerly awaiting hands. What if it sucks?
I just don't know.
Do not fret though inner child, for we are off to console ourselves with homemade chocolate pudding, fresh strawberries, salted pecans, chocolate shavings and a dollop of vanilla ice cream. It aint a Baked Alaska but it aint bad.

Stopping Stalling.....

The measure of personal success is how many times you've stalled in life..or just in the car.
In my case I am down to zero stalls a day. Wow, I know, who knew the gear grinding, abrupt bone rattling herky jerky motion of the car seizing up when I release the clutch too fast was actually a working metaphor for life. (as well as an obvious measure of my driving prowess)
To think that I went from an average of 7 stalls a day (ok maybe it was more like 12) to zero in under 2 months is astounding. What's this? Every one and their dog drives, big frigging deal?
Out! Git you outta my blog, it IS a big deal.
The whole fricking world is full of things that *every one* just does, just blusters through as if it's easy squeezy puddin' n' pie while a few of us watch in wide eyed horror as all their teenaged hooligan acquaintances go from zero to 60 miles an hour in the single breath of blowing out their 16 birthday candles.
SOME of us didn't run around charged up on hormones and sugar laden soft drinks and cheesy Dorito chips and hot cinnamon gum with music blasting their own personal anthem through earphones whilst tooling about in their parent's car.
SOME of us some how missed the typical teenage boat that carried all their car driving friends away whilst you stood on the shores of self pity consoling yourself with ice cream that was heavily laden with your own salty tears. Not because you wanted to drive too, but because you just didn't *get* this pulsating desire of every one else to drive, it costs money, you need a vehicle and on top of that one that works for more than 2 weeks at a time. My parents were cool folks but God love em they couldn't keep a car working even if their ability to get to and from town and work depended on it, which it did....
So years can easily past, the kids you baby sat for think it's a riot that you're over 16 and don't drive, they pepper you with incessant questions like "don't you want to drive?" "are you evvvvvvvvvver going to get your license??" "No really, you don't have your license? why? why? why?" "why are you stalling? whyyyyy?"
It's questions like those that put the sit back in baby sitting, nothing like squashing a small child under a mound of pillows, unanswered questions and your own weight. (no children were permanently harmed in the making of my life)
Time marches by in the quirky mind messing way it does where you realize your high school friends are now out of college, the kids you baby sat for are 16 and before you can say vrooom vrooom they're tearing up the roads, brand spankin' new licenses burning holes in their pockets as they too partake in the joys of free-wheelin' freedom and you realize...holy crap. The sweet little youngin's who used to sit on your lap and watch Disney movies are now licensed??
The gap between the mysterious car driving awareness age of 16 and your own oldering years widens. What seemed crazy when you were a kid seems next to impossible when you're pushing 30 and then...sitting smack dab on TOP of thirty, enjoying the view and the super powers every 30 year old acquires.
So I set a goal for myself, I will get my license, but first I had to get my California Beginner's. No more stalling unless it was literally in the car. My first discovery is y'all don't call it a beginner's down here, it's a learner's permit. This newly acquired information sends me into spasms of anxiety for at least a week. The second thing I am informed rather morosely by the DMV worker is that I need a social security number, an American one.
As if I don't have enough *necessary* papers by now.... I'm so glad that I have an entire folder full of papers and documentations and Identifications to prove that I exist. I'd hate to have to rely on my own physical being, my flesh and blood and sweat and tears to prove that I am indeed real, and certainly not a figment of any one's imagination.
Life is strange...
I'm getting it tattooed on my head, swear to Gawwwd, one of these days you're going to see a crazed woman throwing back coffees and muttering to herself about idiot drivers and you'll know it's me. No, not because of the extra glint of insanity that shines with in my eye, not the hair for sure as I might pull it all out by then, no, you'll recognize me by the tattoo in lovely Edwardian Script across my forehead..."Life is Strange" Pretty but practical, having one's personal motto so "in your face" so to speak.
I wonder if when we die and go to heaven God makes you fill out a form in triplicate and give fingerprints...I'd ask a dead relative but none of them ever haunt me.....
But anyways all the teeth clenching, nerve stretching time it took to work myself up to writing the California's driver's test was for naught as I now had to get a SSN card. Oh joy...... but time passes. In the mean time I practice not stalling the car in the drive way...that's right! My husband started teaching me to drive before I even got my license. (cause we're rebels that way...You get the irony here right?....woman waits till she's freakishly afraid to drive and past 30 to start getting her license and considers herself a rebel??? hmm)
I practiced my clutching and non-stalling techniques in the drive way every day. I practiced backing up, turning around and parking. I can do a 3 point turn but my specialty is the 7.5 point turn. I practiced stopping the car on the steep incline and starting it with out rolling backwards (we have a standard transmission in case that isn't obvious by now).
Then I practiced not hyperventilating when the car rolled back the first time I tried stopping on the hill and taking off but ended up rolling backwards and then stalling the car in a shuddering bucking heap of metal that I mimicked by shivering uncontrollably and gasping great car scented breaths. Good times....
Who knew the driveway was so damn exciting. But 2.5 months of checking the mail box every day for my dang SSN number paid off because ...I'm gonna say it...I made that driveway my beeee-otch. That driveway shudders in fear when it sees me coming...ohhh yeaaaaah.
So here I was 2.5 months later, brand new SSN number in hand and I am back to square one, which is in line at the DMV, overworked brain trying desperately to recall the 5 million different speed limits for different roads (65 for the freeway unless otherwise posted, 55 for undivided high ways in case you're curious, 15 miles an hour when approaching a blind intersection, 25 in a residential or school zone and zero if you're parked)
Oh and don't think I didn't notice how the universe threw me that damn SSN card curve ball, nothing like an enforced wait before doing something that makes you disgustingly nervous, as in sitting in a pool of what's hopefully your own sweat and gibbering like a fool next to your beloved sweetums who has more faith in your memory than you do type nervousness.
Of course the wait is fairly long despite the amazingly controlled and professional atmosphere of the DMV. I gotta say, all the crap I have heard about DMVs and this one was like an anti-DMV. I thought I'd be waited on by Satan and poked with a red hot pitchfork or something from the way people go on about the DMV. Not so though, people were polite, it was relatively quiet and the lines moved at a steady pace, lots of television screens so you could see as well as hear your number being called. Why if they'd had a hot pretzel stand I might even consider going back just for the hell of it, a nice Tuesday afternoon date with my husband so we could take in the free show that is the theatre of life!
Finally it's my turn to have my thumb print taken, my photo snapped (great idea by the way, blind the person who is about to take the written test....thanks again universe)
I take the test and my first horror is realizing the test sheet is long and rectangular, I was prepared for a wide rectangular, not skinny rectangular. I resist the urge to erupt into a wailing mass of female hysteria and biting my lip I forge ahead in a truly inspiring display of nerves. (well inspiring for me.)
Waiting inline to have my test corrected takes an eternity, this is no fault of the DMV but my own flustered brain that is trying not to second guess every answer I gave, trying not to wonder if the old man behind me is slowly inching closer so he can perhaps cop a feel or sneak a peek at my answers, both a no no in my book.
The DMV lady takes my test and I proceed to hold my breath so that not a single sound escapes from my body as I strain my ears to hear the words that will mark my fate.....pass or fail? Pass or fail?
FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND HOLY LADY DID I PASS OR FAIL? Screamed silently into the darkness inside my brain of course. As if sensing the impending crack in my composure she flicks a glance up at me and casually dishes out my much anticipated grade.
"Pass."
I grin, one of those lip stretching wide faced grins that probably bares too many teeth and looks a tad maniacal but I can't help it. She's drawn a smiley face on my test and all I can say in my coolest voice possible, as if 30 year old women write their driver's permit exam every day is "oh, look a smiley face." BRILLIANT!
I am brilliant, I am conversing, I am awash with joy and finally as she mutters on about needing a licensed driver over 18 in the car with me at all times while driving I look harder at my test and see that my score is........ONE HUNDRED PERCENT.
I am a DMV driver's handbook genius!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am road ready.
I have a full year before my learner's permit expires in which to practice driving and one day....one fine golden sun filled day I will get that damn piece of plastic that separates me from every one else and I will be..a fully licensed driver....muahh ahhhh ahhhhh.
No longer am I stalling, nope I'm revving my engines and popping it into 1st gear and coasting down the drive way of life at hair raising speeds of over 5 miles an hour.
Sweeeeeeeeeet.

The Cycle of life....

It was a daring sort of day.
The kind of day where you blow bubbles off the patio, the breath of wind replacing your own and filling the wee valley before you with rainbow hued orbs.
The sort of day that has multiple brownie and coffee meals in lieu of vegetables and fruit.
The sort of day where you dare to wear your inside clothes OUT. You know, the sort of clothes you only wear at home, the stained, comfy, stretchy mismatched clothes that are the ultimate in comfort and only your true love thinks you look super hot in.
We giggle like school children in baggy stretch pants and tshirts, sloppy hairdos that look like a monkey styled and head off to the bank. Utterly delighted in our inside clothes out extravaganza, secure in our knowledge we wont actually get out of the car. The sun is shining and we're merrily driving along to deposit a check in the drive up atm window, chattering like the good companions we are, my sweetie pulls into the turning lane...and it happens, a bicyclist zips around the corner of a monster SUV, there's one of those heart stopping moments where you realize you could be about to run over a human being, he zigs, we zag and there is no sound but the roar of my pulse, all the blood in my body stops so abruptly it sloshes to the rear of me, pauses for what seems to be an eternity then finally rushes forward, blood slamming through my veins like a tidal wave.
The bicyclist continues on in a zippy sort of way across the lanes of traffic, weaving amongst the cars, and into a parking lot. We of course follow, flag him down and proceed to beat the living day lights out of him.
I wish, I mean no of course we didn't beat up a fellow human being even if he did need a beating as bad as I have ever seen any one need one. But I wish.....because I'll tell you right now a 30 year old Canadian's fists are gonna hurt one hell of a lot less than the front end of our sweet little Honda civic. My elbow to his gut would be a tickle compared to a fender and my foot up his ass would be a joy compared to a permanently installed bicycle.
Angry much are we?
EAaaaggggghhhh!
This, this is why being a part time hermit makes sense. It's the thing that keeps us securely on the other side of the dividing line of life, the line that keeps relatively sane couples from tracking down idiot grown men on bicycles who zip through traffic across no less than 6 lanes and expect all the cars to yield to him.
It's the line that keeps me glued to my seat in shock and horror instead of wrenching open the car door and darting through the afternoon traffic in hot pursuit of what is obviously FAIR GAME at this point. If he gets to act like a frigging idiot than all bets are off...right..RIGHT????
All I hope is that dude made it safely to where ever he was going, with his life flashing before his eyes and thanking what ever God he believes in that he didn't get a face full of car today. Maybe next time he needs to cross a busy intersection street at rush hour he'll use the proper lane and respect the traffic like he's supposed to. But for the record, Mr.Bicyclist average looking grown man dum-head, you came this close to the wrath of a mean Maritimer today and her ass kickin' husband. Like anyone we're gonna snap some day, maybe not today, maybe not with you. Maybe it'll be just over one more canceled tv show we've hopelessly fallen in love with and had ripped from our hearts, but it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen.

Bulking up.

If something is good as a few ounces than I'm going to love it on the pound scale. Seriously, a cup of grey sea salt? Pashaw, a measly ounce or 2 of smoked paprika? HA! Candied ginger.....one bag? One tiny little 16 ounce bag.....I don't think so. I'll take 8 pounds please.
Nothing makes us shudder with delight more than buying our most used goods in bulk.
I think perhaps we were mountain folk in another life. The sort who only *git* to town once a year and who have to milk goats and stuff like that. The sort who call each other Ma and Pa and sit on the veranda spittin' at bears. We don't do those things but I feel like we're kissin' cousins next door to doing them.
I just can't explain it but my heart beats a little faster when I buy 48 rolls of toilet paper. My lungs gotta work extra hard when I can get...wait for it...25 POUNDS of coarse grey sea salt...oh mama. I get smoked paprika, cinnamon, oregano and cumin by the pound also. BY THE POUND!
Coconut oil in a bucket so big it's both thrilling and oddly disturbing to imagine eating that much oil, coconut or other wise. I buy the natural zero calorie sweetener stevia by the pound too as well as concentrated soap in great big containers that would make you think we're gonna hole up in the house till the end of the world.
Who the heck are we?
I mean really, some sort of hermit people wanna-bes I suspect.
Earlier we sat at our kitchen table enjoying a lovely meal of nachos (with tortilla chips we bought in a pound size bag of course) and it was sooo quiet. The windows were wide open to let the lazy summerish heat blow hot kisses over our sweaty legs but it was sooooo quiet. No neighborly noises, hardly any traffic, no military booms, no helicopter fly bys, no dogs barking or lizard foot steps across the walls of the house. I'm not even sure I heard any birds so I looked at Alan and remarked on how silent it was, for a Saturday and all. Alan cocked his head in that way he does, as he's fully aware that cocking your head lets you hear better and finally agreed, it was VERY quiet.
"Perhaps everyone in the world is gone?" He finally ponders.
After all how would we know? We don't watch the news, we don't hardly talk to any one but each other, how long would it take before we noticed an absence of humans around us?
We share a small look of what was supposed to be horror but ended up more as lip twitching suppressed smirks...
Oh we're terrible, we know it, since our first thought was, "absence of humans...that doesn't sound so bad" and then of course the overwhelming crushing beast called guilt laid it's heavy hand upon our backs and pushed our greedy souls a little bit closer to hell as of course we don't really want every one gone...but we are hermits.....and we like it.
When we finally did hear some sound it was just a book falling off a shelf in the bathroom, so quiet it had been that the muted crash startled the bejeesies out of us and we are now completely bejeesies free. Alan wondered if perhaps it was zombies. He always wonders if it's zombies, I love the man but he is always just a little too delighted over the idea of the dead rising and attacking us.
Although I can't say I'm overly concerned about it, because at least we can arm ourselves with our 25 pounds of salt and deep fry them in our giant 5 gallon bucket of coconut oil. See, buying in bulk would be a total asset come the day every one in the world disappears and zombies take their place.
There just doesn't seem to be enough hours in the day for each other so how can we make friends with the zillion and a half people out there? We barely scrape together the time to say howdy do to our families once a century.
At least I have the perfect best friend, some one named Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs, she writes me almost every day telling me how she's seen my profile pic and wants to chat and also how I can buy meds online real cheap and that if I let her transfer a zillion dollars to my account I can keep 25% of it and also how she's super sXXXXy hot (her words not mine). Oh Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs, she just cracks me up. She doesn't seem to mind that I never invite her over, never take her up on any of her offers to view her XXXtra special photos, buy some of her cheap pharmaceuticals, she's a feisty little terrier of a friend that Linda23JJPharmaCeutiCALs.
Alan made a good point about the general population of the world though, he said that eventually we'd run out of internet if there weren't people out there constantly contributing to it. So, I guess I would miss the human race if it disappeared, I mean in at least 10 years, 15 tops. (my estimate of when I'd run out of internet to browse)

Rising to the Occasion.

Alan and I have spent considerable time and resources trying to levitate and to no avail. I am thinking it is time to throw in the towel. We had been so inspired after watching the televised documentary on Meditational Flying that we immediately threw ourselves into a 3 and a half year program to learn this technique. End result?
Pbbbbbtttt.
What a rip off. Our instructor (internet instructor) held web cam classes every Friday evening at 8 and we faithfully followed every single exercise. We eliminated white flour from our diet, we wore only blue on Sundays, if we drank alcohol we followed every sip with a grain of salt, we played Ondarian chants on the cd player when we slept but the hardest thing of all was sticking to the strict exercise routine that consisted of stretching our leg muscles before and after every levitating attempt.
Did it work? No. Damn it.
I am so saddened by the lack of levitational progress we have made. If we were a loaf of bread I'd say we were a flat, dense, doughy mass that had no evidence of leavening power in us at all.
We had been considering abandoning our practice for a few months now but like any habit, after investing so much time and materials in to it we kept saying "one more week" or "one more month" or "one more meal of light consumed under a full moon."
The bottom line is, did we levitate? Even a little? Alan thought he felt a little lighter one evening after the 10 minutes of meditation followed by the stretching exercises and Ondarian wine. I am inclined to believe it was the partaking of Ondarian wine on an empty stomach after straining to levitate for a full 20 minutes that led to his feeling lighter.
I suppose I do feel lighter in one respect over all, dropping a few thousand dollars on cds, instructional videos and levitation classes over the course of 3 years will do that to a person.
Over all the experience was fun and educational. I'd highly recommend the process to any one with an interest in unusual meditation techniques and a fondness for Ondarian wine (a sort of fennel seed and vinegar based honey wine). Though I warn you that our levitational success was limited our knowledge of internet based levitational classes is much greater than it was 3 years a go.
We've been thinking of beginning classes ourselves, teaching Ondarian levitation techniques, to willing students. Of course at a fraction of the price of the official Ondarian classes. If you have an interest in levitating, Ondarian wine and Friday night rituals consisting of web cam instructional classes on propper leg stretching and inner enlightened meditational tecnhiques please let us know.