They should call them Mmmmmmmargaritas...

(a little sprinkle of a really fruity dried chili pepper is a nice little spicy twist to the margarita.)

Dear Self,
Last night you had a gorgeous plate of homemade mexican food?

Yes.

A layer of homemade, slow cooked mexican beans that were heavily flavoured with garlic, peppers and spices. Topped with 3 fried masa dough balls that encased spicy jack cheese, accompanied by green epazote salsa, a sprinkle of cilantro and tomato.

Mmmmm yes indeed.

And self, were there also watermelon margaritas so delicious and flavorful it felt like you were sinking your teeth into some exotic fruit only found in paradise every time you took a sip (of which there were many)?

Yes, yes there were.

And you enjoyed this luxurious meal at home, in the comfy coziness of your own sofa with your sweetie pie husband watching the new Stargate movie?

You bet your gate dialing, wormhole traveling, Samantha Carter lovin' ass I did.

Damn, you know if you weren't me...I'd hate you right about now.

Yeah...I get that a lot.

Dear Universe......

You are so damn sneaky. I love the way you twist and turn the tendrils of fate, weaving me in amongst your strange plans. Very clever. Yes, very clever indeed Universe.
Sometimes, I admit I get a little...well...lets be honest, I get down right furious with you. As in, un-becoming, red cheeked, mad-eyed, righteous indignation infused with a touch of pissed-off-ed-ness at ya.

(I'm pretty sure that's a drop kick I'm performing...)

And I'm sorry about that.
I mean, really when you think about it, that makes as much sense as getting mad at the check out girl at the grocery store.
It's not her fault she needs the manager to come and do secret special manager things to the cash register as the line of people backs up, the crowd of shoppers starts grumbling less than quietly under their breaths and her manager has yet to arrive. I of course don't get angry, cause I can see that's not her fault, and besides that the woman in line behind us is apparently hogging all the anger today, drawing it tight against her pursed lipped self as she stares daggers at the checker and fumes until she realizes no one is taking her fuming seriously and proceeds to dramatically flounce away with her purchases to a different check out.
I might add Universe, whilst I'm thinking of it, that I could see in that moment what you had in mind. It became clear pretty fast that the slowed up checkout wasn't for our benefit, we were just a cog in the machine. Or maybe it was for our benefit but we passed your test with flying colours, cracking jokes with the checker and fellow un-irate customers, biding our time for the manager.
The manager who just happened to be busy, because she too was manning a checkout lane and couldn't leave mid customer check-out. Oh universe, you clever crafty omnipotent thing you. How delightfully, and might I add, deliciously dark of you to have the fuming customer who lane hopped be the manager's next customer....the customer who had to wait while the manager proceeded to leave her station and make her way, 6 lanes down to our station...thereby leaving the presumably still pissed off woman..waiting...again. You can't really me that didn't happen on purpose.
You can't tell me that beautifully orchestrated lesson in patience, manners, good humor and respect wasn't part of your to-do list for the day. Right after making a squirrel get run over by a car but before making that one cloud look suspiciously like the Ship Hector. Busy, busy every day for you Universe, and like I said some days your schemes make sense. Other days....well other days you're damn lucky you don't have an ass I could drop kick in to next week. I'm not even sure I know what a drop kick is, but it sounds powerful and painful and I'd be willing to learn on those days when you do nothing but confuse and exasperate me. Hiding your life lessons so well amongst the general chaos of existing on this planet with every one else that I could even begin to doubt you have life lessons for me at all. I even begin to wonder if I'm just a bit of amusement for you, an experiment, a "what will happen if we make her realllllllllly mad" reality show for you.
Take my tooth.
Actually, to steal an old over-used joke, no don't. I've had so much work done on this one, wee, poor tooth that I do not want it any where but where it is, tucked safely in my head.
But this tooth. What was the plan there Universe? Does one tooth realllllllly need all those dentist visits? Seriously? Was this the master plan of the sneaky dentist's league...or you. I gotta say.....this entire tooth trial smacks of your doing Universe.
Shall we reminisce?
First, a tooth with a prior filling from yeeeeeears ago.

• Visit 1: Has a crack and needs a new filling, dentist discovers the old filling is touching my nerve and suspects I may possibly need a root canal, fills the tooth temporarily with mysterious dentist meds so that my tooth can have a chance to be a super star and heal. Wait 2 weeks.
• Visit 2: Tooth feels fine, no root canal, oh yaaaaay for me. Pretty new white filling doesn't behave as it goes in. Dentist tries over, and over, and over during this visit, the tooth finally after hours in the chair is filled. yaaaaaaaaaaaay.
• Visit 3: The filling has popped out due to flossing and it's difficult in between teeth area that is apparently damn hard for a dentist to fill. New filling, again damn hard to do, long dentist visit. Tooth re-filled, yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
• Visit 4: The filling has popped out.....again. Dentist tries again but admits if it doesn't stay I may need to switch back to metal amalgam for this tooth, darn, but he gets it filled, so yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.
• Visit 5: Routine check-up, I noticed that tooth was aching a bit. Dentist sees no evidence that it's hurt. yaaaaaaaaaaay
• Visit 6: The tooth has joined forces with Satan and puts me through the absolute worst pain of my entire life. Emergency visit for x-ray and referral to the root canal guy...umm..yay?
• Visit 7: Root canal, sweet pain relief root canal. Best damn root canal of my life.
• Visit 8: Crown prep, oh me and this dentist's chair are old friend's now. Getting my tooth finished soon, get a shiny new temporary crown while the new porcelain one is being made. Yaaaaaaaaay!
• Visit 9: The crown has not been made right. Something along the lines of a little mysterious bubble, confusion at the lab, and the crown doesn't go down as far as it should in one spot. *sigh* New molds taken of my poor wee tooth, I get reacquainted with the temporary crown, which is feeling a little less temporary now and go home to wait another week......great.
• Visit 10: The crown is still a little funky. At this point I am gazing up directly at you Universe, sure it may have looked like the dentist's ceiling but trust me, it was you. As they muttered and poked, and pondered and rushed around fixing my crown for the SECOND TIME, leaving me to wait as it's rushed across the street to the crown people I just gotta wonder......are you testing me? Or trying to break me? I'm telling ya now, I won't be broke. I will damn well learn a lesson from all of this even if it's a few new swear words that I invented just for you Universe you malafortling bodsquipper. Yeah, you heard me right.

In that moment as I sat in the chair wondering if I'd be going home with my new tooth or not I felt that moment...that eye watering, mouth tightening, chest pressure moment when you realize you're either going to cry or......slap some one silly...no not really. It's cry or sigh. Cause what can ya do? I can't complain, being able to get tooth work done is a luxury, just like my dish drainer. If it needs more time, it needs more time.
A HA.
Patience?
Is that it? Well hell that's as good a reason as any to make me go through 10, 11 if you count the old filling from when I was a kid...and ya know what?
Lets do that. Lets count it cause I think I should get a wee bit of horror story bragging rights out of this besides my shiny new porcelain crown. That makes ELEVEN, count them, 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11 visits to the dentist for just ONE tooth.
So........thanks.
I didn't freak, I didn't mentally crack...well not much. There are people in the world who'd just have to get a tooth yanked, if they could afford even that. And we're not rich by any means but I sure do appreciate being able to get work done on a tooth instead of just ignoring it. Thanks for providing me with the opportunity to not get rip roaring mad at the dentist, cause I really don't think it's his fault my tooth was in a gang run by Satan. Thanks for the most awesome, amazingest husband who sat out there in a waiting room chair for every single second I was at the dentist.
Thanks.
Like I said, I don't always see your reasons but I figure even if you don't have any lessons for me to learn, well I'll be my own teacher, and teach myself.
By the way, if you feel like bestowing me with that super power we talked about before.....like if you're feeling a little guilty seeing all those dentist visits laid out in all their mind numbing numbers glory...well I'm not so learned and advanced I'd turn 'em down.
Love from me.

F8

I was wrist deep in a bloody massacre at the kitchen sink when my husband called out, "We were going to get a lottery ticket!"
I turned, dark red cherry juice dripping from my fingers, rolling in disturbing little rivulets down my wrists as I too remembered and exclaimed, "Oh yeah!!!"
Cherries are forgotten, as Alan explains why he remembered. Today is August 8th, of 2008. That's 08/08/08. We don't buy lottery tickets very often but when we do we like to buy them connected with some oddity number freak-show of a calendar date.
Who wants to buy a lottery ticket for no reason?
Well I mean beyond the gazillion dollar reason, we like to have an extra reason. An anniversary date, or at 11:00 am or pm if we can manage it. Or on February 22 at 2 pm. We figure if fate aka the universe wants us to win a gazillion dollars then it won't be from some random ticket we bought on a 6th of January. Who buys a lottery ticket on the 6th of January? Not us. It's not superstition, it's genius.
"I got an email newsletter from that psychic I've been reading about. That's what reminded me about the odd date today. It's supposed to be lucky."
I gaze across the living room at Alan as he shares this extra juicy tidbit of news. A psychic says today is lucky......hmmmmm....
I stand, cherry juice drying on my fingers and on the counter and the floor where I've already dripped it as I consider the fact it's already evening and I've started prep work for homemade yogurt with massacred cherries.
Should we bother running out to get a ticket after all?
"Get this, it's almost 8 now!" Alan has turned around completely in his computer chair and faces me, our eyes lock.
In that moment a decision is made, no words are needed, our bodies move in a balletic like synchronization for a moment as we are spurred into action.
I fling cherry juice into the sink, lick it from my wrist and permanently stain my dish towel as I hurriedly wipe my hands off.
Alan is rising from his chair, he goes for our shoes as I shove the bowl of yogurt back in the fridge. I leave the cherry carnage as it is, pits, juice, cherries scattered across my sink and cutting board. Probably across me as well but it doesn't matter.
We are on a mission.
"There's only 5 minutes to 8." I call, heading for the bedroom to put on my *outer world clothes*. You know, the clothes you wear out in public that are different and usually less comfy than the *at home clothes*.
We are a well oiled lottery ticket purchasing machine.
He grabs our wallets, I grab the keys, and we are out the door. Breathless with excitement, off to buy a lottery ticket as close to 8 pm as we can on 08/08/08.
Winning the lottery would be fricking sweet any day of the year, who am I kidding, but winning it from a ticket purchased on 08/08/08 at 8 would be better than any damn cherry on top.
We are laughing as we fling ourselves into the car and head out.
"Should we go to the 7-11?" I ask, carefully directing the car down the darkened driveway despite our hurry.
Alan thinks for a moment, the 7-11 is where we usually buy our lottery tickets. "Too bad there's no 8-11."
We groan in unison, man that would have been awesome. And damn the 7-11, it's more than 5 minutes away and on top of that it's numbers don't even add up to 8 or a variable of it. 7+1+1 =9 Damn.
At the main road, turn signal clicking away Alan and I share a laugh. Could any one else in the universe have as much fun buying a lotto ticket as we do? Even if we don't win we are sure getting our dollar's worth of excitement out of it. We turn an every day, even mundane task into an event filled with excitement and meaning. We imagine the hand of the universe directing us to buy a lottery ticket today of all days. So much more exciting than just "oh ho hum buying another ticket for no reason on just another average day."
"We should go to the little store."
Alan's words cut through the giddy silence in the car.
"O.k." We've never been to the "little store" it's an itsy bitsy glorified liquor and cigarette place that's right at the intersection, like 3 minutes from home.
"It would be nice for them if we won," he continues on as I am already turning into their tiny little parking lot, "they could use the money."
We remember how we read one time the place that sells the winning ticket gets a special fee from the lottery people.
See how kind we are universe?
See how we're thinking beyond ourselves. Deciding we'd like our gazillion dollar winning ticket fee thing-a-ma-jig to go to the little guy at the corner.
We leap out of the car, well, we leap out as best you can from a little Honda Civic and rush over to the doorway of the teeny tiny little store. Like a sign from the lottery Gods there is a ticket station standing outside, right by the entrance.
We are ready.
We are so ready to buy this ticket.
We are so ready we brought our own pen in case of a pen emergency at the ticket station.
We fill out two sections to buy two tickets. One ticket we choose numbers that are purposefully and well thought out. The other we randomly point the pen and fill in, no thought at all.
See how clever we are? Figuring we are covering both ways the universe might wanna direct us to win. Through randomness or purposefulness.
We buy the 2 tickets.
The rush of speed is over, we made it. We don't know if we bought it exactly at 8 pm but we were as close to it as we could possibly get.
On the way home we pat each other verbally on the back for supporting our local little store and for following our instincts.
"We could fix up the car when we get the money." Alan says in that soft voice one gets when thinking out loud.
I snort. A definite un-lady like snort and Alan joins me in laughing. "I don't mean like pimp it out."
I laugh, "I didn't really think you did. You mean like convert it to electric or hydrogen run or something."
"Yeah, maybe fix the wires in the dash."
I glance down at the gaping hole in our dashboard where our many, many, mannnny car stereos had once oh so briefly lived.
"I kinda like the wires. It says 'this cars already been hit, move it along'. "
Parking the car in the driveway we head back inside.
"Hey we met in 2000, I mean we knew of each other's existence in the year 2000 which means that we are on our 8th year of knowing each other."
Alan turns and stares at me and we grin. Two different faces but damn it all we're wearing the same grin, that special "8" infused ticket just got a littler eight-ier. Sweet.
So were the cherries and homemade yogurt.
No snack tastes as delicious as one that is made and ate basking in the aftermath of a lottery ticket splurge and the foremath of lottery ticket winnings.
By the by, the lotto ticket numbers are drawn Saturday night at 7:57.
Do you know how fricking close to 8 that is? Fricking close enough that we will check our numbers at 8 exactly.
Should you hear a decidedly 8 flavoured screech from the vicinity of Southern California round abouts 8:01 pm than you can probably guess what happened.
If all you hear is an amused chuckle and the sound of a ticket being gently torn up and scattered into the recycling bin then you can guess what happened also.
Either way, it'll be fun.
Either way, it's up to Feight now.