I'm almost halfway sure my chocolate's paranormal.

October tried to sucker punch me. I took it like a woman, held my ground and then only sobbed when October turned it's back to go on with the busy dealings of Autumn-izing the country.
My Grandmother passed away.
Just one of those things, people were expecting it, and the time came...and then it passed and so did she. Expected or not it still sucked. But I have been reminded of a couple of important things. You gotta live your life, you can't stay in the puddles of sadness, life goes on until it stops and hopefully each person has collected up an awesome cache of memories and experiences when this physical existence ends.
I like calling it physical existence, I really believe there's more to our world than just the physical plane. That the spiritual one, or what ever you want to call it, is the next step after this life. So even though I am sad for my Grandmother passing I'm happy she's moving on to what ever awesome experience is next, no longer burdened by the frailty of a human body.
Which reminds me, I am totally gonna haunt the hell out of people when I pass. I mean, I am going to go poltergeist all over their ass, forewarned is forewarned.
A small side note about me, I've been writing my grandmother letters for years. Just little notes and silly pictures and poems and whatnot. Just things that I felt like might bring a smile if she saw them. Like a closeup of my face sticking my tongue out, or pictures of my husband dancing in the driveway, the sort of foolishness that needs no words or translating and stuff I hoped made her shake her head at the daft grand daughter.
The last one I sent her, we took it to the post office and after coming home saw that my Mom had emailed me to tell me that Grandma wasn't doing good and was going to pass soon. I wondered if my letter would make it to Canada before she did...it didn't. I had done something different with this letter, I wrote on the back that whoever should see it, if they'd please tell my Grandma that Tracey-Anne said "I love you." She was in a Nursing home for 11 years and I'm not sure if she was ever really able to look at the letters I sent by herself.
My Mom said some one gave her the letter at Grandma's funeral, she said someone suggested it be read out loud as part of the services and she laughed and said "God No!" Because I had written stuff like "Well slap my arse and call me Ethel" in it, silly little things like that. Personally I think it would have been a hoot to let the Reverend struggle through my page of nonsense writing in front of a crowd of mourners.
I didn't think much more about that letter after that.
My Mom told me the services were very nice, that a little memorial area was set up with chocolate in honor of Grandma, famous for her sweet tooth. When ever we'd go visit her we'd always bring something sweet. I am not sure I have a photo of her from the last 15 years that doesn't have a box of chocolates or Tim Hortons iced coffee or some other sweet treat in the pic as well. :)
When I was a kid I'd go visit and stay with her for a week or two and we'd eat biscuits and molasses. She said that I was a "good biscuit eater" high praise indeed. I think she liked that I truly appreciated the awesomeness of a homemade biscuit with butter and molasses. :)
So on this one night, not too long after her funeral, we go to a local health food grocery store and I spy, from my position in the check out line a small sign in one of the food aisles that says "Chocolate bars .25"
I think I was moving across the room before I even made the conscious decision to do so, cause come on, chocolate and .25, couldn't have been any more clear to me what I should do if a giant beam of golden light had crashed through the ceiling illuminating the sale with the voice of God or that guy who does the movie trailer voice overs booming
"CHEAP CHOCOLATE!"
So I grabbed a bar, and scurried back into line. The cashier glances at us as he rings it through and goes on to explain that this bar is ridiculously marked down, that's it's retail price is THREE DOLLARS a bar and that the store received a shipment by mistake and so somehow that equates to them selling them for dirt cheap.
We go out to the car, bar in hand, not lost in the bags of groceries, start heading home with hunks of dark chocolate studded with crispy crunchy real cacao nibs through it in our mouths and realize. "Holy crap this is freaking good!" Like I can't believe I walked away with only one bar good. We do some hasty math in the dim interior of the car, add up the savings and figure out that, on sale like this, it's half the price of the bulk dark chocolate we get there.
We did what any normal person would do, circled the block and tried not to run down any pedestrians as we rushed back into the store, hearts thudding because maybe some other lucky smhuck figured out before we did that sales like that don't happen very often.
Success, I won't leave you hanging. We had success, 15 bars of chocolate left! We paid a total of 4.00 for 48.00 worth of chocolate! And once more the cashier, a different one this time, commented on how good a deal this was, how the store got the chocolate by accident and they were just selling it off at 1/12th the price.
Yay for cheap thrills in any form!
When we got home, mouth still savoring marked down chocolate, I checked the mailbox and there was a card inside. We headed up to the house, unloaded groceries onto the kitchen counter as I puzzled over it. Addressed to me from a Reverend in Nova Scotia. I suspected some sort of sympathy card about my Grandmother's recent passing but I didn't expect the envelope for the last letter I'd sent her to come falling out when I opened it up.
See what I mean?
October tried to sucker punch me.
I set the papers down and turned away for a much needed hug from my husband, already sniffling, I decided to just put the card and envelope away until a less emotional time and do something a little less mentally taxing like putting milk in the fridge.
Then...there was a moment.
Not a chorus of angels, light blasting, voices from beyond the grave sort of moment BUT a moment none the less. The card and envelope I'd unknowingly set upon our awesome and unexpected chocolate boon. It suddenly seemed funny, like snort and snicker so hard it blew away the grey fog of grief sort of funny. What were the odds? Getting all that chocolate and then the envelope I'd sent my Grandmother... It felt like she was saying hi.....she got the message...maybe. It felt good.
I don't know for sure if the other side can arrange mega awesome chocolate sales, I don't know if such things as the timing of checking the mail and shopping can be synchronized....but I do know that chocolate tasted ever so much sweeter with a hint of paranormal about it. Just the possibility made me smile and my heart lighter, mind clearer.
And whether she arranged it or not I do know for damn sure Grandma Prest would appreciate my treasure trove of 48.00 worth of fancy chocolate for the low low price of 4.00, almost as much as she'd appreciate the chocolate yumminess itself.


We watch our fair share of paranormal shows, Ghost Hunters and reality shows with psychics and mediums. A common thread that seems to run through is that if there is an "other side" that communication might not always be a direct, clear, scientifically proven event. That usually the communication is very personal and specific to the deceased and person getting it. That it's something meaningful to the recipient, like an amazing deal on chocolate and my Grandmother's envelope I sent making it's way back to me via a third party who I don't even know. :)
What I mean is that maybe the chocolate is only paranormal for me, and that's ok....I'm the one eating it.

Eh!

It had been 8 years since I'd walked through that particular patch of woody area and I was a little annoyed.
The trees had grown while I was gone, the path, worn by my very own feet, had been reclaimed by grass and roots. Branches had the sheer audacity to block the way! Mother nature made no bones about who was in charge. I may have had delightful, unrestricted access, to that area for a large part of my childhood, but it was never really mine. Life's a bitch, eh.
Briefly I contemplated a face off with ol' Mother Nature, just to show her I was no pushover, even after years away from that particular patch of woods.
I was being woodswomanly you see, showing off my Nova Scotia outdoorsy type skills that are put to little use in Southern California. If you get lost down here it's most likely in a parking lot and if you hug a tree the palm police will haul you away for molesting a trunk in public.
On our recent Nova Scotia trip I happily led my husband through the knee high weeds and skeletal branches, still bare of spring's green. Trudging through a path that was now more memory than trail. Pointing out fascinating things like pine cones and thorns and swamp grass and birch bark and keeping a sharp eye peeled for spruce gum because every one should get to chew it at least once in their life. But just traveling along the path unscathed, unscratched was demanding enough, my bout with Mother Nature would have to wait.
Tempting though it was to voice my disapproval to her, I just smiled, politely, and batted branches out of my face, giving up on the idea of arguing this overgrown path nonsense and forged ahead.
Keeping a careful but cautious grip on my burr ball.
When planning our trip home we made lists. Things to do to prepare for the trip, things to take on the trip and things to do ON the trip. The third list was my favorite as it involved mostly Canadian foods. Ah Caramels, Tim Horton's coffee, Coffee Crisps, Wunder Bars, A&W poutine, and pizza donairs...let me just say that last one again. PIZZA DONAIRS.
But smack dab in the middle of the list was make a burr ball from the prickly little clingy balls that grow on the weedy burdocks plants all around the property where my Mom lives.
Let me just say that as far as lists go, you can considered that one dominated. I kicked list ass. I stuffed myself on every thing I had planned to and to top it all off, I made that burdock ball! It was a work of burdock art. My husband gamely trudged along with me as I sussed out dried brown little prickly things from the weeds, calling out "I found some more! And more, ohhhhh MORE over here!!!!"
When we were kids my brothers and I would gather burdocks, sometimes even voluntarily. It was not unusual to come in from the bushes with the little buggers clinging all over our pant legs and socks, making a mess of our shoe laces. Alan said he's had similar but less enjoyable experiences when he was a child with things he almost dare not speak of aloud because they are THAT evil.
Foxtails....ohhhhh.
Apparently as clingy as burdocks but more evil and in absolutely no way fun. But burdocks are cool, the most fun was had gathering them on purpose and sticking them together to make a MEGA BURR BALL.
Why? Well....we were kids, we lived in the country, did we really need a reason why? And if we do then I'll admit we may have thrown them at each other. Burr balls are the warmer weather equivalent of snow balls, plus they stick.
Apparently Fox tails can't be made in to a mega foxtail ball, apparently they just stab your socks and itch your skin and annoy the heck out of you when all you tried to do was take a shortcut home from school across a hill and you end up with stickers in your ankles and a pocketful of regret and a lifelong loathing for a weed you'd as soon obliterate from the planet as ever have to see it again.
Umm, but look husband. BURRS, round, cute, NOT evil!
It was a lovely moment in life for me, introducing my husband to non-evil stickery burrs, dragging him through the wild rose bushes, under the birch trees, through the dense fir tree branches and into the little swampy clearing I remembered so well, burr ball in hand.
I was like a tour guide, the spiel spilling out of me un-bidden.
"And over there is where the pitcher plant is, back there is where mushrooms grew, down there is where the stream is, up there is the tree I climbed, that hill over yonder was a good leaf sliding hill, these denser weed lumps are for standing on, the best moss is over that away, these trees grow berries and did you see the burr ball I made?"
A satisfying, free verse sort of description of my childhood that I was finally able to show my husband in person. I mean one can only describe the apple tree one used to sit in and chuck apples from into a bucket for the pigs for so long. Eventually one needs to drag one's husband through the field and point at it and say "THERE it is!" Then one wonders if said apple tree could still hold one's weight, plus one's husband's weight....
After making it through the overgrown bit of woods that once was a path I was pleased I hadn't picked a fight with Mother Nature after all. She's a strange sort of woman she is. So much had changed and yet so much hadn't. The natural playground beneath the trees where a tiny stream traveled was exactly the same. The trees in the area have always been tall enough to provide a natural sort of branch roof. The ground below a wide open place to play with smooth tree trunks like the pillars of a woodsy palace. 8 years later it looked the same. Now I have to wonder if Mother Nature was really blocking the path or just hugging the little area tight, protecting it with bushy arms and tangled limbs.
I took a few moments to bond with her, flinging myself on to a tree branch, whispered soft apologies to the lichens that clung there.
I think she heard me.
It was a wonderful trip, power packed.

(Tim Hortons is the lifeblood of Pictou County, Nova Scotia!)

A chaotic whirlwind of coffee, friends, coffee, family and more coffee, interspersed with perfect little pockets of nature. Deer sightings, river visits and trips down memory lane. The only down side was I forgot to throw..er...I mean GIVE my MEGA BURR BALL to my brother. The upside is I did remember, just barely, to take it out of my pocket before going through security at the airport.
Though I have to admit I am curious as to what customs would have thought of it. You can just never tell by looking at a person if they are a secret mega burr ball lover or not.