All Kinds of Stuff...

Let There Be Light...

2008-07-01T03:38:00.000-07:00

Recipe for a refuse lamp:

Get you a lamp. Preferably one found sitting in the communal trash area of an apartment complex you lived at 4 years ago and you've been using as a plain jane boring lamp since then. (We lived at the apartment complex, not in the communal trash area, though from the amount of furniture discarded there every week you could make yourself right comfortable amongst the trash bins if need be. I swear that trash area had nicer furniture than most people's houses I've been in)
Gather your guilt and accumulated pile of stuff you can't bare to throw in the trash and decide if you're gonna have it take up space in your house it might as well be as something useful. Things like aluminum coffee pots that got funky inside and are no longer being used since you've upgraded to the stainless steel model of them, a broken coffee cup, a sweet looking steel cut oats can and some corks are all good.
Ask your Mother-in-law to keep her eyes peeled for a colander for a lamp shade for your kitchen-esque themed refuse lamp creation and then have her actually go one better and score a .25 cent fryer basket from a yard sale and be kind enough to give it to you.
Don some swank looking safety goggles and then drill holes in everything so the rod of the lamp can fit through and stack it all up on the lamp rod as you see fit. Please note you can do a nice messy job of cracking out the bottom of the coffee mug because a neat and tidy hole won't make any difference, since it's pressed down against oats can lid. Holding your breath while slamming a screw driver down through the bottom of the coffee cup may or may not have been what kept the entire thing from shattering...but don't rule it out. Never rule out the power of holding your breath.
Bat your eyelashes at your blue eyed husband and call upon his expert handy man skills and assistance in wiring the lamp back together, bending bits of metal and also encouraging you not to run around like a mad woman drilling holes in everything until you're sure they'll all fit on the lamp rod. Thanks to him I don't have half a dozen items with holes in them that don't need em.......
Get a cute little fluorescent bulb and screw in to your wicked awesome refuse lamp and turn it on with a few soft spoken words and whispered bits of flattery...or you can just hit the switch.
Bask in the soft light of your creation that cost...well what ever the price of the bulb and two bits of wire cost.

(Place of honor on top of the fridge for my kitchen-esque themed lamp!)

(The cat was exhausted and couldn't stay awake any longer waiting for us to finish our lamping. Either that or she was bored senseless.)

Behooved to share my shopping feat....

2008-06-30T19:34:00.000-07:00

Does it make sense if I say we're not impulse shoppers but we follow our impulses shopping? Our wills are made of the strongest material, a woven fabric of consciousness embedded with practicality, innate frugality and a layer of realism glued down with common sense.
Hence the reason I can stand in a backed up checkout line at the super market and not only look at the rows of candy but actually not WANT any of it. Candy bars schmandy bars, don't need em or want em. I fully realize that my confidence is shored up by the very foundation of some damn good 70% dark chocolate at home....but still. Pretty impressive huh?
We don't buy gum, we don't buy magazines and sometimes we walk down the cookie aisle and talk about checking to see if they have any good organic fruit this week....and our eyes don't even dart to the side, nor does drool drip from our lips. And I really mean it this time, not a drop of drool dampens the store floor...not a drop.
We can go to a department store and while we do enjoy browsing and meandering our way amongst the shelves and aisles, we don't randomly throw bits of "gots to haves its, really needs its or ohhhhhh mine mines!" in to the cart all willy nilly.
Because we are not impulse shoppers.
I have said it before and there's no one I like better to quote than myself so I shall say it again....(plus some things like coffee, sunset gazing and brownie baking are worth repeating) I like making purchases when I've had time to read reviews. Things are just better when 376 other people have already agreed that it is.
Also we like to comparison shop, we like to see if THOSE highball glasses are really the BEST highball glasses, if THAT book is available on Half.com or if there's a recipe for something so I can make it from scratch instead of store bought.
I know, we're crazy people huh.....neck deep in web links, tabs and bookmarks for anything that strikes our fancy. NASA probably doesn't put as much thought into their astronaut socks as we do into our grapefruit seed extract.
Like I said we're NOT impulse shoppers...........BUT......(I just love big buts)
BUT, we follow our impulses. Which is to say that should it strike our fancy to make some homemade bread we will pop out and purchase the necessary ingredients on a spur of the moment whim, we will grab the latest Wii video game that we were lusting after AND make no apologies for sampling Häagen-Dazs' newest flavour (Fleur de Sel caramel ice cream) when we see it at the store.
At times there's almost a psychic quality to our impulses, never have I had any buyer's remorse that I can recall. There are times when my sweetie and I will pause in front a box of wine glasses on a busy Target aisle and just KNOW, those are OUR wine glasses. A quick look we share, words need not be spoken and in to the cart it goes. It's not impulse shopping, it's following the psychic impulse to buy what's really already ours....just a few minor details like payment and timelines stand between us and our glasses.
We have come to rely on this sense, if we should shuffle our feet and frown and ponder a little too long over a a potential purchase often times we pass it by. Figuring if it were reallllllly meant to be ours, or we reaaaaaaaaaly wanted it than we'd have it in our cart already.
I can not count the number of times me or my sweetie has enthusiastically blurted "Do you want to just get it? Want to? We'll just get it!"
And when we do, when we follow this impulse that is vibrating in our brains tellings us we NEED this item we never regret it.
Like toe shoes.
Well they're not called toe shoes but that's what they are. Shoes that are like toe socks, only shoes. God, don't you just want to faint from the glory of that very idea? TOE-SHOES!
It's like the shoe people reached in to our brains and plucked from amongst the rabble inspiration for shoes we didn't even know we needed.
Shoes for people who like to be in their bare feet. But bare feet, while comfy and relaxing at home, gets you some majorly annoyed scowls at the grocery store.
My husband ran across these shoes in the typical way one runs across anything on the internet. He was reading up on these people who run in their bare feet, or almost bare feet and were supposedly the fastest marathon runners on earth.
A few million link clicks later and a gasp of such impending importance reverberated through the house alerted me to a life changing discovery by my husband. He forwarded me the link...I looked....I loved.....
TOE SHOES!!!!
Incredibly flexible, thin shoes that's almost like wearing nothing at all..EXCEPT, their soles protect your footsie wootsies from sharp sticks and glass and the general ick of pavement filth and citified nature trails. Oh, and of course they have the marvelous advantage of each toe having it's own little compartment.
We stared at them in combined amazement, it was another one of those "understandings". These were cool. We both knew it, we both wanted them.
I'll admit they're the priciest pair of shoes either of us has ever bought, actually they're the second priciest bit of apparel I've ever owned. (the first being my wedding dress that came in at a whopping 100 dollars!) We're frugal and proud of it BUT unlike some ordinary shoes these are shoes that really feel unique. Just like walking in your bare feet, you can feel the textures of grass, dirt, sand, pavement and twigs under your feet.
If you're asking yourself "why would any one want to feel that?" then you just don't *get it*. These shoes add a whole new level of tactile sensation to a walk, and if you have any interest at all in enjoying a bit of nature and out of doors than I can not recommend them enough!
They also encourage you to get out and walk more, just to feel new things under your feet. Have no fear that my shoes are actually talking to me, whispering sweet nothings in my ears, telling me I should walk up the side of the cement steps, take a stroll through the bushes, wander over the yellow bumpy things on the ground in front of the grocery store, climb a tree or start researching parks like mad so we can find more places to go walk around in our toe shoes. I thought of all those things on my own, inspired like heck by my new footware.
The FiveFingers add to the *barefoot feel* by fitting your feet like a glove, the material hugs your foot like a second skin. Snug but not too tight, it seems unlikely you'd suffer from blisters in shoes like these. They're machine washable too so I can't wait to find some mud to tromp through. I suppose I could make some mud....
The Vibram FiveFingers KSO shoes are a welcome addition to our family. It's amazing how a little thing like a bit of molded rubber for your feet can be so inspiring but it's true. We have already visted two different local parks and walked further than we ever have before down our little road here, just during this past week alone.
Supposedly the Vibram FiveFinger shoes can strengthen your feet muscles and that you will have greater foot flexibility since your toes are separated and you use them more for walking. Also that your posture is improved and leg muscles can be strengthened as well. That's a lot for a pair of shoes to accomplish but when you wear them for an extended period of time walking it doesn't sound so crazy. Just by virtue of the fact we've been inspired to go for longer walks over rougher terrain than pavement is going to bring us some added health benefits.
And ya know what? We looked dang cool doing it too. I am so glad we follow our impulses.

Rooting for it!

2008-06-25T23:31:00.000-07:00

How you know when you're waaayyyy too happy about a recent trip to the Endodontist? First you write a poem about your root canal, then you sing it so much it gets stuck in your head AND your husband's, then you make your computer's speak program sing it to you when you tire of your own voice, then you record the computer and put it on your blog. That's how you know.
Listen to my root canal poem/song: ("Alex" the computer voice doesn't know how to say the word "Nasties". Silly computer.) The Lyrics are below, sing along...you know you want to....

No one's ever loved a root canal
Like I loved getting a root canal.
A root canal can be a gal's best friend.
When your head is throbbing
and you're sick of sobbing,
A root canal can make the nasties end.

A root canal's a lovely thing
if all you want to do is sing
instead of moaning curled up on the kitchen floor.
Drilling teeth's not usually so fun
But you'll be glad when it is done
and wish that you could go for 7 more.

Cause a root canal is over looked,
other vacations all are booked,
But the dentist's chair's relaxing in the end.
If your teeth are screaming mad,
your cavities are awful bad,
A root canal can be a gal's best friend.

Oh drill me
Then fill me
Poke holes in my back tooth.
Then crown me
Don't frown see
I'm better off it's truth!

No one's ever loved a root canal
Like I loved getting a root canal.
A root canal can be a gal's best friend.
When your jaw is killing you,
and another day you can't get through,
A root canal can make the nasties end!

The Root Of All Evil....

2008-06-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

I like to picture where Satan resides.
His hot little hell hole deep in earth. Ripe with disgusting, stagnant filth and the piercing cries of little minions.
But I was wrong. Satan doesn't live in the earth, turns out the old feller has been residing in my seemingly innocent back tooth. I always knew there was something a little evil about me, a certain glint in the eye when I stared deep into the abyss of my own reflection as I practiced making faces. Who knew I may have been housing pure evil in my number 31, aka back tooth?
Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic, perhaps it's not that Satan's lived there all along, it's just that my tooth was a portal for him this past weekend. A doorway if you will, that would let him wreak pain and havoc topside, on the earthly realm. To do a nasty little poking spree, with his three pronged pitchfork, in to the delicate soft innards of my tooth nerves. Of all the nerve, yes really of ALL THE NERVES? WHY MINE?
I've heard people talk about excruciating pain before. And ya think you know pain, I mean just 6 days ago I slammed the back of my ankle on our mini trampoline legs as I was putting it away. The trampoline away I mean, not my ankle, and in pain and shock jerked my foot forward, away from the offending leg and smashed it directly into the next leg, resulting in a colorful assortment, a party pack if you will, of bruises on the front and back of my foot. It hurt, like "owie, owie, owwwwwwwwwwwie, holy fricking hannah" my honey buns running for ice for my foot as I alternated laughing and maybe a wee tear or two, type hurt.
But I was wrong. That wasn't pain.
That was foreplay for pain.
I think maybe the universe just wanted to give me a heads up, didn't want me walking blindly into the week-end of excruciating, mind numbing hell I was about to endure with out a little pain preview ya know? A little something to get the ball rolling. Gee, thanks universe.
Long story short, 3 medications later, frantic phone calls to 3 dentists and waking poor root canal doctors from their toothy slumbers on a Sunday morning later I am feeling goooooood. Practically slobbering with anticipation for my root canal, unable to sleep as a side affect of one of the meds but feeling gooooood.
Weird thing, after the strange, nightmarish blur of a week-end until finally I met my new temporary best friend Dexamethasone, everything tastes sooo good. Every joke Alan cracks and a few he didn't even mean to crack is the funniest damn thing I ever heard. The sitcoms are funnier, the ice cream is tastier and I finally had a coffee...oh yes, I didn't have a single gloriously creamy iced coffee since..umm....I dunno, the last few days are sort of a blur and they can stay that way thank-you very much.
Seriously thank-you brain, you marvelously shriveled muscle residing in me skull, I thank-you. You and your amazing capacity for enduring the tortures of a tooth that I think was seriously pissed off at me (maybe I cracked one too many God jokes and he got pissed and smited me a bit?) Just a thought, one of many crazy ones, one will have with their hand plunged in a bowl of ice to help distract from the agony in one's mouth.

Things I have learned:

Clove oil
Peppermint Oil
Colloidal Silver
Sea Salt Water
Ginger Tea
Iodine
Ice
Raw garlic
Raw onion
Bowl of ice water to plunge the opposite hand to the side of hell face into
Pressure points on hands and feet
Head and neck massage from hottie blue eyed husband
Tylenol
Aspirin
Advil
Antibiotics
and 2 kinds of prescription pain killers

.....make a bizarre little cocktail for a weekend and only mildly alleviate Satan-esque pain. Like mildly as in if your entire head felt like it was exploding and you put a Donald Duck Band-aid under your right ear....like that will make it all better. Note how the list progresses.....clove oil to prescription pain killers.
I have a high tolerance for pain. You have to when you careen into doorknobs and desk corners as often as I do...but this....this I'm pretty sure gives me free reign to use 17 of the choicest curse words in a steady stream for 92 hours straight in varying degrees of intensity and arrangement and if you knew the pain I had you would be all "You go girl, curse that tooth out!"
The funny thing is, you can probably tell from my list we are not medicine type people. My dear sweetie had to run out and buy the various pain killers cause all we had was aspirin that had an expiration date from like 2002 on the bottle. Though we're not sure if the pills in the bottle actually had an expiration date THAT old as we both had a very vague recollection of putting newer aspirin in the bottle....though why we did that we don't know, and since neither of us have the foggiest recollection of the last time we even bought aspirin it was pretty safe to say these were probably expired too.
We always reach for the home remedy, the natural and the herbal treatment first. We pride ourselves in not overly polluting our bodies, why hell I had two lovely first time made loaves of chewy sourdough 100% whole grain rye bread loaves sitting in my oven waiting to to be tore into with organic butter and aged cheddar cheese when my tooth went WACKO. (Damn tooth, it's bad enough it totally screwed my week-end but it also ruined my snack. Two loaves of homemade sourdough 100% whole grain bread 6 days later is not the same thing as straight from the oven.)
We like things as natural as possible. We tried natural. Natural almost always works, but it can't fight an evil tooth that can only be brought around to the side of non-evil by a nice little Tuesday morning root canal.
Muaaaah ahhh ahh, take that tooth.
I only wish I could astral project so I could pop out of body and have a go at poking the offending tooth along side the dentist just so I can get a few jabs in, even things up a bit.
My new best friend Dexamethasone has returned my sanity. Thank-you wonder drug. But between you and me I'm dropping that pretty little pill like a bad habit as soon as I'm on the happy side of my root canal. Shhhh, don't tell Dexamethasone that this is totally a one time thing, that I have no intentions of making any life changing decisions to go all meds crazy, pill popping chemical stewing any time soon.
See, I must be evil, see how I'll use my new temporary best friend that way with full intentions of dumping Dexamethasone's ass as soon as possible? Course maybe I wouldn't be such a cold hearted pill snubbing bee-otch if I was able to sleep.....see...that's the thing about sea salt, ice water or massage, there's hardly ever a side affect like not being able to sleep. And that's the only side affect I looked at, if I want to read a scary list of horrible possibilities I'll check out the news. But...............some times modern medicines has it's advantages. Sometimes when you exhaust all other possibilities modern medicine is a fricking miracle. My sweetie likes to think of doctors as mechanics for the body. A lot of things a person can treat themselves with patience, a good diet and some common sense but sometimes, you just need that third party to get in there with his drill and make some holes in your tooth.....hmmm though I have a dremel...and this nifty little diamond tipped drill bit.......
Ahh, no worries, I am pretty sure we shall leave the dentistry in the hands of the professionals, leave the pills alone when ever we can, leave my beautiful bread in the freezer until my mouth can chomp good again and leave Satan in his festering little hole in the earth where he belongs.....just as soon as I evict his ass from my tooth.

Please Note: Giggling too much in happy excitement over getting a root canal makes the root canal people look at you funny. What ever you do don't tell your Doctor he's removing Satan from your tooth either...just saying...it won't go well. Also strangely enough I can say "she sells sea shells by the sea shore" like a million times more accurately with a face full of freeze juice, Novocaine? I dunno what they call it, I just had a root canal do I really have to call it anything besides freeze juice?

Biting the bullet about dust eaters biting the dust...just bites.

2008-06-16T01:30:00.000-07:00

If you're anything like me you've spent many an hour agonizing over your dust buster. You haven't? Umm......well this is awkward.
Let me restart the beginning of my blab-fest with this then....I have this friend...um..yeah...and SHE (who is NOT me) has spent many an hour agonizing over her dust buster. Because that's the kind of person she is.
The kind of person who'd always thought a dust buster was a frivolous, extravagant purchase but none the less eyed them with something akin to lust in the department stores. Never daring to let her gaze linger too long, lest her husband suspect her desires. She had a vacuum cleaner did she not? She reasoned with herself, why would she need a second apparatus that sucked?
Was she enamored by the delicate pastel hued plastic body?
Was she tickled over the idea of a teeny weeny cleaning machine she could keep in her kitchen? Was she just sick?
Yes, yes and no. She was in love, and afraid to admit it...until......
I'm sure you know where this is headed.
An "until" so heavily laden with passion and intrigue can only lead to one thing.....an explosion of gasping, girlish delight in the middle of a Linens n' Things as she was brought to her knees by a display of dust busters for only 14.99.
Ignoring one's secret desire is easy...until....you're faced with your secret desire only costing 14.99. Also, stuttering and stammering and clutching the unit they had on display in a childish "mine, mine, mine" sort of attitude goes a long way towards shattering the illusions that you're a cool, sophisticated woman who doesn't swoon over dust busters. My....HER husband was surprised.
"You really want one?"
And he asked it in such a casual way that implied he wasn't shocked, or disgusted by her needs, just surprised that she was hyperventilating over the 14.99 price tag, and manically searching for crumbs on the store floor so she could play with the demo unit. Lifting her husband's feet and knocking dirt onto the floor so she could feed her little beast.... crooning "There's a good plastic baby, mama's gonna fix you up good."
They bought one.
She cried the first night. Not realizing the new addition to the household had to charge first for 24 hours. It sat there happily suckling electricity from the plug whilst she eyed the little piles of crumbs that seemed to have miraculously appeared on every surface, as if sensing the arrival of the chosen one. Crumbs she could not, in good conscience, clean in any other way but with her new dust buster.
Finally, the next day....the day that took for-fricking-ever to arrive, she and her dust buster were united in the full glory that is a woman and her little sucking device coming together in holy house cleaning union.
She buzzed about the living room and kitchen, sucking up crumbs. Where there weren't crumbs she MADE crumbs, so as to test the little sucker on every surface available. Her husband was delighted by her strange and baffling joy that a little tool could bring.
When it's battery wound down she didn't howl. She just bit her lip and held the dark cloud of despair at bay by screeching, "WHY DID IT STOP?"
"It's not meant for cleaning an entire house." Her husband rationally explains. "5 minutes is a pretty good run time for picking up crumbs, if you think about it. If you have more than 5 minutes worth of crumbs to clean up maybe you need to use the big vacuum right?"
He made a lot of sense. And eventually the cloud of despair would retreat far enough that she could see this logic and not just stand and stare at her little plastic baby slurping electricity from the plug, belly full of coffee grounds, bits of tortilla chips and scraps of paper she'd ripped and scattered across the carpet for testing purposes.
Life was rainbows, sunbeams and lollypops for a while. Until......
Damn them "untils"........everything life changing happens after an until, have you ever noticed?
Well...all was perfect...UNTIL......she noticed she couldn't suck all the crumbs under the edge of the counter PLUS the coffee grounds around the stove all in one go......how odd.....it was as if the little plastic baby was growing weaker......she couldn't admit it until one day her husband innocently said, "It sounds like that thing is dying."
"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why would you say that? Why? WHY?????? You don't like my dust buster do you? You've never wanted me to have a dust buster, you'd let coffee grounds just pile up till we lived on nothing but coffee grounds, and wore nothing but coffee grounds, I suppose you think I ought to just quit spilling coffee grounds huh? HUH?????????????? "
He forgave her. As he understood the depth of love she had for the dust buster, having had such a relationship with a harmonica himself.
He suggested she time it. Cleverly realizing lets not have HIM destroy her dreams but lets have MATH do it. Numbers never lie, they may scar your soul with mind numbing cruelty, revealing truths that are too big for some minds to grasp....like the number of pints of ice cream left in the freezer, the number of poisonous snakes in the world or that your dust buster that used to run for 5 minutes at a time and now runs for only 40 seconds....but they never lie. Math will break your heart time and time again but it never lies.
40 seconds.
And every day she unites in cleaning joy with her plastic companion the time is less......Death hovers over the plastic dust buster with every hairball it consumes.
So fine, what ever, death is the inevitable conclusion to life, well that's just FRICKING PEACHY.
Is there a funeral service for the dust buster?
A final resting place?
Is there reincarnation for the dust buster?
Are batteries, life giving batteries, easily and readily available for the poor wee duster buster whose clock is running out?
*sigh*
The funeral services for most people's dust busters involve a complicated and scary process of smothering the plastic tool in yet more plastic, having it carted off by strangers in a loud rumbly truck and buried amongst everything our society considers too disgusting to keep. No loving embrace of sweet mother earth should ever be given to the dust buster, I feel very certain it goes against it's religious beliefs.
It's like a mummy, but instead of put in a museum on display where we put all the other old timey mummys that refuse to deteriorate, it's discarded. Hidden deep in our garages....IF it's lucky....and if it's not, it's sent along to the garbage heap. And a shiny NEW dust buster comes in to take it's place but like a pet...you know...you just KNOW you're going to outlive it......that some day, a hell of a lot sooner than you'd like, you will be faced with the same situation all over again....
Poor little dust buster, and poor she who longs to keep using her little cleaning aid and yet knows the time is drawing near. A decision will have to be made.
Which is more important to her? Hearing the gentle purr of a NEW Mr. Sucker-upper as he happily gobbles up the day's mess under the edge of the counter....or the environment? Will she start a collection of dead dust busters to join the blenders in the garage? Or will she realize that by keeping her kitchen counters garbage free by mechanical means she might actually be contributing to a larger garbage problem on the earth.....
Crap.
Seriously, why do I.........of course, just a slip of the fingers, why does SHE even have to think of these things?
Why care about the future generations? Why give a rat's ass about her legacy to the earth?
Why think about what she'll have to do with the old, dead dust buster when it finally bites the dust? Why can't she just throw it out and never think about it?
WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHY?
Is this cause her Mother was talking about goats whilst in labour with her? It all goes back to that doesn't it? She's a fricking hippy wanna-be because her Mother had to be running her mouth off about goats whilst giving birth. Something like that's gotta scar a child ya know?
So......she thinks about her dust buster, but enjoys the time they have together in the here and now.
Maybe by some miracle of miracles it won't die. Maybe it will forever run for 40 seconds at a time, just enough time to whizz through the kitchen chasing dust bunnies.
I hear too that she wonders how people cleaned up crumbs before dust busters? There's this thing called a whisk broom, like a regular broom only tiny........tiny is cute......though she doesn't dare speak of such things as whisk brooms around her Mr. Sucker-upper, lest he hear and ask uncomfortable questions she can't answer. Like what happens if some day....there's not even 40 seconds?
What if there's not even 2?
Will Mr.Sucker-upper be given a place of honor as art amongst all the prized possessions that are jammed in every corner, crowding every surface of the house? How valuable is he to the household when he can't work any more?
She might steal side long glances at him as he sleeps, recharging for the next hopefully 40 second cleaning spree and acknowledge.....he's beautiful as a dust buster....but as art? Hmmmmmm.....
Hope stirs, I know this for a fact. She has hope. One can't spend endless hours worrying, and agonizing over their dust buster and not have some hope.....a new battery? A new life? A new purpose?
She can't predict what the future holds but I damn well know this....he won't be garbage. He will NEVER be garbage.
He might become the world's funkiest flower vase, or secret compartment to hide valuables, weirdly shaped doll, strange little planter or the world's clunkiest cat toy that never gets played with....but he'll never be garbage.

Hmmmmmmmm...do you see what I see...would that make him..Dirty Smurf?

Cravings assuaged poetically

2008-06-12T02:13:00.000-07:00

Oh where art
My butter tart
In these United States?
The sticky treat
I long to eat,
and my desire sate.
Look everywhere
the shelves are bare
people's brows are raisin'
Yes that's right
Raisin delight,
Is the tart I'm praisin'.
I've been known
to make my own
When a craving surges!
A bit of crust,
sugar's a must,
A butter tart emerges.

(Heaven is located just under this raisin)

An Understanding Marriage.

2008-06-11T19:15:00.000-07:00

(me and my sweetie)

My husband wants to buy sea water...and yet we have no fish....no pool...no hot tub...but apparently we are lacking in sea water.
And not just ANY sea water, of course not, that would be silly. God forbid we get regular old, shore water...bleck. No, what he is currently lusting after is DEEP sea water. Pumped up from the fathomless depths of the ocean and available for people to buy at 55 dollars a liter.
And this is why we work so well together.
Because I understand, because I sat here in the morning....well actually it was afternoon as we have flipped our schedules about again..(for the umpteenth millionth time because who can live by a clock?)
I sat there, blearily blinking sleep from my eyes as he excitedly explains WHY we might want to go ahead and get our selves some deep sea water.....and the way he explains it, makes perfect sense.
I understand.
In fact, the way he explains it I almost feel silly for not having thought to buy 55 dollar a liter sea water, pumped up from the fathomless depths of the ocean, myself...as it now seems so obvious. Even half asleep, dream images still crowding my brain...I understand. And I understand him.
Luckily he understands me as well.
He understands how Halloween is literally around the corner by my calculations. How it's actually less than 2 months away....when you think about it. Like I think about it. As I excitedly explain that June doesn't count because of course we're IN June, and Halloween is IN October, so those 2 months are pretty much shot, and since we're about to hit July, you might as well say it IS July which leaves us with only 2 months until Halloween.
And while he might listen attentively to my spiel with a smile on his face, that tugs up the corners of his lips in that, "about to chuckle all over the place, cause Halloween aint no sea water kind of look", he understands.
He likes to have crunchy things with his meal. The man would and does eat corn chips next to anything and everything. If he pops up from a meal of mashed potatoes and gravy to "get a little crunch" I understand. Just as he understands I don't want to lick the sour cream spoon.
I don't care that I just inhaled a giant dollop of sour cream with my beans because when it comes to the last scoop, I don't want to lick the spoon. When I have finished my beans, my sour cream to bean ratio would be completely ruined by licking the teensy weensy last speck of sour cream from the spoon, so he takes care of that for me. Saving me the untold agonies of wasting a teeny weeny itsy bitsy bit of sour cream that I'd be tortured to wash down the sink and would probably end up putting the spoon in the fridge with the 17 other sour cream spoons we would have if it were not for my hero, my sour cream spoon hero. Who, selflessly, and heroically steps up to the plate every time, totally obliterating his own sour cream to bean ratio by licking the last bit of sour cream from the spoon. *swoon* He understands.
Just like I understand that life would be better with a pulley. We don't need a pulley, but undoubtedly life would be fricking sweet if we only had a pulley system rigged up, some way....for something. Not a day goes by that my sweetie doesn't dream loudly about how some rope, a pulley and some imagined *system* could have us hauling what ever we wanted up over the patio railing rather than archaically walking it up the stairs. One short flight of stairs...not when a pulley would be so much more satisfying. And I understand, it's not the destination in life...it's the journey they say. And he gets that, his journey will be by way of a complex system of weights, counter weights and silky white rope from the hardware store, NOT just the mundane plodding of feet up the stairs.
And I understand.
Just like he understands my desire for triangle shaped food. Because nothing tastes quite as good in any other shape than triangle. Instead of one medium sized triangle of watermelon he will cut me 6 little triangles. So that I might experience full triangle glory, over and over again with each little piece. I don't even have to ask. He just does it, and seems to relish my enjoyment of snapping off each pink little triangle tip with my teeth almost as much as I enjoy doing it.
Because he understands just how dang good a triangle piece of watermelon tastes compared to those disgusting half moons people some times cut.
We understand each other so well there are days we complete each other's sentences.
Not always correctly, but it's the attempt that counts.
"Honey do you want-"
"A canoe? For what? No wait, do..I want...um..a raccoon? Wait, I know, a yard stick!!!"
"Umm.....no...a coffee? The raccoon sounds cool though."
Life's pretty dang good when you don't just have a marriage, but an understanding.

An inanimate rant.

2008-05-29T10:17:00.000-07:00

(myself, in the closet battling my enemy...obviously turning the air blue with cusses)

I care not for inanimate objects defying my will.
I'm not asking for much here.
Well actually, truth be told I AM asking for much BUT I'm satisfied with so little.
In my wildest dreams I would like some super powers that let me exert my will upon more than inanimate objects.
I'm not talking God-like or anything. I'm not looking to take over the world and install flags bearing my face on every roof top...I don't think of things like that...do I?
I know not to assume I could get omnipotent powers, like some people (usually evil genius types in movies) set their sights upon.
I'd settle quite happily with one itty bitty power, a smidgen of power you might say. Like a one one hundredth of a fraction of a single iota of power.
I've even got it picked out too, a nice innocuous seeming power that I call....skin. If you so much as begin to look like you're even thinking something dirty I'm gonna go biblical on your ass.
By skin, I mean that should I see evil doers, qualified as evil by myself of course, I would be able to immobilize them, for 30 seconds in a non-harmful skin.
That's all.
That's not so much really.
I'd even settle for as little as 15 seconds, see how accommodating I am oh ye whose in charge of handing out such powers?
Think of the good I could do. Evil, swerving truck on the road who I suspect has a moron at the wheel, Pzaptafa! (sound of skin power in effect) and voila, frozen truck, covered in a glistening, translucent membrane of energy that prevents it from moving, or other things from hurting it, but ultimately allowing me to scoot on by. Afatpazp! (sound of skin power turning off)
OR, say I'm at the second happiest place on earth, Disney Land, and kids keep cutting in line because for SOME reason the little rug rats think they are immune there. That Disney Land is solely there for their amusements and adults are nothing but speed bumps and cash dispensers. Well the next time the little.......darlings......barrel through the line, taking cuts, almost knocking people over and causing one great pains from biting one's tongue so one doesn't say something that will land one in Disney jail....Pzaptafa!
Place in line is secured. And if the little...........darlings.....should miss the ride you're getting on, bonus.
My favorite place to use skin power would have to be at the theater though. Perhaps it's a sign of the early onset of crotchetiness but I can't stand the yammering of fellow theater goers during the movie. I can not tune it out, I hate having to change seats and fisty cuffs just aint my style.
Pzaptafa! I could immobilize the blabber mouths, stick my tongue out at them without fear of retribution and perhaps dissolve their minds into quivering puddles of fear by popping out of my seat and racing past them to sit on the other side of them, stealing their popcorn along the way.
Afatpazp!
Skin power turns off and NOT only have they..hee hee, this is too good..not only have they missed 15 to 30 seconds of the movie (depending on the strength of skin power that gets bestowed upon me) BUT it's gonna blow their little minds that I'm on the other side of them. Because obviously whilst immobilized by skin you see nothing, as if you're on pause.
And then, whilst they're all "Who? whaaaa? Huh-ing." I shall zap them again, Pzaptafa! And run to the other side once more, thereby cementing the mysterious, awesomeness of me in their minds and possibly purloining their soda along the way.
Not, that I have given any great thought to this or anything.......
As of yet, many will be relieved to know, I do not have skin power.
In fact I seem to be lacking even the basic power that every one else seems to have over mastering inanimate objects. It would seem simple on the surface, I have a brain, the plastic coat hanger does not, therefore I am God of the coat hanger, but does it obey me??????
DOES IT KEEP MY FRICKING SHIRT ON IT'S FRICKING PLASTIC SELF WHEN I PUT IT THERE?
No.
Does it let my shirts slide off to the floor time and time again..?
Yes.
When it does deign to do it's one fricking job in life, hold a shirt on it's self does it let me tug my shirt off it with ease?
HELL NO.
Does it instead somehow mysteriously bite into my shirt with it's stupid little hooky thingy and force me into an embarrassing tug of war, me against the coat hanger?
*sigh* Yessss.
Coat hangers should obey me.
The concept is rather simple but time and time again an abrupt dash of reality is thrown into my face by inanimate objects that gleefully defy my will.
And the coat hanger is just the evil minion of my closet.
I have noticed this defiance, spreading like a disease, amongst more and more of my possessions. Doorknobs, keys, forks, even sweet precious little forks have been infected. Glass jars filled with tea somehow expel their contents all over the stove causing me to invent new swear words, because apparently I don't know enough to satisfactorily express my dismay at TEA defying me.
Things, non-thinking, non-sentient, non-alive things will fly from my hands and mock me with their tumble through the air. Gull dang it, a jar lid has NO RIGHT to take a dive like that from my fingers, landing sticky side down on the carpet. No right.
*sigh*
Until the day I am bestowed with my skin powers, finally once and for all making up for the genetic hole that's preventing me from dominion over my stuff, I shall continue onwards.

I may massacre my coat hangers in the mean time, but really, they have it coming.

It's Bloody Delicious.

2008-05-10T15:49:00.000-07:00

Alan says we have a dark side.
What? Just cause we were merrily juicing up some veggies for a potent, power packed supremely healthful drink he thinks we have a dark side?
Is it my fault that raw beets ooze red, blood like juice all over heck and back when you chop them up?
Nooooo.
Is it my fault that juicing a beet yields a delicious, nutritious albeit damn bloody looking drink?
Heccccckkkk No.
Is it my fault that for the 3.2 seconds he had his back turned I paused mid-juicing so that I could carve the core of the beet into a rat like body that would do any horror movie gross-out scene proud?
Ummmm.........maybe?
I'll admit to that being my own idea but it's not my fault the beet had such a long rat like tail, and that when I chopped it up to fit in our juicer that fate handed me a deliciously disgusting opportunity.
It's fate's fault! A ha!!!
Usually if I babble on long enough I can find some one else to blame for anything and everything, I am much relieved this time is no different.
Fate stepped in and provided this afternoon's grotesque entertainment. My muse screeched in my ear that I should pull out my carving knife and..NOT not cut off it's tail but be a good wife and smooth out the core of the beet into a rat like form...I supposed a skinned and de-legged rat like form to be accurate.
How does one go about plating a bloody rat for their husband? A virginal white dish to show off the wet, darkly oozing rodent/vegetable is best. Flick your fingers a la Emeril in a deliciously dark home version of "BAM" to splatter excess beet juice/blood all over the plate. Be mindful of your flicking as you'll have to clean up the splatters that will....er...COULD make it on to you, the floor, the cupboards, the counters...the ceilings...if you get too enthusiastic. And unfortunately I've never suffered from a lack of enthusiasm.
Present the plate to your loved one with all the pride you can muster and rejoice in their chuckle, their appreciation of a terribly good joke.
If you think carving a bloody rat was fun you should try juicing one, held by it's tail as you lower it in to the grinding mechanism of your juicer, you'll never look at your veggie juice the same way again!
Usually when we drink beet juice we just pretend we're vampires and cackle over every sip and bare our teeth at each other and sigh over the many months away that Halloween is.
But this time we giggled like mad scientists, twitching our whiskers and slurping our ridiculously red rodent juice with mephistophelian glee.
Mmmmmmmmmmmm beets make a bloody good drink.
p.s. I don't really have to state the obvious do I? That beet juice is as close as I wanna come to eating or drinking any rat or related product..right????

The Beauty of the Big Biscuit...

2008-05-08T19:44:00.001-07:00

How delightful are biscuits?
Very, is the answer in case you had a momentary brain lapse and were fumbling through your mind desperately looking for a response that won't enrage this blogger. The answer is very.
A hearty, buttery, flakey bread type product that you can whip up at a moment's notice and be enjoying a bite of, albeit a steaming bite in about 11 minutes.
That's 10 minutes baking time and 1 minute preparation time, I will admit that if you're not a fan of dust clouds of flour, smacking your shins in to cats that get in the way as you dash at reckless speeds across the kitchen gathering ingredients, splattering globs of biscuit dough all over the kitchen, your self and your husband then perhaps a more reasonable (which I'm not, reasonable that is) estimation of total time for everyone else would be around 13 or 14 minutes. Any more than that and I gotta wonder what it is you're doing with your flour that I'm not doing with mine. *insert raised eyebrow look here, the sort Laura Holt is always giving Remington Steele, also guess who has discovered Remington Steele and has been watching back-to-back episodes on Hulu? The answer is meeeee.*
I have very fond memories of biscuits.
They were always the dainty, little, round, perfectly cut sort that made me think of baby showers and women's something or other meetings......sorry the name of that community group escapes me, all I can remember was the table laden with pot luck food, luck indeed, as there were always biscuits, pre buttered with a wee little square of cheddar cheese already adorning the golden beauties like a wee jewel in the crown of...oh God I'm hungry. How many minutes has it been? I've a biscuit in the oven you know.
A biscuit, as in singular.
Because that is my brilliance, my time saving, get a bit of biscuit to my gullet faster than you can say "Beam me up Scotty".
The....BIG...biscuit.
What's with all this rolling the dough out and cutting it in to wee circles anyways? That's like saying you're only going to eat one biscuit and nobody eats just one biscuit. My Grandmother when she lived at home was always in to weight watchers and health and calorie counting and scales and losing weight and this that and the next thing and even she did not sit down to eat ONE biscuit, she ate a whole bunch of biscuits in one go. The tub of Country Crock margarine spread between us, the molasses already loaded into a squeezable tipped bottle so we could ooze out the perfect amount on each beautiful bite of baked biscuit. Perhaps this was why she seemed so aware of her calorie intake every where else I am just now realizing, because when it came to biscuits and molasses we were *good biscuit eaters*. As if consuming a small truck load of biscuits in one sitting was a skill to be proud of.
The Big Biscuit is brilliant.
A batch of biscuit dough pressed out lightly onto a greased cookie sheet (maybe yours doesn't have to be greased but mine does or else there's a kitchen full of broken biscuit dreams, tears and curses when the big biscuit sticks to the sheet and refuses to give you the all important big biscuit bottom layer that's slightly crispy and golden and MINE! NOT the cookie sheet's but MINE. Not that I hold grudges against inanimate objects or anything...for long...it's just I don't like non-sentient things to defy me and my will, is that so wrong?)
Then you pop your big doughy biscuit in the oven for it's allotted time and within 10 or 11 minutes....ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....a biscuit, warm and steaming and just ready to be plopped on your plate..er.....I mean divided up for you and your husband who is now the one giving you the raised eyebrow look but instead of Laura Holt's eyebrow routine it's Remington Steele's cause he's on to me and my Big Biscuit and wants in on the action.
Sometimes we just have buttered biscuit, some times the all important biscuit and molasses routine, though I warn you this is a routine that is impossible to stop. Butter a bit of big biscuit, drip a drop of molasses, munch away, repeat..and repeat..and repeat..and repeat.
You will hear a distant groan of protest that is your stomach but you will also find your molasses addled brain will ignore it and keep eating bite after perfect bite of BIG biscuit and molasses. It's just the unfortunate reality of something so dang simple and delicious.
Sometimes we dig out our cheeses and sit trading hunks of gruyere and cheddar and fontina back and forth over our plates.
Other times we plop a chunk of Big Biscuit on a salad, like a mega crouton.
Sometimes we have it with marmalade or cinnamon sugar or.....like today....fresh strawberries.
A little trick I do, if you like your biscuits extra golden on top, pop em under the broiler in the oven for a few seconds after they are baked. Another little trick I do, forget it's under the broiler, walk away, distracted by shiny objects and bits of fluff and then wonder why the kitchen smells like smoke.
I can only in good conscience recommend the first trick unless you're into charred biscuit.
A ha, which reminds me. A third trick, take your big biscuit while it's still in it's soft, warm dough form and.....pop it on your Bar-B-Q grill. Holy mama, that's a gooooood biscuit and it can get a wee bit of char but the good kind, not the stomach turning, we can use it as a piece of charcoal to draw a picture of our deceased Big Biscuit, kind. I usually dust my big biscuit with lots of flour so it wont stick to the grill when ever I've done this trick.
By the way for those of you with husbands who look at your biscuits with a dark gleam of greed in their eye I want to set the record straight that biscuits, big or otherwise..do..NOT EVAPORATE. Even a little, so should any biscuit disappear while it's cooling and the BIG Biscuit Baker is outside watering the plants then we'll all know it wasn't a natural phenomenon..... I do give him points for originality, and cuteness....so he can have as much of the dang biscuit as he wants if he continues to be my hand model.

How to Enjoy a Big Biscuit:

1. Break it in to hunks, use your hands just like the caveman biscuit makers did.
2. Prepare a little love for the biscuit with some sliced strawberries, a touch of sugar and a drip of Amaretto, let the mixture combine in an almost carnal like way until it coaxes the blushing strawberries in to releasing it's juices at which point introduce the whole thing to it's betrothed...the BIG BISCUIT!
3. Clean the table like mad in a frenzy of energy because you realize that as the sun sets it's highlighting every bit of dust on the surface and making you look like a bad house keeper, which you might very well be but there's no need to photograph the evidence now is there?
4. Raw...HEAVY....cream......thick and luscious and much more adult than the whipped gelatinous-y type stuff that masquerades as whipped cream in the freezer section of the store. If you have the patience you could whip it up, if you don't..like me, just pour a dollop over the sweetened berries and bit of Big Biscuit and try not to let your hands shake cause it looks too impossibly good to have come together that fast.
5. Lure your husband out on to the patio with promises of telling him where you hid the spoons if he'll hold the plates of strawberry shortcake type cousins in the dying rays of the sun.
6. Eat.

p.s. The recipe I use for my Big Biscuit is adapted from Bob's Red Mill
However I use only 100% whole wheat flour in my recipe, omit the sugar, and replace the shortening with coconut oil. Oh and....um depending on what's closer the fridge or the sink I'll replace the milk with water.

America's got BIG balls....

2008-05-07T20:17:00.000-07:00

....and I've finally had my hands on 'em. There are a few things Alan recalls quite clearly about when we first met in person. I mean besides me obviously. Like the icy cold of a Nova Scotian February, plenty of grocery store visits AND Canadian Bowling. He thought it was a joke, wee little bowling balls that you hold in the palm of your hand and can wing down the lane like a softball...... Though *lobbing* the ball was frowned upon it still happened, I guess the bowling authorities want bowling to be more about the rolling and less about the bouncing. Both are fun.
I knew there were other sorts of bowling out there of course, hadn't I watched the Flintstones? Hadn't I seen Fred's boulder like balls with the intriguing holes in them that our wee little balls lacked. Hadn't I wondered and marveled and, I'll even admit, LUSTED after those same balls, wishing that at least once in my life I could get my hands on some like them.
All the kids in my area wanted the same thing, my brothers even, we all wanted to get our hands on balls like Fred Flintstone's.
It's taken 30 years but I've finally fulfilled that childhood fantasy. I didn't expect it to happen in the belly of a casino, but the actual bowling alley with it's racks of large colorful balls were just what I imagined. Actually, I didn't expect the colours, those were a treat. Fred Flintstone's balls were a greyish white as I recall so I wasn't expecting turquoise, blue and neon pink. I quickly learned a few things about American style bowling.
The balls are heavvvvvvvvvvy.
I mean they expect you to hold a ball in one hand that's like 2 or 3 times the size of a Canadian bowling ball, and I'm pretty damn sure by the 5th ball I rolled that it was actually 19 times the size of a Canadian bowling ball and that it was no longer being thrown down the lane so much as falling off my cold, pained hand and rolling from it's own momentum, aided by the lane lubricant, my wishes and eventually the gutter to it's final destination.
Also, American bowling forces un-lady like expletives from one's own lips when they throw the ball with a resounding thunderous kerplunk-like crack straight into the gutter, but's it's ok I swore ONLY in Canadian. So I'm sure the slew of filth that tipped off my tongue a time or two was unintelligible to lane neighbors. Slew like "BEAVER FROSTED, BLUE NOSE BUGGERED LOONIES AND TWOONIES THAT BITE'S SNOWBALL SOBEY'S AZZ!"
American bowling involves sticking your fingers into dubious holes that God knows how many other people have already stuck their fingers in to...which is weird cause my Mama always warned me about doing things like that...and I'll admit to a tad squeamishness about doing it myself. Which probably accounts for my score.......or lack of score for the better part of the game. Also I'm not fussy in any lady like way, I mean sure I wear my Mary Janes on a short walk through the desert but that's foolishness not ladylikeness, and anyways it's not

reaaaaallllly foolishness if you realize it actually IS foolishness and are prepared to levitate your way back to the car at the first sign of anything that so much as looks like a snake or a snake's cousin...... but anyways breaking more than 4 nails during one game seems to be a bit much even for me so I either have to give up bowling or de-claw myself and unfortunately I like bowling.
I reallllllyyy liked the bowling, I think I might have more than a slight fondness for making a fool of myself in front of a bunch of strangers. Course, no one was outwardly snickering or anything, I saw a few amused smiles but no more than that and can you blame them? I was hefting an 8, 10, or 11 lb bowling ball around and winging it wildly about. (I couldn't make up my mind which size I liked best, 10 fit well but 8 was pink so you can see my dilemma!)
They're just lucky it went down my own lane every time, one ill timed snicker and I could have plowed it straight into the gut of the teenie bopper of my choice!
Sometimes I can bowl better left handed than right handed. This is a weird but true fact, I think it was the same when ever I bowled in Canada with the itty bitty balls they have up there (do you think ball size is a heat/cold related thing......?)
Bowling left handed is harder cause that arm is naturally weaker, being that I'm a righty, but my ball wobbled it's way down the lane and knocked more pins down with frequency compared to the right. I think it's pretty safe to say that from here on out I'm going to study hard and become ambidextrous, I think this would be a cool skill to learn.
A miracle of miracles did occur on this momentous night of American bowling. I got a strike, one glorious strike that came out of no where and if I hadn't been sweating bullets and willing the ball down the lane with the very force of my gaze, never blinking, I'd have thought it wasn't my ball causing the pins to clatter merrily to the ground in a drunken heap but somebody else's who must have hopped the gutter. But no it was mine!!!!! I clapped, Alan clapped and of course the strangers sitting behind us taking in the show that was me squealing like a girl and cursing after every gutter ball clapped most enthusiastically.
Thank-you kind strangers where ever you are. While your attention caused me to go in to spasms of anxiety and much blushing I appreciated the enthusiasm and the impartial witnessing of my first ever American strike during my very first American bowling experience.
I like America, it's got great balls!
p.s. I do realize these two styles of bowling are not actually called American and Canadian Bowling but that's what I'm gonna call them *pbbbbbbbbbbt*

Hot Headed!!!

2008-04-27T17:20:00.000-07:00

(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.....

2008-04-25T16:10:00.000-07:00

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.......

2008-04-23T19:33:00.000-07:00

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.