Artificial Intelligence

Does the middle piece of your 3 part artificial Christmas tree piss you off as much as mine does me? Being all holier than thou, thinking it's the glue that holds my holiday fun together.... I tell you, after the first few years of fake tree bliss the honey moon period wears off and that middle tree piece just becomes annoying.
You start to notice things, like how it's so much more smug than the top and bottom pieces, how it acts superior every Christmas you haul it out and place it on the bottom piece, crowning it with the wee top. It acts like it invented Christmas and that I should give it more ornaments because it's easier to reach than the top and bottom.
Fret no more, your free loading, hate fueled by fake fir, middle tree piece days are OVER.
Say goodbye...to the jam in a tree sandwich, where in the top and bottom pieces are the bread and the middle is the jam and what I'm saying is you don't NEED THE JAM.
Hear that sound?
The sound of boo-hooing from the garage where the middle piece lays abandoned on the cold cement floor? Well ignore those tears, they're as fake as the whole tree.
I give to you, the world at large or at least the percent that uses the internet and wanders into my neck of the virtual woods..... the NEW look for your same artificial tree. If your tree doesn't have 3 pieces....well.......look on the bright side, no smug, superiority complex pieces for you to deal with.
I've been kicking around this idea for a while, sometimes hearing it rattle back to the forefront of my mind, squeezing it's way between clay character ideas, thoughts about coffee and world domination. (Ignore that last one, it's rather un-holiday-esque to admit to things like wanting world domination instead of peace)
This year my idea become a reality!
We left out the aforementioned and verbally bashed middle section of the tree. We did need to do a little creative finagling because the top piece didn't actually connect to the bottom piece all stable and perfect like. (It's as if the artificial tree craftsman don't WANT you to play with your tree like it's a really scratchy set of building blocks)
Not wanting to deal with yelling "Timber" if the top piece fell off, we found a sturdy bit of cardboard tube we'd saved, because of course we save cardboard tubes. It's an unwritten rule of life. Every one saves cardboard tubes and makes fun of each other behind their backs. This is one of those reaaaaaaaalllly sturdy sort, ultra thick. We cut a piece that fit over the bottom section of tree pipe..er...trunk...and also over the trunk of the top piece. It needed a little stuffing of tissue paper to create a perfect tight fit, but Voila! My new tree jam!
Since the cardboard tube wasn't working for me, decoratively speaking, I took a piece of artificial garland and wrapped around it.
Now you can't even tell anything is different! You can applaud if you want, I'd clap too if I weren't busy typing.
Fluff your tree as usual, connect the lights and go on about your holiday making with a brand new look for your same ol' fake tree!
I LOVE this look! We set our tree up on a stand we have in the living room to provide some of the height lost because we left the snooty middle piece out. The NEW tree look is more natural, less perfectly pruned and conical, more like the kind of Christmas tree you find in the wild. I like wild. I like my tree and maybe some year when I'm ready for a taller more traditional shaped tree maybe I'll even like my middle piece again. Maybe.

How to make September go by so fast........

......your neck will hurt for at least a week from trying to catch a glimpse of the school flavored month as it whizzed by your head.

Calendars are to avoided at all costs, it's the only way to truly make time pass at alarming speeds. It's the same principal as not staring at the clock so that it appears the hand jumped from 10 to 3 and oh boy it's snack time again! Only this is more fun because whole weeks will dissolve in a blur, punctuated by annoying things like dentist appointments and season premieres.

If you can flip your schedule so that you get up at 4 in the afternoon for a few weeks straight, great! You're on the right track. I always say if it's good enough for the Alaskans it's good enough for me. (Days without sunshine..and salmon**.)

It's funny too how much time will pass whilst you're busy elsewhere wrestling with the aforementioned schedule. Nothing spells fun like scheduling a 10 am dentist appointment when you've been currently going to bed around the vicinity of 7 am. We take great satisfaction in doing the math a week ahead of time before an appointment to see how far the schedule needs to move, forwards or backwards, to match up with a hard set time. It's like life becomes a game, one that draws upon all my rusty math skills from high school pre-cal classes from days gone by.

Speaking of which, reminiscing when you should be trying to go to bed so you can make yourself get up and go get your teeth poked is another excellent time passer. Pre-Cal class is forever burned into my brain, and I said as much in my Facebook status, so you just know I'm speaking the truth. To this day if I have a stress dream it's usually about being late for that math class, or worse yet being back at school and not knowing what class I have next but feeling the sinking sensation of teenage dread that it might be Pre-Cal. I'm gonna say it, that teacher was a genius. He never yelled, he was just the master of looking like he might tear your head off if you came to class 20 seconds late. I always secretly imagined that the other teachers were uber jealous of him because of this power he wielded.

After a leisurely stroll down memory lane I tripped on a rock and found out I hadn't remembered the teacher's name correctly which spurred a whole new brain rattling session to see if I could shake loose the cobwebs that were starting to gather and form sticky barriers between present me and past me.

I need a doppelganger. I would even settle for a machine that would let me borrow my past self from my past and bring her to the future. After showing off my ipod touch which is way cooler than the Star Trek Next Generation tricorder she owns (which only flashes lights and makes woowoowoowoo noises and is 10 times the size of an ipod touch) I'd put her to work making some of the things I have ideas for but haven't made yet. I want to say I haven't made them yet because I haven't had time what with all the memory lane walking, teeth poking and schedule flipping but I read once time is an illusion as is the feeling we don't have enough. So I won't say that. I will say though it's funny how it keeps passing, it's not that there's not enough time, there's not enough ME!

My husband once dreamt that there were two of me. Before your minds go all 21st century kinky, he said that the other me was evil. That I smiled freaky and moved like a snake. So maybe that's an omen, no doppelgangers for me, from the past or otherwise because those scenarios never work out good and the last thing I need is to find myself locked in my garage whilst my other self plays it off like she's this self and tries to steal my husband.

Doppelganger are like zombies, it's not enough to recognize the dangers, you've got to have an emergency plan for fending off the living dead right down to tools set aside for the specific purpose of removing the staircases that lead to our second floor patio where we live, should the day arrive the dead rise.

Zombies made September flip by surprisingly fast as well, which is funny you'd think immersing yourself in a Zombie world for a few days would mean that at the most September would shamble by with occasional lurches and free falls. Nope, not the case.

It's not my fault we dedicated 12 plus hours to a Zombies board game. It's the internet's. Internet showed me a photo of a Zombies!!! game in progress and I was immediately struck with 2 parts jealousy and 1 part enlightenment. There are zombie board games? This I did not know, but after several hours of intensive internet research, first narrowing down which zombie board game I wanted and then where to buy it I found myself once again zipping and slipping through time. A few days later my back hurt from hunching over the hoarde of zombies on our kitchen table as my husband and I battled it out to see who would survive the un-dead.
Handling all the itsy bitsy teeny weenie absolutely adorable zombies made me have strong, almost over powering, urges to customize them with paint jobs etc. A crafter/artist/possible doppelganger has to watch out for sudden attacks of insane creativity. I'm not saying that one of these days won't find me hunched over an itsy bitsy teeny weenie absolutely adorable zombie giving it, ironically, more life by adding some blood and stuff to it's undead guts, but now is not the time. Now IS the time for filling our virtual store shelves with all kinds of goodies for lovely customers to purchase. I have had many a chat with myself, my inner brain self not doppelganger self, about the calendar and the proximity of holidays like Halloween and Christmas and that the time to create for those specific dates draws ever nearer.

So September was spent creating things. A lot of things, and dipping my toes into each of the worlds that emerges with a new character. Whether it's a spooky jack-o-lantern or a perky penguin.
I just finally looked at the calendar and lo it was October, and my hair is still settling from the breeze of September swishing by.

October in California is odd. It's hot, like a grumpy summer, but my calendar listens to no arguments about slowing down, or even pausing time until the heat passes and I can play Autumn with crackle logs and Apple crisps. It cares not that September 09 is now forever just a blurry memory. If it were not for the evidence of a fairly productive month I might even wonder if it happened at all....

** I would like to specify that I did not mean days without salmon, but actually that I always imagine Alaskans to have a lot of salmon and I like salmon and so if it's good enough for them to have a lot of it then by golly it's good enough for me.

Floss-ophy

Ya gotta look at the little picture.
If you look too hard and too long at the big picture of life you'll just develop a twitch along side an overwhelming urge to hide under the bed. And I could do it too. Ever since I got those bed risers that lift the bed another half foot off the floor I've been very aware of how easy it is to crawl under there and just...chill....be at one with the dust bunnies and lost cat toys and ouiji board (cause every one has one of those under their bed right?)
The idea behind bed risers is more storage space, the un-spoken underlying idea that they don't mention in those commercials and Bed Bath and Beyond flyers is that the storage is for you!
When you look too hard at the big picture of life and sensory overload is imminent, the dark and dusty and surprisingly cool coffin like confines of the under-the-bed-ness is just a belly crawl away. Waiting like a secret hug from your furniture. Ahhhh...
Luckily my husband doesn't find me under there too often, striped socks peeking from under the bed skirt giving away my position as I hum and contemplate putting glow in the dark stars under our box spring to complete that *drifting in the dark void of space* feeling that relaxing under the bed offers.
I can avoid that *hide from the world and all it's annoying problems* feeling by deliberately NOT looking at the big picture. Instead I narrow my vision until I'm practically microscopic eyes woman and look at something small. Something manageable.
The earth could spin off it's access, spewing it's excessive piles of non-recyclable garbage out into space like a great vomiting orb of humanity infested planetoid that it is and I'd be ok, because I'd be there relaxing under my bed marveling at the ingeniousness of my tooth flosser. (I like how I felt compelled to specify TOOTH flosser as if I flossed other things and didn't want there to be any confusion as to what sort of flosser I was speaking of)
I try not to incur the wrath of my dentist. No one can lay a guilt trip on you faster than
1) a Mom,
2) any puppy from any animal shelter commercial and
3) your dentist.
Mine suggested I floss more and I agreed, what with him having shiny, sharp, pointed objects in my mouth at the time of the afore mentioned suggestion. Also, annoying mouth maintenance chores like flossing are less annoying after you're grown up and have already sunk thousands of dollars into your mouth in tooth repair. *gulp* If there's anything I would do with a time machine it's go back in time and slap the crap outta me for not flossing when I was 6.
BUT I am pleased to say 31 year old me needs no slapping!
I've been very diligent and with the use of these little clip on to a handle type disposable, pre threaded floss dealies was actually getting the hang of every day flossing with out it being a 4 hour event that ended with me cutting off the circulation in my finger tips from knotted and tangled floss. Let me just state that only people with giant mouths and little hands can floss their teeth easily and un-painfully with JUST floss. So, hence the need for a flosser doo-hickey and of course as I started using those little plastic doohickies that clipped into the handle I started feeling the weight of them on my conscience as I threw them away. As a crafter there's only so many things I can save to reuse and make arty stuff out of and I draw the line at used tooth flossers.
They're so small, just a little "C" shaped bit of plastic with floss threaded between but those little bits of plastic add up. Sure there are oil spills and toxic waste dumps and Styrofoam everything littering endless miles of road in North America, there's plastic bags clinging to tree branches like alien flowers, there's massive piles of STUFF every where that needs addressed or else it'll choke us off this planet in another few generations but....I can't always think about the BIG picture or else I'll need a little recuperation time under the bed again.
But the little picture, totally doable. I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna pull out a tired phrase and use it one more time and squeeze out every last bit of usability from it, I make the LITTLE picture my beeeeeotch.
I decided to put my foot down and refuse to believe that my only tooth flossing options were disposable flossers that I could actually use without cutting my lips and pinching my fingers OR just regular floss that meant I had to start playing favorites with my teeth, no attention for you molars. No!
This is why the internet is my best friend. Like seriously don't ask me to start rating family and friends and the internet in my life because the top 2 positions would create world war 3 and some shunning the likes of which the world has never seen. But suffice it to say I think of an idea, a product and I ask my bestest non-carbon based friend if such a thing exists and it tells me YESSSSSSS. (I should say I feel sort of guilty at the amount of love and slobberly attention I bestow upon my monitor because I know in my heart of hearts it's not actually responsible for all the awesomeness it displays. But my computer is all tied up inside and behind the monitor and what am I supposed to do? Tell the screen this hug isn't for you, pass it along? You're beginning to see the allure of the underside of my bed now aren't you?)
But as I was saying I found it. The holy grail of teeth flossing........*insert respectful moment of silence here*.....a RE-THREADABLE FLOSSER!
A plastic handle that should in theory last for fricking ever, probably longer than human teeth actually, and it can be threaded and unthreaded and it's soooooo easy to use that it causes a person to make inappropriate sounds of pleasure from performing the most hated of dental chores.
Now of course the only thing I need to do is look a little harder at my floss because I have heard tell there are eco-friendly options available for it too. Sweet. I can not fix the world but I can fix my negative impact upon it. One itty bitty bit of dental waste at a time.
Today is a good day, definitely a nap on top of the bed and not under it sort of day thanks to my new Flossaid Dental Floss Holder!

The blog post that has nothing to do with babies.

(Our plastic child can sit on the floor keeping company with lighters, tequila, knives, credit cards, car keys, lasers, bleach, candy, pure sugar, razors, scissors, rock music with swear words, prescription meds, a hammer, dangerous reading material among other things and.....nothing. Plastic children are safe, predictable, if not a little boring, and will never cause any trouble. Plus I can decoupage her if I get the urge.)

Hey I'm all for not having the human race dying out but....holy moly there's a lotta babies popping up..er..out...around the blog world lately.
I think it's actually some sort of mini baby boom and we should all satisfy our voyeuristic tendencies by counting backwards 9 months or so to see what was so baby making fantastic back then. I could be wrong but I am gonna guess that all the baby making madness occurred during that dry spell that happens between the seasons of good tv viewing.
That little window of time when one block of shows has their season finales and the next block of premieres doesn't start for 3 weeks. There's nothing on tv, sooooooo a whole new generation of little humans was created. I am secretly going to call all children conceived during this time period "Re-run-lings" in my head.
Do not get me wrong, kids are great (at a comfortable non birthed from me distance) and like I said some one needs to keep the human race going but I feel a little superior at times cause NAHHH NAHHHH aint gonna be me. I'll be sipping Margaritas with the only kids I need. Fuzzy four legged ones that can only sass back in "Meow" language. (Okie, now that was just bragging. And everyone knows the unspoken rule that you can't diss the *beauty and wonder* that is creating life nor can you extoll too much the benefits of forgoing the *beauty and wonder* of creating new life because it'll make all the new Mama's jealous.)
We are not going to have kids.
And there are not many things about that decision I could regret except maybe the mini sandwiches that baby mamas get at baby showers. You can't convince me there aren't a few women out there who got knocked up just for the wee tuna on whole wheat cut in to tiny triangles. Those sandwiches alone are what got me through many a relative's baby shower. Those tiny little minuscule bready delights stuffed with cheddar and ham are what lured to me to neighbor after neighbor's baby shower where we sat around with strangers playing weird games (and not Nintendo based ones) whilst waiting for the food to be unveiled. Those sandwiches alone are also what my Mother hauls out of her Mama torture bag of tricks and takes photos of at all the Canadian based baby showers I can't attend so I can see the sandwich nirvana I'm missing.

(evidence of torture by own Mother, plate after plate of beautiful teeny tiny sandwiches that I can't have)

She's no fool and we've got a good thing. I thrust plastic grandchildren in her face and she tortures me with miniscule food. It's a fair trade.
There's a lot of reasons FOR having kids. Someone to work the farm when you're old and grey..er..or keep you company in your golden years and love and affection etc. BUT in all fairness there's a lot of reasons NOT to.
I couldn't begin to list them all, and I am sure for every one I have, there's a Mama out there who needs no argument against any of my reasons other than the sweet and pure love that only a child can bring. I don't think one decision is really better than other EXCEPT one is better than the other for ME. :)

Reason number 382 why we are not having children.
The *pretend* child we have, aka the only grandchild the folks can expect from us, was given a lovely hair cut the other night. You see I was in the middle of creating the un-dead and realized I didn't have the right shade of blonde hair in my craft supplies. So I fetched our darling plastic daughter that we keep stored in the closet and only bring out at Christmas (reason number 291: storing your children in the closet is probably a no-no) and with hardly any hesitation hacked off a long hank of blonde hair...muah ahh ahh. If there's no rule about butchering your children's hair for making zombies then there ought to be.

Reason number 4587 not to have children. I've never been good at sharing. Seriously, the new Nintendo Wii game.....lets say I could even afford the new game..or the Wii system AFTER all the expense of creating a human being there's no way in hell I could sit idly by and let some one else beat the new Zelda game before me. That's not mean...that's honesty right there. Also, I'm pretty sure there's some Motherhood rule that says parents shouldn't devote 50 plus hours of gameplay to the new Zelda game if they have children...something about matches and cleaners and world domination...I dunno for sure I was only half listening to that parental lecture cause I was distracted by how many rupees I'd collected.

Reason number 784 not to have children. Schedules. Holy fricking Hannah it would seem the entire freaking universe lives by the clock..EXCEPT my sweetie and I. Our schedule slowly rotates around the clock, Slowly pushing further a little later every night, sleep a little later every day. We have no set pattern. Just when you think we are getting up at midnight we're actually getting up at 4 am, or 4 pm. I am thinking kids and a schedule like that don't mesh.... I have heard rumors about the youngins needing stuff like sunlight.....

Reason number 32, I hated school, or at least large chunks of it. I can't imagine creating a human and then sending them off to the very institution I so very much un-enjoyed...and as for home schooling..um, did I not mention the 50 plus hours of game play? Plus margaritas. How many margaritas do parents get? Pbbbt, suckkkkas, y'all work on long division, my hubby and I are gonna make brownies, eat half the pan and then do dangerous things with a lighter we can leave laying out in the open because our cats have no interest in playing with it....muahh ahh ahh.

(Dangerous things we can leave in the middle of the living room floor forever and always should we desire because we don't have children. I'm not saying it's the BEST perk of opting to go childless...but it's definitely one of the more interesting ones.)

Reason number 7, adults who said "Oh you'll change your mind some day" with that knowing smirk on their face as if they knew for damn sure a switch would go off when a woman hits 30 and she will wanna help increase the earth's population. It's almost worth it for that alone. Sort of an "in your face" rebellion, ha HA no grandkids for you!

Reason number 9876. The other day we stepped out on to the patio to stare at the lovely, artistic billows of smoke from the fire way off yonder at the military base. Of course we wanted to snap a photo and of course I ended up flailing my arms and smacking a 500 dollar camera out of my husband's hands to bounce off of the house and onto the patio floor........ I fear children. If I could manage to do that on accident to a tiny camera.....a full size kid? Yikes. I'm pretty sure they're worth more than 500 dollars....

Reason number 17, We don't need to make any kids. The friends and relatives are doing a fine job of it on their own. Producing such wonderful little persons that one could not even hope to compete. (But lets see em produce a pair of cats who can occasionally tolerate each other long enough to bump noses though! Now there's a feat!)

Reason number 865, Babies don't use litter boxes. So far as I know.

I fully realize the Universe is gonna punish me for even thinking up such a list by making me have 19 kids in my next life time. Most likely all of which I'll name variations on the theme of Mario and Zelda. It'll be little Links and Luigis running all over the place and I'll be bewildered why such names appealed to me. The Universe is just sneaky enough to do such a thing. In the mean time I'll baby my cats and make my OWN little sandwiches. It's not just Mamas-to-be who can cut a square into 4 triangles ya know.

Disclaimer: Children are wonderful. I am very happy for all the proud parents out there, but I am happy and proud of our un-parentage as well.
To each their own.

We Zoo-ed!

Recently Alan and I made use of our zoo memberships. For a long while they were doing a pretty awesome job of just taking up space in our wallet. A handy little guilt trip was triggered every time when went to the store. And since we need food to survive, we go to the store at least once a week and therefore suffered the agonies of guilt as we opened the wallet to pay and a little panda bear face peered back at us over the leather/pleather/whatever material the wallet is made of, pocket.
"We should go sometime." Alan would say.
I'd sigh and stare down into the wallet at our memberships, my own Mother should be so good at making me feel that guilty.
"Yes we should, sometime." And then we'd close the wallet and munch our way through the groceries, happily making shots of chocolate and whatnot, while the whole time the cards languished in the wallet unused, forgotten....until the next store trip.
I am not sure where the time goes, I don't understand how it gets eaten up so fast, but half a year can flip by easily and the downhill slide towards the holidays starts happening. Time picks up even more speed as we cross the halfway mark of July and if it was hard to "find the time" to do something in the first 6 months of the year then it's damn near impossible in the last 6 months.
But the other day a wonderful thing happened. A pocket of time just unfolded in front of us like a gift from the Universe. The couple whose schedule continually rotates around the clock found themselves up and about starting their day at 4 in the morning. By 10:00 am they were done of all the things that HAD to be done for the day. The pocket of time was so perfect and beautiful, a week day moment of early day time with which to do ANYTHING, it left us staggered. So many possibilities.
"We could go to the hardware store!"
No, no, we had to think bigger, this window of time felt bigger than a trip to the hardware store. This was bigger than trying espresso at a local coffee shop we'd never been to, better than a movie outing at the theater. The flavor of this pocket of time came to us after we chewed it over for a moment. Almost in awe of it's perfectness, feeling a little clutch of panic chasing on it's heels as the longer we thought about what to do the more of that perfect time ticked away.
It was Alan who dared speak the words into the hush of the car. "We could go to the zoo......."
The zoo?
You mean, not just let the plastic membership cards remain as place holders in our wallet, not just let them be little guilty reminders that we paid money for something we hadn't used yet this year? Could we? Should we?
Hell yeah we should could and would. We were rebels we were. We snatched that hunk of time by the throat and told it what we were going to do. We were going to see adorable wild animals in the confines of pretty man made cages and we were going to do it today and give those cards the shock of their life when they were exposed to day light for the first time.
So we went to the zoo.
Out of curiosity before I picked out some of the 340 plus photos I took that day to share on my blog I did a quick look on Google, doing an image search using the keywords "San Diego Zoo". The results were 1,480,000.
That's a lot of photos of the San Diego Zoo......so here are a few more. If you look hard you can virtually see my few contributions teetering on the top of the internet pile of photos.
I am always of the opinion more is more better. If one photo of a Koala bear is cute than half a million oughtta be down right heart achingly adorable. This is a fact. Perhaps not scientifically proven yet but just look at people with kids. Have you ever seen a proud Mama take ONE photo of their precious little human? Of course not, more is better. And that's my reasoning behind 29 separate photos of the Koala bears alone.
Finally getting to the zoo was very satisfying. We spent about 5 hours there and I only got sun burned a little. But that's good news, that's the hallmark of a good tourist, sun burn and camera permanently attached to one's hand. Constantly staring at the world through a lens rather than just your eyes. Gulping down water and ignoring the cries of our feet calling out "Mercy! Mercy." A little sweat, a lot of pointing and a ton fun, we were excellent zoo tourists.
The giraffes were my favorite part. I had no idea as I walked around a little turn in the path and spied the long necked giraffes in the distance that nothing was separating me and them but a little fence and a ditch.
Even though there were no signs expressly forbidding jumping the fence and hopping the ditch to fling one's arms around the legs of the most beeeeeeautiful giraffes in the world I suspected that it would be frowned upon. I probably have permanent fence stomach now from leaning so hard over the rail to be as close to the giraffes as possible. Luckily Alan is very good at keeping me balanced, in more ways than one.
I took a lot of photos of the giraffes as well, in fact 40 photos of the giraffes alone.
On occasion I love math. I like knowing that if I took 29 photos of Koalas and 40 photos of giraffes than that means I can mathematically prove that I love giraffes 37.93% more than Koalas.
That sounds about right to me.

Melt

(This photo is here solely so you know this blog post has a happy ending. Consider it a spoiler.)

The existence of hot chocolate has always bothered me.
The premise is simple really, drinkable chocolate, and I am all over that like melted candy bar on my face after a gluttonous binge of untold levels of sugary decadence. But hot chocolate is a promise that isn't kept.
Maybe the wrong people are promising me though. Maybe if it was, say, Willy Wonka and not a hometown diner, offering up the promised delights of hot chocolate, it would live up to it's name. But so far it's been nothing. A dark, vaguely chocolate related, steaming hot mug of nothing.
I take my sweet treats seriously. VERY seriously. I have to battle away tears if I ladle hot fudge sauce onto ice cream and there is ANY delay in me enjoying that dessert immediately, before the warm gooey sauce to cold ice cream temperature window of good eatin' opportunity closes. Should anything delay me and the ice cream turns soupy and the fudge sauce is in turn diluted by the ice cream I am in untold agonies. I mean, don't get me wrong I'll still eat it, but mourning the lost perfection of what could have been the most amazing sundae ever the whole time I shovel it into my mouth. Plus every one knows tears and ice cream don't mix, it messes up the salt ratio.
So hot chocolate disappoints me. To the point where I shun it's existence. No longer being duped by decadent descriptions on menus and packages claiming dark, creamy chocolate heaven in a cup. HA! Ha, I say!
When I was a kid and given the choice of a beverage at a restaurant of course I'm going to order hot chocolate. When you're a kid your memory banks work differently. The part of your brain that controls the desire for sweetness overrides any bad experiences one might have had previously with watered down boiling hot brown water passing itself off as hot chocolate. It clobbers the rational side of the brain and grabs the grey lump that is chocolate desire and whispers sweet nothings in it's non-existent brain ear about the promise of how goooood the hot chocolate will be, much better than stinky ol' orange juice. I love a good orange but even as a kid, side by side, orange or chocolate? HA, again HA! Like there's even a choice?
But hot chocolate has broken my heart so many times that even the ever hopeful, puppy-dog-like, resilient, sweet treat lovin' part of my brain has at last learned it's lesson. We turned our backs on it, sneering at it on menus. It was deleted from our top foods menu of the mind and was never heard from again. We shoved hot chocolate so far away in side our brains that we almost forgot about it's pale unflavored existence, accidently making it on occasional hoping....hoping.....*sigh*
Do not weep for me though. I have had a break through.
Hot chocolate.
Hot chocolate and I have been reunited, we have done things to work on our relationship. It's become better quality chocolate now, none of this dried processed powdered stuff, and I have learned to treat it with a delicacy and restraint that can only come from experience and age. It's delivered a velvety rich chocolate experience that enrobes each one of my taste buds individually in warm luscious chocolate and I have come to accept that proper hot chocolate doesn't come in a mug. It comes in a shot glass.
I think that's what was wrong in our relationship all those years. I wanted hot chocolate to physically be more than it could be and fill a whole mug to boot.
How could chocolate have ever hoped to live up to that sort of selfish demand? How could it have turned a mug of warm water or milk into pure warm chocolate? It was spread too thin. Once I realized that the only way to have a decent hot chocolate was to give up my greedy notions of a Willy Wonka-esque type never ending river of decadence, harmony returned. Though in all honesty harmony was actually ACHIEVED as both hot chocolate and I can freely admit now, from the happy comforts of our newly renewed relationship, that what we had in the past was NEVER harmonious.
But, as I said that's in the past.
Because I know there are others out there who may have suffered similar torments as a child, being handed steaming mugs of brown liquid that broke our hearts more then quench our taste buds I shall share the secret to perfect hot chocolate.
It's not a measuring thing but a common sense thing.
Take a hunk of dark, good quality chocolate. The size of which you'd actually sit down and nibble on in one go. Be honest with yourself, it's gonna be a decent sized hunk. Now double it, after all hot chocolate is better if you share it with your sweetie. (see how much I've grown, when I was a kid I'd have been all "sweetie shmeetie, it's all MINE MINE MINE!")
Now break it up on a plate into smaller hunks with a knife.
Transfer these to a pot. Turn the burner on but keep it medium.
Let the chocolate melt slowly, stir it and as it's melting add a small splash of coffee liqueur and a dollop of organic milk. Not enough to dilute the chocolate to the watery stuff of hot chocolate by gone days, but just enough to thin it so that it pours and can be sipped before it re-solidifies into hard chocolate.
Now having stirred it into a gorgeously dark, creamy smooth, mouth wateringly perfect hot chocolate, prepare a plate of necessary side flavor essentials like fresh raspberries, lady fingers, cocoa beans and MORE chocolate if you're feeling ultra decadent.
Pour the liquid glory into the shot glasses and enjoy.
The shot glasses are the perfect size to fool the brain into thinking it's getting a whole glass full, plus they're pretty and the smooth column of warm chocolate between the fingers just adds to the whole experience.
Be prepared to jam your fingers down in the glass to wipe out every last chocolate drip.
I considered serving the chocolate on a plate for better lickability but I do draw the line. I am a lady, I have manners. There'll be no chocolate plate licking here, just finger licking and shot glass slurping, thank-you very much.

Ma poubelle

We have some kind of luck.
OR, as I prefer to think of it, we have some kind of strange guardian something or other floating about like a very specific skilled wish granter. Ask for a million dollars? Nothing doing. Ask for a piece of electronics to fix itself after being broken for several months, poof. Granted.
World peace? HA! It laughs in our faces. Have a mugger return a stolen wallet? Sure thing.
To clarify though, I have been reaping the benefits of said ghostly wish granter/protective spirit of odd and un-related things only through marriage. I certainly never had such luck. I really only get to stand under the umbrella of weird protection with my husband.
It's his eyeglasses who go missing in Maine and given up for loss only to be found, after miles of driving, hanging undamaged outside the car door. I don't mind that it's not personally my guardian object angel, marriage does have it's fringe benefits besides the hottie blue husband. :)
It's good to lead gently into one's chaotic thought process with illustrative descriptive mental images of a ghostly character hovering about our old printer. It's a good fake out for what's really on my mind.
Trash cans.
Again.
I either have a fetish, am very trash conscious or need to get out more and expand my horizons. A fourth and more creative option would be to start a whole new blog, Trash Talk, but I am fearful of the sort of readers one might draw near with a title like that.
The connection between a strange aura around our possessions and my trash cans is this. After several cans went missing, presumably stolen...one came back.
After more than a year one of our trash cans turned up at the bottom of our drive way and I am tickled pink, green and a light shade of iridescent blue.
The guardian has struck again.
The questions that bombarded my mind after seeing our lonely little bin we purchased from Lowes, sitting down by the mailboxes, almost left me speechless. Almost.
"What the..? Seriously? Look! LOOK! It's our bin! Is it? How..huh? I...er....."
These questions were just my brain's way of trying to process an almost impossible situation. Our stolen bin had come back. It did not have the look of a plastic trash can possessed by a sentient spirit so I assume the bin thieves returned it themselves. Unless....unless the guardian of inanimate objects has been working out and has managed to develop a few corporeal muscles and pushed the bin back all by it's invisible self. I am actually leaning really hard towards that possibility. I like to picture the expression on the bin thief's face when our can started hauling itself out of their bin thief hide away and began bumping it's way along the road towards home.
We stood that day. Staring at our long lost member of our trash sorting family. Warm afternoon sunshine played over it's dull grey brown features. It's shadow stretched across the road as if reaching for us.
"Is it really our bin?" We asked, not wanting to hope and have our hearts broken.
We looked around, peering into the bushes and neighbor's driveways for possible bin thieves with nefarious n'er do well intentions on their faces. We were alone. Me, my husband, the guardian of inanimate objects and our garbage can.
There was no mistaking it. It was OUR can.

(exhibit B, pull made from plastic handles off of boxes, how many other bins identical to ours would have an identical extra handle for long armed husbands to hold when pulling the bin up and down the steep driveway?)

It still sported the fashionable little pull we'd made from plastic handles off of some boxes. It was missing the lid, which we very well knew was in our garage, lonely and useless as the cruel bin thief didn't take it when it had taken the bin.
I marched over, ready to take my bin back to where it rightfully belonged. Thoughts of neighbors *accidentally* not noticing they'd taken a bin from the communal trash area, that in no way matched any of the other bins down there, had a special handle and kept it for over a year...accidentally....washed through my mind.
I stepped close, victory so close. Score one for justice....
"Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww."
I will save you a description but suffice it to say the....bin-napper....for lack of a better word, had apparently tossed a half can's worth of perishables in the bin for goodness how long and left it.
Perishables, no lid plus Southern California heat is a pretty nasty math equation.
I was tempted though...to retrieve what belonged to us, to clean up some one else's careless and disgusting mess just to return the bin to it's rightful place.
I stared hard at the can....and I sighed.
"I guess it's their bin now."
I was only sad for a moment, it actually seemed like pretty good instant karma. Leaving the mess where it was. As it turned out the garbage men didn't even touch the can, and who could blame them, I'm not sure they get hazard pay.
BUT...
I did get one teeny weeny extremely power packed moment of satisfaction from this whole peculiar bin experience.
I took the garbage can lid that belonged with the bin, and the very day we saw its return, placed it lovingly and a little sadly on the can. They might as well have the lid too.
Then...I cackled all the way up the driveway. Rubbing my palms together in a seriously evil genius sort of way. Imagining the mind trip that was gonna do to them, if they even noticed.
And they did.
Perhaps just a little bit of justice and a tiny sliver of shame. As later when we walked down to check the mail, still that same day, we saw the bin had been moved to the other side of the cans. As if to hide it from view.
They'd need much bigger bins to hide their shame though.
I like to wonder if that messed with their minds...knowing that we know....and yet didn't take the bin back? Ah well.
Maybe they're not jerks, maybe they're actually some forgetful old lady who accidentally took the wrong bin home after gathering her cans in the middle of the night and then maybe she lost track of it in a garage full of junk and cats and old lady belongings for over a year until finally she spied it through her dusty spectacles and declared "That's not mine, oh golly!" and promptly returned it.... Yeah, it was probably that.
I find most of life's annoyances go down smoother if I pretend they're perpetrated by forgetful old ladies.
In the mean time the bin remains, they apparently not claiming it and neither are we...unless I actually break down and reclaim what's rightfully mine and clean the heck out of that thing whilst half sloshed on rum. A person would have to be half sloshed, at the very least, on something before attempting such a chore.
Ah well.
But kudos to the guardian object angel, I am seriously impressed. I do not suppose many people can claim their garbage bin was stolen for a year and then returned...what a strange and oddly satisfying experience that is.

All that's brown and steaming is not coffee.

And so I learned a valuable bit of information about myself on a recent mini road trip. Some time during the past few years a slow and subtle change must have been taking place within my very cells. So soft and graceful was my dna overwriting itself that I did not have an inkling as to what was happening. And I suspect that if I had actually committed to the hermit lifestyle and just never visited any one, any where, ever again I might even have remained ignorant of this change for years, or forever.
I'm a coffee snob.
I admit this with the same slow grudging tone one uses when they admit to any peculiarity like a thimble fetish or cravings for human brains.
I don't like the idea of being a snob but connoisseur just isn't the right title. When I read the description on my coffee beans packaging when I am at home I raise an eyebrow over terms like "fruity notes", "chocolate finish", and "a hint of that vanilla creme brulee you had that one time at that restaurant when you were half smashed on southern comfort".
See, I just don't *get* all of that from my coffee experience. I just know I like my coffee strong, I like it jangling merrily with caffeine and I like it sweetened with stevia and topped off with raw milk. I prefer French roast, but if any other nationality roasts my beans that's fine, just as long as the little icon on the packaging indicates something like, "DARK! These beans are darker than Satan's soul. Good for espresso!"Not that I'm picky. It's just that I have come to know what I like. And apparently, as my taste buds have informed me loudly and with much protest on a that recent road trip, what I don't like.
Perhaps I was expecting too much from the coffee they had available at the garage we stopped off at for fuel. I know for sure I was swayed by their insanely huge coffee section that looked like it was trying to rival a Starbucks. With whipped that, vanilla the next thing and a half dozen kinds of coffee the rest, I was salivating. We had 2 more hours of driving and that garage coffee was looking and smelling mighty fine. When I emerged from their restroom I found my husband walking in confused circles around and around and around their coffee bar.
"So much....soooo much..." He whispered. So we shared a look of avarice and swooped in on the coffee cups. We squirted and spritzed to our hearts content and when I carried my as yet too hot to drink concoction back out to the car my taste-buds were dancing with un-restrained joy at the imagined bombardment of pure taste-buddery delight that was about to befall them. French roast coffee with dulce de leche creamer and vanilla creamer on top.
Maybe I was expecting too much.....maybe anticipating liquefied coffee infused dessert was wrong. Maybe I shouldn't have drank my coffee out of the little plastic stirrer like a straw but....Holy crap, it tasted like un-holy crap.
How can something that smells so good taste so wrong? You would think I had learned my lesson from the tropical mango shampoo from back in my teenage days. They should put a warning right on the bottle, "DO NOT EAT, WILL SERIOUSLY MESS WITH YOUR MIND! SMELLS LIKE HEAVEN, TASTES LIKE THE INSIDE OF A CHEMIST'S BOOT!" (by the way I am not at all embarrassed about tasting that shampoo because not only can I live the rest of my life peacefully with that little nugget of curiosity thoroughly squashed but I see so many jokes made about tasting good smelling soaps that I know I am not the only one. What I really find disturbing is what if it had tasted good? What if I had found myself glugging down a whole bottle of tropical mango shampoo whilst in the shower? It might have started me on a life long course of soap slurping and closet shampoo sucking.....a much worse thing than being a coffee snob)
Arriving at our destination, coffee cravings un-quenched we settled in to our hotel and tried the coffee in their restaurant. We might as well have scooped up some of the muddy water from the nearby Colorado river for all the coffee intensity it had. I don't like to toss words like "bland", "boring", "pale", "diabolically weak" and "disappointing" around but to heck with it. Consider them tossed and free falling about your feet. Am I spoiled? Yes. Was it coffee? I think so, if I searched hard through the brown liquid filling my restaurant mug I could catch a faint echo of coffee. Maybe they were having an off night or maybe, and I suspect this is really the case, my tongue is too accustomed to the strong dark coffee we make at home in our beloved little Bialetti and unfortunately most others pale in comparison.
We tried one more time.
We refused to go 3 days on our mini road trip with out a good coffee. We got clever. We eyed the in room coffee pot the hotel provides and unassuming little coffee grounds pod.
It was 9:30 at night and we starting to get the shakes. We needed a decent cuppa joe and we were willing to go MacGyver style to get it. Shunning the plastic cups provided by the hotel we dug out two mason jars that we had filled with tasty road snacks and already consumed. These would be our glasses.
Because we are us, meaning a little odd, we had brought our cool new portable water filter with us on the trip to show off to the in-laws. So we started filtering hotel tap water. I got extra clever and started a pot of coffee BUT assuming the worst about the grounds I only used half the water so as to make a really strong pot. We had the stevia for sweetener, never leave home without it, but now all we needed was some sort of dairy product. Once more Alan's and my eyes met and spoke the ocular language of coffee love. We tugged on our shoes and faster than you can say "did you remember to take the hotel room keycard" we were downstairs in the food court ordering up a double scoop of Dreyer's ice cream from the ice cream cart. We cackled in the elevator, cold icy cackles flavored with vanilla and mint chocolate chip. Then, like a well oiled machine Alan and I parted ways, he dashing down the hall to the ice machine to get the ice and me ducking into our hotel bathroom where this entire mad science coffee experiment was un-folding.
The tiny room smelled like the inside of a coffee shop. Alan returned with the ice and the coffee pot finished burping and bubbling the last drop.
We were ready.
Mason jar. Check. We filled it half way with dark, delicious smelling coffee.
Stevia. Check. We carefully metered out an eye dropper full, just the right amount of sweetness we knew from experience.
Ice. Check. We dropped in a handful, straight into the coffee. We were making frou-frou iced coffees in our slapped together bathroom barista bar.
Ice Cream. Check. We each ladled a small scoop of our choice on top of the chilling iced coffee.
We grinned at each other in delight. We raised our mason jars and sipped at the same time.
We grimaced.
Holy Crap, it tasted like crap.
Down the drain it went with my disappointment swirling after it. I hate to waste, I hate to be a snob but good Lord who replaced the coffee in the hotel rooms with dirt. Actually I am half sure that dirt would make a better cup of coffee than that coffee.
The next day, bleary eyed and sniffling like children who were denied their treat we hit upon a brilliant idea. We'll go to Starbucks. We'll pay the extra coinage, we'll get a strong cup of coffee, we'll consider it a vacation treat. What could go wrong? I mean besides having to listen to the lady on the cell phone behind me in line give a waaaaaay too detailed account to whoever she was talking..er....make that yelling to, on the phone about her dog's indoor bathroom habits when she is not home, what could go wrong?
Severely shaken, desperately craving a coffee I waited the eternity with a pleasant half smile that was beginning to wilt at the edges for the employee to end her marathon conversation with the customer before me and ordered our coffees.
Once more Alan and I raised our hopes like flags on a pole and sipped our coffees in tandem.
Once more we sighed. The cloud of disappointment slid over our sun of hope and our flags went limp.
Holy crap, it tasted like crap.
If it were not for my father-in-law swooping in with a bottle of instant coffee that we were able to doctor our beverages with I think we'd never have finished them.
I have a theory.
Somewhere between California and the Colorado river people only like weak coffee. That's the only way I can explain it. Either that or I have officially trained my taste buds to only be receptive to my own coffee. Either that or I have some sort of freaky super power that enables me to seek out and discover the worst coffee around.
*sigh* Let's just be truthful here....
I need one of them stickers: "My name is Tace, and I am a coffee snob."

The technologically trashy life.....

(I'd have gotten out of the car to snap photos but since they had lots of signs expressly forbidding people from leaving their vehicles I had to snap photos through our dusty windshield at the recycling place. I wonder if it's like one of those wild safari parks and a lion would have ate us if we got out?)

Today was an exceptional day. I swear I floated around on a cloud of smug satisfaction and pure superiority all day. Where ever I walked, people cast startled glances my way like lines from a fishing rod, trying to catch just what this air of mysteriousness that hung about me was.
Was it the bounce in my step?
Did gravity not cling to me with quite as desperate a grasp as it did to every one else?
Perhaps.
I know that I felt lighter, in fact it is quite possible that I floated on my way into the grocery store. Not only did we empty the garage of a car load of techno trash and recycle it responsibly today, but I emptied my brain of the responsibility and associated guilt of said accumulated pile of techno trash. The kind of stuff that multiplies shockingly fast in this *digital* and technologically advanced age we live in. And in our case, having my husband in a computer related web site building biz, monitors and keyboards, fax machines and multiple printers have a way of stacking up.
I am not the first person to suggest strange and un-seemly procreative things happening in the dark corners of our abodes where the junk stuff lives. Perhaps it's a natural combination of time and dust, coupling with the trash in the early hours of the morning when eyes are not on them, spawning new bits of wire and cables and cords and phones and hard drives and disturbing numbers of computer power supplies. The sort of things you can't point your finger at and say "A HA! You did NOT exist yesterday!!!!" Because with out a doubt you'll only get that eye brow raised, quick step back and hasty goodbyes, reaction from any witnesses. Though deep in their hearts, in the very back corner, in the crevices that resist logical thought they know.....they know what happens with junk in the dark because it happens in their garages too. But they turn a blind eye when the garage door opens and pretend it's a bit of dust that has caused their startled gasp and not the newborn piles of computer mice that lay still and silent in the light of day.
There are only so many ways to attractively stack and store 3 old computer monitors, 3 old computers and the various and out dated non-working parts to accompany each bit. Eventually it gets to the point where if you have to look at any bit of it any longer you're going to do something drastic like banish it from your life forever, or scream.
Banishing is fun, easier on the throat, highly effective and very satisfying. But I like to do my banishing legally and responsibly so I researched where to take techno trash so it could be recycled and like a shining, golden beam of light guiding me I found just the place.

(The place where we took our techno trash has free drop off the first Saturday of every month. I love free! Also look at the incredibly strange cubes of mashed together parts. It's weird but oddly beautiful because all of that is being recycled or reused in some way instead of just being buried!!)

The place we took our stuff is called E World Recyclers and they claim to recycle 100% of what can be salvaged from techno trash. They say....."Nothing Goes in a Landfill but the organics and other materials such as wood that belong there. E-World Recyclers is driving the entire industry toward a cleaner process, being the first recycler in the country able to create furnace-ready glass from CRT tubes."

Alan has commented several times about the strange times we live in. How something that still works, was once fairly expensive, like a monitor, is now so worthless you can't even donate them to a goodwill. In fact in some places you have to pay for them to take your techno trash to be disposed of properly. These things don't *age* well. Bell bottoms come back in style but old style clunky chunky monitors? I doubt it.
At this point I should say I can feel that feeling that means that at some point in the year 3421 that some person has probably dug this blog post out of the massive blog post graveyard and will chuckle at my old fashioned ways and be aghast at the notion of wanting and needing a skinny high resolution monitor when giant old style ones are all the rage and are being dug up like fossils from our old dumps and being polished and sold as antiques for a quadrillion Teractoles. (Teractoles being the planatoid currency in the year 3421)
Delivery of our car load of non-working non-usable technology trash was easy. What wasn't easy was having the dedication and resolve to set the alarm clock so we'd get up in the morning at the appointed time to deliver the car load of stuff. We hate wake up alarms like people hate calories. With a deep and abiding hate and a healthy dose of respect for their awesome power and potential.
But we did it. That and more, I finally mailed off my box of # 5 plastics I had gathered up. If you thought there were a lot of sour cream containers in that pile before.....good golly. Plus I used the time in the last couple weeks to dig out every # 5 plastic anything I could suss out and 9.50 later it's on it's way, outta my hands and off to be put to use instead of buried in a landfill.
Like I said, today was an exceptional day.
To top off my waste management and trash related day I saw something VERY interesting.

(forgive the blurry picture but when you're spying you snap photos on the move, because a moving spy is a spy that's less likely to get it's ass kicked)

Three blue bins at a local business. THREE. Even I in all my obsessive recycling insane ways can hardly fill 2/3 of our blue bin on a good day and yet they had three......
I think it may be my first big break in my blue bin thefting case. Perhaps I shall lurk closer one of these nights and with a few deft rolls and acrobatic jumps to avoid the security cameras I shall inspect the bins closer to see if any look like mine.
I see this as going one of two ways. One, they are mine and I shall exact my revenge and meter out justice Canadian style (meaning ice will be involved) or Two, I shall find out this business is really really really good at recycling and I shall bow down before them and study at their feet to learn the ways of a zero waste lifestyle.
I'll be fine with either way.
For now, I shall go down to the garage and dance in the spots where old monitors used to sit.

Garbage Bin %#$#$%^!!!!!!

I can't very well title this post garbage bin bastards, but I can dang well think it.
Politeness and manners dictates I use caution with my words, temper my temper with a dash of sanity and not just say '"oh bugger it all" and curse the blog air blue with inventive phrases that would have my Mother warning of the minister hiding in the bushes.
If there's 2 things my Mother taught me, it's not to point (I still wave with a fist to indicate something, which can make people think I'm starting a fisty cuffs scuffle) and also not to curse because you never know who might be listening. Meanwhile since I am obeying the "no pointing" rule I curse a little more often than is strictly lady like. But you can be sure I do an impressive imitation of a horror movie creature, head swiveling 360 degrees to see if any one, including ministers in the bushes, heard me.
But all of this is besides my point, which I admit I am either very good at or bad at.
Getting beside my point I mean.
There are times I look to the right and left of me and my point is sooooooo far down the line of things I am yakking on about I can hardly see it. Sometimes we wave at each other and my point will shrug in an embarrassed sort of way, wordlessly asking "how did I end up here?" I'll tell you how point, it's because I got side tracked thinking of curses when I was meaning to expose the seamy dark underside of a garbage bin crime world.
Our bins have been...stolen....no less than 3 times.
Now, call me crazy, but a full bin seems more interesting than an empty one.
Should I be embarrassed that the bin thieves don't think my garbage is good enough for them? Should I be grateful that they don't dump the bins out, thank goodness, but rather wait until after the garbage trucks have come and gone and apparently mosey on down our private road and load up on bins to their little heart's delight as if we're hosting a fricking bin buffet, an all you can steal blue bin special, ya bunch-o-thievin-buggers. The bin thieves not you.
I no longer cast suspicious glances at the neighbors, having learned they have been victims of the bin thieves as well.....so they say......I suppose they could be ultra clever and are eluding my accusing eye and finger of judgment (the pointy "j'accuse" finger, not the middle one) by including themselves in the barbaric bin business going on around here, but meanwhile every night they go out to their secret bin hideaway and glory over their stash of stolen plastic containers.
I shudder when I think of that...of some stranger running their fingers over my grey garbage can....or worse....the brilliant blue plastic of the recycling bin.
WHY THE RECYCLING BIN?????? Are ye thieves with an environmental conscious? Does that make me feel better or worse? How do the scales of justice weigh that out?
On the one hand they stole private property, on the other hand they might be recycling. Does that even out? Aggghhh...
So anyways I've been trying to figure out how to install a gps device on my new bins that were dropped off by Edco. I think this is a brilliant idea. I make my bin trackable, wait for it to get stolen, then I locate it using what ever doolybobber-thing-a-ma-jig one uses with their garbage can gps, (hence forth called gcgps) go to my poor abducted bin and NOT only steal it back but....but.....
This is where my plan falls apart. I am not sure what I want to do, something heinous like unleashing my look of supreme disapproval that clearly states through nothing but facial muscles and exquisite eyebrow control that says, "You are going to hell buddy. HELL. Pitchforks will be jabbing your azz for eternity and you shall choke on the fumes of melting plastic, surrounded by all the bins you've purloined."
OR something subtle like just start watching those people for the REST OF THEIR LIVES. Waiting, biding my time until one day I introduce myself, make friends with them, get invited to their bbq's and birthdays, wait for years to go by and then when they least suspect it I will tell them I hate them, take back all of the Christmas presents I've given them and spit in their face. See, it'll hurt more if they don't understand why AND they care. Muaaaah ahhh ahhhh.
In the mean time life goes on.
I have not taped a row of thumbtacks with their pointy parts poking out under the edge of the garbage bin handle.
I have not set up a secret spy web cam in the bushes so I can see the comings and goings on around my precious, precious bins on garbage day.
I have not joined the volunteer sheriff's program in my community, though if truth be told that's ONLY because it's for seniors and I don't think they let you arrest people.
In the mean time I gather my trash and take it down every week. And try not to obsess over how I can attach a gps doolie to my can so that it remains hidden as well as active.
I also no longer name my bins. I do not let myself grow attached......
But...if truth be told, on Fridays when we go down for our cans and we round the end of the driveway and walk past the cactus that conceal the bit of road where we place our bins...my heart speeds up...just a little. And I find myself holding my breath, and when my bins are there, EXACTLY where they should be, I feel relieved.
And so should the bin thieves........

Trixies terrible trip aka why she needs to twitter

(Just moments before the deed was done, pre cat carrier.)

There are those rare days you hope like hell your cat is not psychic.
The days when you whistle mindless, tuneless songs under your breath hoping to add to the atmosphere of normality, even though that's not normal. You try not to stare at the cat too often, or overwhelm her with pets or ignore her too much, trying very hard to strike the perfect balance of casual, every day affection. You grin through teeth and wonder if that looks aggressive but the nerves that sizzle along your limbs won't let anything close to a natural smile stretch across your face.
I do not know how people have kids let alone keep 'em.
Because even taking a sick kitty to the vet for a check-up is a little taste of emotional hell on earth.
Trying hard not to drown her fur in salty tears, lest the vet think we live in the ocean.
Trying to think of the perfect way to insert her into the "case of horror and damnation", aka the kitty carrier.
Coming precariously close to drawing up detailed plans in photoshop about how Alan will hold the kitty and distract her with bright idle chatter and possibly some close up magic and I will grab the carrier, carefully opening the gated door and some how we will insert one suspicious and now pissed off feline into one tiny case with out hurting her. We may end up in scratches and pain but that is the lot of a feline mama.
I wonder if human mamas feel the same, jamming their kids into kid carriers for a visit to the doctor, unmindful or caring if they get beat up in the process because the entire focus is on your young furry charge. Kids are furry right? We don't hang out with them as often as we do our cats so my information may be outdated.
As luck would have it, or perhaps telepathically communicating calmness to Trixie (the afflicted cat) would have it, or perhaps even the 23 minute feline hypnosis procedure that I invented and dispensed would have it, getting Trixie into the cat carrier was not too big a deal.

(Kitty yoga)

There were relatively few tears, even fewer curses and the howls were kept to a minimum. I will not say between the 3 of us, me, my husband or Trixie who was the one howling.
There was excessive shedding, as pissed off people and cats tend to do and with knots in our bellies and disgruntled cat in tow we headed to the vet's office.

(Trixie and Susie, leering at lizards out on the patio. Susie is the one who looks like she can speak 3 languages)

Of course, being a completely indoors cat, the fresh air and sights not normally seen by Trixie were an insult and assault to her senses. She cried, and I'm pretty sure her meows sounded like this
"Meeeeow, meeeeeeeeeeow, meeeeeemothereffingmeeeeeeeeow, meeeeeyou'vewrongedthewrongcatmeeeeoooooowwwwww, meow."
She was one righteously ticked off cat.
Her fury was almost a thing of beauty and even as I tried not to gnaw my lip off I made a mental note to add that same pitch and intonation to my own angry squalls in the future when I unleash my own rage upon any ne'er-do-wells I came across.
I liked our vet's office. I liked the gurgling rushing water fountain and climate appropriate fake grass in the front. I loved the murals, bright and bold scenes of a tropical beach that for some strange reason was populated with house pets. Looks nice on canvas but I'm think a beach like that in real life would be a little too odiferous for the senses.
There was a strange and almost amusing amount of tropical plants all over the front desk, congratulatory tokens for the newly remodeled office opening I surmised. I could be a detective I'm so surmise-y some days.
I stared at them as Trixie occasionally let out the pitiful yowl from her plastic prison and imagined how the desk staff seemed like they were in a jungle. I wondered if there was even maybe a monkey behind the desk and then wondered if it did tricks. Trixie yowled again and I shot semi accusing glances at the other patrons as if their presence, and not my stuffing my cat in to a wee plastic box and taking her on a strange journey, was the result of her discomfort.
The patron's dog stared at me with odd blue eyes and I could not hold his gaze, his tongue lolled in amusement and a touch of victory. We're cat people so I turned my back on his rolly polly face and with just the right touch of snobbery I made sure Trixie's face was shielded from the sight of such a huge canine beast. Being an indoors cat it could have been a fire breathing, stegosaurus eatin' dragon for all the difference it made. One being as foreign and strange as the other.
Alan and I held hands tightly over the top of the cat carrier, I stared into his blue eyes instead of the dog's and we made idle chit chat. The sort of stilted conversation one has when one's nerves are stretched thin and are beginning to hum and vibrate like a violin string.
The actual examination by the vet was surprisingly quick and relatively painless for Trixie. The added bonus besides knowing what was the cause of her mouth discomfort was that we both have fantastic and authentic feline hair shirts now. So quickly and completely did she shed, as if she could shrug off our hands that held her in place, that we both had the perfect hair shirts to wear home, the perfect accompaniment to our guilt. Sweet.
Turns out Trixie has to have her teeth cleaned and a couple possibly removed. Yikes, that sucks, worse for her because it means another trip back to the vet's, more discomfort, more nerves for all of us and what if there's no hulking dog in the waiting room this time for me to use as a scapegoat. Though....come to think of it, there could be a LITERAL scape goat because chances are not as slim as you'd think seeing as how we pass a lot of goats 2 minutes before arriving at the vet's. Meaning an empty lot, full of a lot of goats. I could call it a field but I'm a country bumpkin and know what a REAL field looks like. I'm also trying to distract me and you with idle goat chit chat instead of facing the impending second veterinary tooth treatment trip for poor Trixie.
I'm sure it will be some time soon, when her bloodwork comes in.
If you think sneaking a cat into a plastic cat carrier once is a great trick, trying doing it twice. When the memory of the ordeal is fresh in your victim's mind and she's on to your tricks and now immune to kitty hypnotism.
Have no fear the deed will be done and done quickly, and Trixie will be soon be on her way to feeling a lot better and hopefully won't be holding a grudge.
I think Alan said it best, "Imagine Trixie's blog post about this whole experience."
Yikes again, I didn't even know she had a blog.

(Trixie's sprawl is way cuter than urban's)

A is for Absolutely Adoring Asparagus....

It wasn't love at first sight.
In fact, if truth be told when I first laid my eyes upon it I was skeptical. Asparagus did not sweep me off my feet with passionate promises of what it could do to my taste buds. Instead it lay in unassuming piles, a little snootier than the rest of the vegetables, a little pricier, and it knew it.
I think that's what put me off for so many years, regular folks like myself didn't eat asparagus, fancy pants folks who served "h'ordeuves" instead of snacks ate asparagus. People who thought they were too good for broccoli ate asparagus next to their piles of caviar smoking illegal cigars that cost more than my entire wardrobe and sipping on a brand of whiskey that only rich people's tongues can palate.
I have an imagination, it's true, imagination does not equal accuracy.
In fact my wild and rampant mind wanderings in the exotic and exclusive world of asparagus had left me blinded to the simple tastiness of this vegetable for YEARS now. There are family feuds that have resolved quicker than my asparagus skepticism.
I am embarrassed to now admit, humbly so, that it was not asparagus who was being snobby but me....
But I have made up for it in spades and have consumed so much asparagus in the last 3 weeks that I am sure the asparagus Over Lords, sitting on their piles of asparagus money are wondering why they suddenly need an extra truck load of asparagus delivered to my local store. They are right this minute with their noses buried in lists and numbers and facts and trying to figure out what has changed.
It's me.
I like asparagus. In fact, it may be more than that. I might have a wee bit of a crush on my new best, edible, friend. First thing into the cart at the grocery store and first veggy that pops into my mind when preparing a meal these days.
There is no need to ask what's for supper in this household, at least for a little while, because the answer, always said with the same breathy laugh that is so indicative of new love that's still in the honeymoon stages, will always be the same, "Asparagus."
I'm like that.
It's a damn good thing there are no children, besides the plastic 5 dollar cheapy toy kind that we haul out for holiday photos to make the parents feel *grand*, in this house. Because I am guilty of playing favorites. If I like something, like say a fancy schmancy veggy that had never crossed my lips for the first 30 years of my life, then so long broccoli, screw you squash you can kiss my Ass-paragus goodbye. When I am with a vegetable I am only with that vegetable for the duration my interest lasts. And even when the weight of nutritional facts starts weighing heavy on my conscience, poking and prodding reminding me that vegetables are good but one shouldn't eat only one vegetable from now until eternity runs outta tape, I cheat.
My husband, who loves asparagus too but perhaps not to the all inclusive 3 week binge of it that I do breathes an obvious sigh of relief after tentatively inquiring as to what I had in mind for supper, and I promptly answer, "French Fries!"
His relief is palpable, one can only wax poetic about stalks of green for so long and listen to one's wife moan about 30 years lost in a haze of anti-vegetable ignorance for so long.
What? Have I gone crazy you ask? Did I not just wear my fingers to the nubbins tippity tapping away about how awesome asparagus is and now I'm gonna prance off with the lowly potato? Am I that easily swayed? While I do tend towards the "love 'em and leave 'em" favoritism queen-esque attitude in the food world, let me let you in on a little secret.
I had asparagus WITH my french fries.
I have married the two and they are living happily ever after in oven frizzled, slightly roasted, salty bliss. Are they a match made in heaven these two vegetables? No they were a match made in my kitchen as a way to sneak some more asparagus into the meal because it is as yet still my favorite of the week.
We have tried them long length like fries themselves, divine. We have chopped them smaller in to little chunks which my husband actually prefers, divine-er. All the sauces that go so lovely with french fries goes just fine with asparagus. Which in our home means, bar-b-q sauce, vegenaise and lots of salt! MmmmMMMmmmMmmmmm.
The way that I go about cooking the 2 together is I start a batch of oven fries the way I normally would, only about 5 to 10 minutes away from being done I pull the pan of oily fries out of the oven and sprinkle my chopped up asparagus all over it, returning it to bake for another 5 to 10 minutes until everything is golden and delicious and making one hop about anxiously in front of the oven door with a rumbling belly and a desperate *must have it* gleam in one's eye. A sprinkle of garlic, pile it all high on a plate, supper is served and once again asparagus steals the lime light away as I shove french fries aside to get at the golden tinged nuggets of green goodness.
And is that all?
HA!
Ha I say, stomach full of one of the best salads I have ever had the pleasure to devour, this month at least. Next month I may be eying up squash or getting the skinny on string beans but while my asparagus lust is still sizzling I have also been making creamy lemon dill asparagus salads. HOT salad, as in temperature not spice.
I enjoy the textures and temperatures of pouring hot saucy vegetables over a really hearty lettuce like endive. Yummmm. Not only yummmm, but easssssssy.
Frizzle up chopped asparagus and olive oil with salt and black pepper in a pan until tender and bright green and they're cooked just to the point where you start risking burned finger tips so you can nip pieces of asparagus out and pop them into your mouth to the dual delight and horror of your tongue. It's worth the burn.
Add a dollop of sour cream and another of vegenaise, turn the heat off and add chopped garlic and fresh dill, sprinkle some fresh lemon zest in there too. Stir it up with a couple of healthy squeezes of lemon juice and and ohhhhhhhhh you have no idea how happy it makes your asparagus. A few chopped heirloom tomatoes not only add flavor but pretty color as well.
Chop a little cheese of your choice and sprinkle it over a bowl of hearty endive and then pour the steaming, oh so dilly fragrant and creamy, lemony asparagus over top. You will hear a sigh, that's to be expected, endive enjoys a warm bath as much as the rest of us. Then you will hear another sigh, that's most likely you.
I do not know how long my love affair with asparagus will last, though I suppose it will never really end, it will just move to the side as I meet a new vegetable or fruit who will grab all of my attention for a while as asparagus becomes part of the background of my meals. Playing favorites is a delicious way to live life, exploring the possibilities of a particular food item.
And if the others, past favorite foods, get jealous....you can eat 'em to shut them up.