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.

Card carrying vigilante....

I was too busy minding the UPS man's business when it arrived.
Eyes fixated on the legs I could see in the back of the truck through it's open doors, I wondered why he was parked there and if perhaps he was behind the disappearances of not one but three different trash bins in less than a year. I wondered if I should be pro-active and go Citizen's Arrest all over his uniformed self in an effort to detain him and search his vehicle for my missing garbage cans. Also, so I could finally say I'd placed some one under citizen's arrest. I mean some one who wasn't family. In case I haven't said it before there is nothing more satisfying than jacking the arm of your Aunt Ruthie, who picked nibbles of pie from your plate one too freaking many times, up behind her back as you holler in her ear, "ARREST ARREST, CITIZEN'S ARREST!!!"
Satisfying that is, until she laughs because she thinks you're joking....and you have to ease up on the arm because deep down you're not joking and think Aunt Ruthie would look nice with iron bars in front of her face. HER face and not your own so it's best to stop these things before the authorities have to get involved. She really would by the way, look amazing behind iron bars. I'm not saying I don't love Aunt Ruthie I'm just saying I'd love her more if she was in jail and I had all the pie to myself.
So obviously, with deep thoughts such as these, my eyes trained steadily and unblinking on the UPS man's legs that were looking more and more nefarious by the second I did not see the exact moment when my husband pulled our mail out of our mail box.
I did not hear him for a few moments either, as the constant muttering, the litany of "Whatareyouupto? Huh? Citizen's Arrest! Make a move UPS man, make a move!", that I ran though just under my breath obscured his words from me.
When finally the haze of suspicion that had gathered thick about my head like a storm cloud was penetrated by my husband's excited voice I broke my stare and turned to bright blue eyes.
"Huh? Wha?" I said. Which I know sounds rather oaf like but I swear I said it in the most lady like, most dulcet, non-evil thought having, way a wife can.
"What's this?" He says with a sly look and a careless wave of his hand, flourishing the envelopes from the mailbox the way a magician wields his cards. My eyes track the movement, they zero in on the top envelope, my name leaps out at me and then the logo. The return address pierces my heart with a little zing, a thrill that makes me say "MINE!" as if I was suddenly channeling a 2 year old and I snatched the envelope.
I've gotta tell you, that was one hard to open envelope. It just did not work. Yet another supposedly inanimate thing was defying my will but I wrestled with it. I tore it open like a T-Rex would bust open open a Hadrosaur. Not a pretty image but accurate.
When finally, bits of envelope littering the front seat like confetti, and all thoughts of suspicious UPS men on possible lunch breaks, or garbage can purloining missions, or maybe even being under cover secret service on stake out at the end of our driveway had finally fled my head completely, I hastily unfolded the letter inside.
And there it lay, gleaming up at me. Shiny and new with my own oddly stoned looking face looking back at me. Eyes forever caught in the beginnings of a sleepy blink, my face, my card, my driver's license. Sweetest piece of plastic I ever slobbered all over in the front seat of a Civic.
Sure I had passed the driver's test and the tester had checked the "pass" box on my paper work. Sure I have been legally a fully licensed driver for over a week already....but it's not the same. Just like placing Aunt Ruthie under citizen's arrest for willful cookie snatching and un-lawful sharing of privately owned perfectly sweetened coffee...it's not the same as the REAL thing. The actual physical proof in your own hands, be it a California issued driver's license or hand cuffs The feeling is outta this fricking world..........
Since it bears repeating...I got my driver's license.
Now I can chase down garbage bin thieves on wheels, not just feet.

Nutella or Sanity

The year rolled by with the ominous weight of time. Thundering just beyond our edges of hearing until it clicked, another notch, another year, another 366 days without Nutella under my belt.
Nutella.....
Which is why I probably still fit INto my belt.
I shuddered with relief when I saw the calendar and realized I had made it, had not cracked beneath the awful pressure of desperate cravings that no single jar of Nutella could assuage.
That there had been no dark and creamy void of unconsciousness starting when I had swept my arm through tidily arranged jars on Nutella on the super market shelf, innocently waiting to have their lids turned, their seals cracked and contents devoured in a sweet haze of ecstasy, spilling them in a clunking rain of beautiful music into my eagerly awaiting shopping cart. Had not filled my trunk to near bursting, had not driven with one hand on the steering wheel and one slathered in the physical incarnation of pure edible pleasure itself. There were no moments of confusion, no waking to the clatter of empty plastic jars tumbling from the bed to the floor. No plaintive cries from the cats because 2 days had gone by in a blink of an eye and surreal interaction between myself and it.
Nutella......
I whisper it's name, the very feel of it's syllables on my tongue has my taste buds aching, individually crying out in silent screams for fulfillment.
I close my mouth tightly, squeeze my eyes shut but the image that is forever burned on my retina haunts me. A single jar, the subtle curve, the provocative white lid..... I whimper, I struggle. I wrestle with the craving, grappling with it, a war inside my very own brain wages behind my hazel eyes that stare unseeingly. Looking inwards at the fight between common sense and craving, wondering who will win. Hoping it's a satisfying victory, wondering if while my brain is busy if my body could suss out one last hidden jar of it.
Nutella......
I shudder.
I had kept the dark temptress at bay. Had not hidden jars in the shower to indulge myself in a hot soak and palm full of chocolate hazelnut glory. Had not concocted elaborate plans to build myself a bunker from the empty jars, their contents emptied into the neighbor's swimming pool I had secretly drained at night so that I might truly become one with Nutella.
I did not scream in fury when relatives opened the closet that should not be opened and they did not turn and stare at me with bewildered eyes in the shadow of the mountain of Nutella jars. They did not recognize how close to glory they stood.
Nutella......
You are perfection, this I do not deny. In fact I would have your sweet name tattooed across my left shoulder, right ankle and one side of my buttock if there was not a grocery store next to the tattoo parlor.
I would marry you, entering willingly into polygamy with my Nutella covered husband at my side if it were legal.
I am not ashamed to say I'd do it anyways, shrugging the law from my shoulders, embracing the subtle hazel flavor and chocolate overtones, if I did not fear the very passions you incite in me. If I did not worry for my sanity, if I could afford the amount of you I'd need to keep me satisfied.
Nutella....
You are not a treat to be savored.
I am not the lady from the chocolate commercials.
I can not take a tiny taste and lean back, carried away in apparent spasms of delight. A tiny taste would be lost amongst my intense desire for you, it would be but a drip when my thirst requires an ocean to sate it.
Another year Nutella and I have been apart...for the greater good.
Nutella......
I love you, I hate you.....I love you....

Favorite Flights of Fictional Fancy: Interview with Big Foot

Interview with a Bigfoot.

Me: I think the question we'd all really love to hear the answer to, in fact YOUR answer, is....do you exist?

BigFoot: *sighs* This again????

Me: Is that a no?

BigFoot: This gets tiring after a while you know. How many other mammals do you know have to put up with the utter lack of respect and lack of believability that my kind gets?

Me: So.....it's a yes?

BigFoot: *****moment of strained silence****** YES. I exist.

Me: Lovely! I'd hate to come and find out I've been interviewing a non-existent creature....again. So Mr.BigFoot, what's the deal?

BigFoot: The deal with what?

Me: Your feet! I mean your entire identity is wrapped up in your "big" feet and I'm looking at them and I gotta say.....

BigFoot: What?

Me: Not so big.

BigFoot: Oh for the love of-

Me: Shhhhhh, shh, calm down. Do you want a carrot?

BigFoot: I. AM. NOT. A. RABBIT.

Me: I. NEVER. SAID. YOU. WERE. Sheesh, attitude much? **crunch crunches on the rejected carrot.**

BigFoot: I apologize. I get very stressed this time of year. People popping out of the woodwork like crazed hunters, cameras hung about their necks, that glazed look in their eyes. Constantly dragging pounds and pounds of plaster of paris through the woods to make copies of my foot prints and I never gave any one the right to do that. Sell them on Ebay, they make a fortune and I gotta uproot my family every time the paparazzi get wind of us. I get cranky.

Me: You should have had the carrot. Munching calms the nerves. It's a fact.

BigFoot: ******Another moment of strained silence, this time even longer and
strained-er****** Are we done?

Me: I thought I could paint your portrait.

BigFoot: Sheesh lady, I barely know you. You barely know me and you wanna be painting my portrait. Do I go around chasing you down and asking you all kinds of nosy questions about how YOU smell, and how YOU walk, and do YOU ever shave? NO! I've got to go.

Me: O.k. **hollers to the retreating back of BigFoot as he stalks across the snowy field** It was nice meeting you!

BigFoot: ***Unintelligible grunt***

Bed-lam

Once upon a time I remarked casually to my husband that there were days I wished we could drag the mattress off of our bed, out to the living room where we could plunk it down in front of the fireplace.
And his eyebrow rose so steadily and so slowly, creeping higher and higher on his face that I began to worry. I was having some serious concerns that his eyebrow was going to detach itself and just run away all together. Which would be a shame as Alan has lovely eyebrows. But I am off of my point if not my rocker.
The boldly stated bombshell lay between us. Our mattress in the living room.
Before the word "Why" could so much as begin to pucker his lips in the slightest I rushed forward like a lawyer horse, launching outta the starting gate, racing to fill in the air between us with not just my words but excellent reasoning behind such a move.
"So we could sleep in front of the fire!! It would be like camping only lazier and we could watch tv at the same time!"
The eyebrow halted it's steady climb.
Alan's eyebrow is his barometer indicating his feelings on how crazy an idea is.
"It would be warm and cozy and instead of heating the bedroom we could stay out here where we already have it heated."
The eyebrow lowered.
"Well....." He said, chewing this idea over in his mind and I do believe I fell in love a little bit more.
That is the true litmus test of a soul mate. When you throw an idea out there, no matter how wacky, it's considered. If even for the briefest of moments.
Sure your idea to defect from all North American Countries and creating your own on some small island where we could live on rum and lobster for the rest of our days, whittling coconut shells and writing our National anthem might ultimately be dismissed. But for a half second, that precious half second when his mind leaps ahead with yours to that place that exists only in imagination, the place where he joins you in decorating your new country's flag and helps build a lovely 3 story hut out of bamboo and flamingo feathers, working in harmony, before reality slams itself against your dreams and hauls you back to the here and now....that half second....is amazing.
"I guess it would take up a lot of space....." He finally says. And I see him mentally measuring the living room floorspace. If I could pop inside his brain for a moment and peer out through his eyes I almost bet I'd see faint green lines laid over every bit of anything that could be measured in the living room. And next to each faintly glowing green line would be the measurements, guesstimates of course he's not a computer. And the units would be in feet but not standard's , rather his own size 11's.
I gaze with rapt attention and baited breath as his head swivels on his neck and I can see that he is envisioning our bed in the middle of the living room and I can see that he can see it wouldn't be half bad. I follow the invisible path his eyes trace, as he mentally pushes our King sized mattress around the available space options. I see when he sees that if we push it right up to the kitchen area we could not only access the fridge from bed BUT do dishes. If we had a keen interest in doing so, which I don't but I like options.
If we push the mattress the other way we could press it up against the patio doors and during the hottest days of summer we could open the door and sleep with our heads practically outside. I see his brows lower as he considers the loveliness of a soft cool breeze in the middle of the night during the hot summer.
Now his eyebrows are not only back to their normal position but they are attempting to crawl down over his eyeballs, perhaps the brows wish to see what his brain sees and want a peek inside.
He grabs the tape measure and starts measuring how much space we'd still have for incidental things like walking.
When he speaks, it's with the far off tone of some one who isn't all the way in the here and now. He's in the there, the there where the reality is different than it is in this exact moment. In that there, the reality consists of pretty much everything as it is now BUT with one crucial difference. We could sleep in front of the fire place on our beautiful king sized mattress in the middle of the living room.
"We could always put the sofa in the bed room, make it a second storage area type place......." His voice trails off and now I walk with him through imagination into the room that would formerly be the bedroom and would then be the sofa storage room in the future, should we go down this life altering mattress moving path.
With those words I know he is hooked.
Life fricking rocks.
When you are a teenager they tell you all sorts of overly recited pap like "You can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do when you are an adult." The unspoken words include the disclaimer "As long as what you choose falls into what is the accepted norm and doesn't differ too much." Meaning chances are no one would reallllly support the dream of creating one's own country with lots of rum based drinks and a 3 story house made from bamboo and flamingo feathers.
So that moment, when you realize you don't actually have to follow the list of "rules". The ones that are unspoken, the ones that say beds go in the bedroom, and your sweetheart agrees with your mattress revolution. That moment when the eyebrows are significantly low on the face and the mattress is but a half second away from being hauled into new and uncharted territory, with unparalleled access to the television, computers, fridge and patio doors. That moment, that's not only love, that's just fricking cool.

Post-Apocalypticness

I do not want to live in a post apocalyptic society.
Or even in a post apocalyptic world that is society-less.
In fact on the list of things I don't want to experience, post apocalypticness is rated very high. Somewhere between laser eye surgery and snake juggling.
And yet I keep things, things I imagine I will need some day. Not tomorrow, not the next day not even 10 years from now but things that would be very handy if suddenly the human race goes boom locka boom and I find myself living in a world that is totally wiped clean of it's technological advances. No electricity, no computers, no phones, no nothing. Strangely enough I never imagine rubble so maybe it's not post apocalypticness I am preparing for but one of them polar magnetic shifts.
The kind the scientists fret over and say will wreak havoc with all of our satellites etc should suddenly the magnetic poles ever get tired of their current magnetic status and decide to switch themselves around.
Can you imagine? I mean I know I can but can you?
So much stuff is tied up with our computers and the internet and televisions and phones that really I feel we ought to be addressing bigger issues than politics and be thinking hard about our technological marriages. We're all polygamists now, me, my hubby and apple computers are living a very happy little life together. And if it's a sin then send me to hell baby.
We research anything and everything at the drop of a hat. We know how much it will cost to run one of those jet packs that run off of hydrogen peroxide and how high we could fly and we can switch tabs and peer mournfully at our bank accounts because jet pack funds are damn hard to grow. We look up what's going to be on tv, then we watch tv ON the computer and we record ourselves and post ourselves on Youtube so other people can watch us. We get recipes and jokes and more fricking stories about Jesus, no offense son of God but you are one popular email forward, than we ever thought we'd need.
So if the earth goes boom locka boom. We are screwed.
How will I know how to make homemade pasta? Or how to change a light fixture or find alternate words for awesome if the world goes boom locka boom?
I'd be forced to rely on the material possessions I have already accumulated.
Now I don't want or need a fallout type shelter. I'm not crazy, just wondering when I stare at an old dictionary and thesaurus that takes up room on my bookshelf and have LITERALLY never had their spines cracked open in this house, why I am keeping them? I look everything I need or want to know up on the internet.
But my hand hesitates, hovering over the faded yellow pages of a book that isn't even old enough to be an antique but is probably old enough to not know the definition of cool as "having qualities of supreme awesomeness". I can't quite recycle it or donate it because maybe I'll need it.
But when?
When would I ever go to the bookshelf instead of using a quick flick of my computer mouse to open another tab in my internet browser and look up my favorite thesaurus site to find alternate words for slimy. Never.........unless......unless the world went boom locka boom and I found myself bored out of my skull because the television was now being used as a doorstop and I had read all of the pocket novels in our bookshelves 18 times each already and there was NO access to any fresh material from my favorite authors because they too were experiencing the boom locka boom and distributing and printing new materials was given up for more practical concerns like researching alternative toilet paper sources and trying to survive in the post apocalyptic magnetic whatchmacallit time.
So THEN, I may be tempted to do some writing along the edges of the paperbacks we already owned and in between the lines, basically entering a new story into the the pages thereby turning the paperback into two books instead of one. And THEN I may have desperate need for a thesaurus because at that point in time my brain will be older and slower and also will have had the words "Holy fricking cow on a stick" etched into the ol' grey matter as will the rest of the world, having experienced the complete and utter breakdown of our technological side of society and all and so a thesaurus will be a very handy thing.
Perhaps in our neighborhood I will be the only person with a thesaurus and what with the world suddenly shrinking in communications size, to basically you communicated with to who could hear you hollering, my thesaurus might provide some level of stature.
Perhaps I shall be crowned the queen of words and I can start a wee little monarchy.
Perhaps a post apolaclyptic society won't be all bad, abominable, atrocious, awful, corked, corky, counterfeit, crappy, defective, deplorable, distressing, dreadful, evil, fearful, forged, frightful, hard, harmful, high-risk, hopeless, horrid or icky after all.

The parallels between parking and crime.

(the face of crime today)

I was wedged between two garbage cans, the front end of the sweet little Honda at an almost perfect 45 degree angle. Back end doing a good impression of the cheese in the sandwich of garbage cans. Front end poking out at the afore mentioned angle and quite possibly over the yellow line in the middle of the street.
And the telltale symbols of a police car were fast approaching in my rearview mirror.
If my palms were any sweatier I'd start giving serious consideration to some sort of moisture retrieval device because California suffers from droughts you know and my palm sweat just might keep us all in avocados and oranges for another year.
The back alley of a shopping complex is a strange place to spend any amount of time. All kinds of odd characters end up walking through.
Like teenagers.
I saw at least 4 of them, though not together, but 4 I am pretty sure constitutes a gang. They may have just been headed to the movie theater down the street and maybe they were and not up to anything nefarious but one of them had a skateboard...A SKATEBOARD. And though I didn't get a good look at it I can surmise from him being a teenager taking a shortcut down the back alley of a shopping center and from the thundering of my heart that he was at the very least sporting some sort of flaming skull sticker on the underside of his skateboard and at most going to see an "R" rated movie. There could be ta ta's and liberal use of the "F" word in said movie. Which now that I think of it was probably why he was in such a hurry, whizzing by at breakneck speeds of at least 1.2 miles an hour on his quite possibly flaming skull festooned skateboard.
And I was wedging our sweet little Honda between two garbage cans.
And my heart was pounding with a combination of nerves, excitement and a dash of paranoia. A potent cocktail of emotions.
The garbage cans are important to this tale. As they were brought from home.
Never have I felt more criminal then when we took 2 large rolling garbage bins from the back seat of our car and placed them in the back alley of the shopping center. I was half sure the workers taking smoking breaks in the back of the grocery store would come over and place me under citizen's arrest for intent to use a privately owned trash can in a public setting without a permit. I was alarmed when they didn't, assuming of course that they were video-ing my felonious use of home owned trash cans for some sinister purpose like posting on Youtube or selling back to me in a blatantly blackmail-esque scheme....or......maybe they were just calling the cops. Avoiding physical and verbal contact with me all together.

Perhaps they glanced across the empty parking lot to the little street I'd arranged my trash cans on and was wedging my car between and could see that I was Canadian. Which means I'm hardy and can withstand freezing temperatures and possibly wrestle polar bears and maybe....just maybe they saw in that one nervous glance they shot my way...in that moment when our eyes connected that I was some one who had the notable distinction of having watched EVERY episode of the first generation of Power Rangers, except for the one where they got the green ranger, and knew I could probably do some serious back alley street fighting if need be. (I have to take a moment and curse pre-vcr and pre-dvr days. Damn you archaic past with no means of recording the Power Rangers, especially the episode when they got the green ranger...damn you.)

Having this entire mental battle with possible gang members and do-gooder store employees whilst I do something out of the norm in a back alley rarely used street played on my nerves. So when I saw that car in my rear view mirror, the cop car, silently stalking up the hill behind me, Officer inside most likely coming to arrest me for taking our garbage cans on a public outing, for subjecting the fine citizens of Oceanside to strange parking and unusual use of a Honda, I was damn near frozen with fear. The car came closer and I winced and gritted my teeth and tried my best not to fling myself out of our vehicle and onto the hood of a moving Police vehicle begging for mercy. Then I wavered, the car drew almost level with ours and I bit my tongue trying not to have my fear twist around inside me and morph into defensive anger resulting in me spewing my annoyance at having a Cop disrupt my work by showing off my impressive vocabulary of 4 letter words.
And he drove by.
What the.......fricking hell?
Did that cop NOT notice that I was in the midst of some seriously sloppy parallel parking? Was he not at all concerned about the possible threat I posed, hauling my own trash cans miles from home to an empty street with convenient parallel parking along the sides? Was me sticking my trash cans out there, subjecting the world to their unusual presence, obviously pretending they were cars to park between, not of criminal importance?
Seriously?
I mean I had an escape route all picked out, I was grabbing hold of my honey and prepared to haul my ass and his over the sandy embankment, weaving between the palm trees until we hit the highway at which point we were going to start thumbing a ride to Mexico, Cuba or Canada. I can not reveal which, as this pretty much constitutes all of my secret escape plans, and if I told you which location I was headed for you could be coerced into revealing that fact and I might very well end up prosecuted for such crimes as practicing parallel parking between trash cans.
My husband says I should not worry. And that the Cop just rolled on by all casual like with out so much as a blurp from his siren or flash of his lights because he obviously summed up the situation. That we were practicing parallel parking in a safe, out of the way location. And we were using trash cans instead of stranger's cars so as to minimize the potential damage.
Hmm. Possibly.
OR he could have been radioing us in and calling for backup, having seen the same thing the store employee saw when he flicked a glance at me from behind his standard issue cop sunglasses.
Alan says that gnawing, palm sweating edge of my seat ready to strike a Power Ranger pose feeling is just nerves. Driver's inexperience. A case of too much embarrassment.
I think it's because a part of my brain knows that I most definitely must be committing some sort of crime. I have to be.
Why else would it feel so crime-y?
I just can not bring myself to believe that the only one with a problem about practicing parallel parking with trash cans is me. I am sure it is an issue that is weighing heavily on every one's minds.
The skateboarder kid probably went home early from the movie, unable to concentrate on on the ta ta's and spent the evening polishing his flaming skull thinking about me. Me parking the car parallel style. And the cop has got to be kicked back in his lazy boy recliner, dog chewing on his handcuffs, the Evening News a low murmur in the back ground accompanying the rapid flip of pages as he thumbs through his Cop rule book. Looking for the law that says practicing parallel parking with trash cans is wrong. I have seen the tv shows. I KNOW how this works, a judge some where is on hold, growing increasingly frustrated with me, a person he's never met, as he waits for the Cop to find the law so he can issue the warrant and they can come haul me and my trash cans away to jail. I am not sure I have enough bail money for all three of us.
Alan says nobody cares if a beginner driver practices parking in a parking lot, that we're not all born just knowing instinctively how to parallel park. He gently points out again the only one acting oddly is me........ Hmmmmm.
Tomorrow I am going to go practice parallel parking again. I am defying the fear, of either embarrassment or of going to jail for playing with my trash cans in public. Either way I'm overcoming the nerves. Perhaps I'm cut out for a life of crime after all.

Holiday Hibernation

(Look at all that empty space. Where the tree once stood there is nothing now but one plastic grandchild which lays there drunkenly until I stuff her back in the closet until next Christmas. Look past her to the SPACE. A gal could do a lot with space like that. I feel giddy.)

I knew it was time when I heard that very distinct sound. The subtle, hypnotic sound akin to trickling water from the eaves of a house on a rainy day in Spring. The sort of sound that is soft and gentle and makes one's own eyes start feeling heavy, falling under the mesmerizing spell of something else falling asleep.
But I am not in the mood for sleeping.
I am in the mood for throwing open my craft closet doors and peering into the very depths of chaos and grabbing hold of messes by the throat and throttling them back into submission. Until at such time when I am done, and the beast of clutter has been, if not tamed, subdued, and I shut the closet doors on new order. On neat and tidy little rows of jars labeled prettily with little stickers that say things like "Bottle Caps" and "Dead cd's".
This may be an unattainable goal, I may end up with teetering piles of things that should not even share the same closet let alone the same shelf like clay and broken drinking glasses I can not bare to part with, but it IS my mood.
So this slowly creeping, softly crawling fog of dozy contentment settling over the house just will not do. If it were a child it's head would be dipping further and further until it's chin bumped it's own chest and I would grab the video camera and record it so we could all sit about later and laugh. If it were a bear it would grumble softly and snort and snuffle and lay it's mighty paw across it's eyes and burrow underneath it's own weight as best it could. If it were my cat the snores would already be alarmingly loud and shaking the walls of a house better than any earthquake.
But it's not any of that. It's Christmas.
Christmas is tired and as much as it and I would love to keep it up all year there comes a moment when you realize it's time to go to bed.
Even the most exciting time of year slows down. It can not keep such a frenetic pace forever. But it tries, if you let it, Christmas will try and keep up, like a faithful puppy following along wagging it's garlands and glittering lights. But eventually it's energy lags, it's light dims and you see the drooping of it's ornaments, the Nutcrackers are no longer standing to attention as much as they are asleep on their feet. And every so often like a gust of wind a soft sigh sweeps through the house as Christmas yawns and struggles to stay awake.
It's contagious too.
I would love to see all my Christmas surround me the whole year but as the sun shines longer every evening and the weather warms and my urge to organize has my fingers itching, Christmas weaves it's spell. It hunkers down and yawns again and I find my eyes tearing as I struggle against my own urge to yawn. To perhaps just curl up on the soft white blanket beneath the tree and have a little nap.
But beware.
Christmas is used to napping for 11 months and if you do not wish to do the same then you mustn't fall under it's spell.
So I concede.
It's time.
Christmas is all but asleep on it's feet so I begin to haul out the bags and containers that it will hibernate in for the year. And just like that, as if sensing relief from the constant effort of being merry, like a smile held too long and hard Christmas droops and folds in on it's self and I hear the faintest rustle of ribbons snuggling tight together and then nothing.
It's eerily quiet as Christmas is tucked away into the garage.
Almost too quiet and I worry for a moment that it could smother in it's bag. I wonder if I know tree cpr and I wonder if perhaps I left Christmas up just a little too long if I am frozen with indecision and guilt and glancing back longingly at the huddle of shadowy shapes that is Christmas asleep in the corner.
But I shake it off. And I do not walk away but run. Renewed energy.
The absence of Christmas makes the living room look naked and vulnerable. But I kind of like it. I run over and stand where the tree was and spin a circle glorying in this instant space. I marvel at how much rooooooooom there is and it makes me itch with an un-natural urge to vacuum. To fluff pillows and dust shelves and rearrange the books. Christmas is asleep and the energy of a new Year has me half drunk with desires to move the sofa and alphabetize the spices and arrange my clothes in the closet by color.
I want to wear tank tops and walk bare feet and have ice cream cones. I want to make jams and salads and raise every blind in the house so that sun pours in and reveals the sparkling dust motes in the air and covering every surface. I want to go wild with my duster and sweep and brush in crazy places I haven't ever dared look before like on top of door frame, tippy toe style under the watchful eye of my cats. I want to think about gardens and plant herbs and sit down to some serious figuring about whether I can grow a giant king sized pumpkin in a container on my second floor patio. I want to hear bees and smell flowers and stalk the lizards who warm themselves on the patio and crawl with my butt in the air after them with my camera jammed against my face and hope that google earth takes a good picture of my ass.
And then, to top it all off. I want to do things I never even thought of doing before.
I want to raise the garage door and reveal the pandemonium inside to the January sun. I will stand there, back lit with my weapons of choice. My broom and my spider stick and will resist the urge to giggle maniacally lest the neighbors hear.
I want to FIND the garage floor, I want to stack and move and shift and arrange until it is unrecognizable in it's new trim tidiness. Then I want to sweep that floor and spin circles on it too and maybe have races with old backless office chairs across the concrete whilst Christmas sleeps mere feet away, unknowing, un-caring.
Dreaming about snow and candy canes and mulled wine and little oranges that make stockings bulge roundly, boxes of chocolates, full tummies and carols blasting from the speakers and maybe...of me.

Parking Lot Picnics.....

We have dueling bellies. When they get hungry the low threatening growls that emanate from our stomachs is enough to drain the blood from the faces of those unfortunate enough to stand near.
GRRRRRRROWWWWWWwwwLLL!
The poor souls, caught in the back and forth hunger pains of our stomachs, gasp and sputter. There's the familiar tell tale sound of panic, similar to that of water circling down the drain, but it's the blood fleeing their heads!
It's not a wild cougar under our shirts, we don't do that any more. It's our tummies rumbling, Pooh style, as in Whinnie the, and as my husband likes to say "My belly button is rubbing a blister against my backbone."
So fine, eat. We do. But occasionally when we are out on one of those multiple store shopping sprees, hopping from place to place, trunk filling with loot we find ourselves stranded. Stuck in the middle of a sea of fast food, which we pretty much NEVER eat any more, and our bellies are growling at each other. People walk a wary distance from us, lest something horror movie-esque should happen, like demented alien creatures ripping forth to lunge at each other in a disgusting and completely un-holiday like brawl in the parking lot.
We can't help it. We're hunnnnnnngry!
Fast food whispers, the sly little devil in our ear. The voice that sounds suspiciously like a Carl's Jr commercial. And though it is tempting, so tempting to slip quietly into the masses lined up in one of those joints a vein of of something un-masses like runs through us. When we are hungry we are like 2 year olds, wants it NOW, but 2 year olds in adult bodies with debit cards in our pockets, fast food devils in our ears and a hankering for cheese that isn't so neon yellow it makes the sun look pale.
Before we are reduced to licking the odd stain on the car door that we are at least 96 % sure is a soda from 4 years ago, that vein of adult-ness throbs. It quiets the beast of our bellies for a moment with the promise of food. Food fast. But NOT Fast food.
The lights of the Trader Joes spill across the parking lot, illuminating the glistening Southern California cars that are polished to a high shine. It gilds the hair of the pedestrians loaded down with bulging sacks of goodness. Our nostrils flare as we pass the sweet Grandma-esque lady with the loaf of french bread sticking out the top of her bag and my belly growls and she glances warily at me and I flash my teeth and try not to look like a vampire in need of a fix.
We're on a mission.
FOOD!
We do not stroll into the store but we barrel through the crowd, wielding our little basket like a machete, cutting a path through the shopper's dazed crowds.
My husband and I are a well oiled, food procuring machine. Words need not be spoken, just the occasional soft grunt of satisfaction as wedge after wedge of good cheese bounces into the bottom of our basket. Aged Vermont cheddar, garlic herb gouda...I try not to cry when Alan picks up the Gruyere.
I try not to.
But the glistening shine isn't all from the holiday music piped in over the speakers. It's the desire for cheese kick boxing the hold on my hunger restraints.
We hurry through the store, we nab two containers of hummus, double back for a bag of mixed arugula salad greens and our grins are fierce as we near the finish line. Perhaps the other shoppers see it as well because they part, a wave of humanity as we zero in on the freshly made bread at the other end of the store.
Is there a clock ticking? There must be. Time is a factor, perhaps the gnawing aches in our belly really is a beast that will be unleashed at the stroke of absolute famish-ness if we do not hurry.
Every thing is going well, going perfectly until the bread display looms before us. Maybe it's because we are delirious with hunger or maybe it's because the multiple store trips is putting us into a catatonic like state but deciding on what bread to get suddenly seems monumental.
Garlic or olive? Garlic or olive? Garlic or olive?
The words do not just replay over and over on a loop in my head but we are muttering them out loud, clutching our little basket to our chest and staring with un-blinking eyes at the damnably delicious bread choices. Damn Trader Joes, why did there have to be so many choices? We want bread. Any bread, we are hunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnngry, and the devil in our ear chuckles. Thinking it is close to winning, pointing an invisible finger at the closest Del Taco.
What happened next....was it a Christmas miracle? Maybe. It was amazing. Our control was crumbling, our fingers trembling, our mouths watering and our brains locked in the impossible decision of Garlic or olive bread when it happened.
IT happened.
It couldn't have been any more amazing of a moment if a fricking angel had swooped down on a beam of golden light and pointed a glowing finger in the right direction for us.
Rosemary.
We sighed, together, synchronized and our smiles were genuine and relieved. Rosemary bread. Peeking out from behind the garlic, of course. Rosemary bread. The world made sense once more and our bodies kicked back into gear.
I don't remember standing in line, paying for our purchases or carting them out to the car. My next conscious memory is with a mouth full of cilantro pepper hummus, a hunk of rosemary bread in one hand, a ripped open bag of lettuce cradled between my knees and the whimpering of our cravings dying down to mere purrs of delight.
I am sure we paid for our goods, no Trader Joes' store cops beat on our windows and demanded we give the cheese back.
We traded the wedge of garlic herb back and forth eating it in the most satisfying way possible, gnawing off hunks of it with our teeth. The hummus we of course attack with our car spoons. The ever present pair of cheap metal spoons that we store in the dash for when we buy pints of ice cream or cases such as this when hummus is around and it's a food needin' emergency. For a while, nothing but companionable silence and intense chewing filled the car.
There was no need to talk, nothing to say and words would just take up valuable mouth space we were reserving for bread.
Cars came and went around us in the parking lot. We watched with mild interest as some one came by rolling away all the abandoned shopping carts. The lights of the neighboring store cast a red glow over the hood of the car and it was lovely.
Almost romantic.
A parking lot picnic.

Fairies and dragons and bears oh my....

If they'd been equipped with little hammers they'd have been clobbering me over the head for days now.
Not that I'd have noticed as apparently I am dense. VERY dense.
It might be a Canadian thing, a certain amount of hereditary cultural denseness that makes us all withstand winter after winter after..oh look MORE snow.
I have been moaning about the lack of tree decorating that has happened here, well as much as I moan. It's more like I have been remarking on a daily basis that I am surprised the earth has not spun off it's axis and crashed into the moon because I have not put any decorations on my lovely, but bare, pre-lit Christmas tree.
I have an excuse though. My husband has written me a note explaining to any one who dares question my lack of Christmas spirit, that we have both been up to our holly jolly ears in work. Apparently his clients don't care if our tree is decorated or not and still expect their websites when they're due...go figure, and I apparently am addicted to Etsy. It's just that every time I sell an item on there the people, just like my husband's clients, expect me to actually SEND them their item.
And then I feel inspired and thrilled and craftiness is practically spewing from my fingertips as I create character after character to re-supply my store. The crafty circle of life keeps a spinning and the tree is giving me a guilt complex.
On top of the business, which we very very much appreciate, I have had the audacity to enjoy my cozy, in front of the fireplace, meals with my husband rather than lugging ornaments upstairs for the tree.
But again, as I sculpt a Westie dog ornament, a shimmery blue Elfsicle and glittery eyed dragon ornaments, I mutter about how I just can NOT believe that I have not decorated the tree yet, so much so that even the cats are going "Come ON already, we get it. Bare tree, ok, shaddup."
I have several places I store the items I make, one of them is to the left of my desk. A metal wire shelf unit thing-a-ma-jig that houses our printers and batteries and most of my hanging ornaments.
To the right of my desk is our Christmas tree.
The universe could not have been any more obvious than if it had emailed me a detailed plan of action....and yet...I was blinded by Etsy lust and taco salad evenings watching the final episodes of Star Gate.
Until tonight.
You may have felt that shift in the universe, that subtle tingling along your extremities that means the slowly spiraling out of control earth, because it all revolves around my actions or in this case non-actions, was pulled back into it's regularly scheduled alignment.
Swear to Gawwwwwwwwwwd, after almost 2 weeks of a naked tree I was suddenly struck by an idea so simple and obvious and beautiful that it must have been some sort of divine intervention. It sparked to life like a match, flaring and building until I was so shocked by the obviousness I could no longer sit still. I hopped from my seat and stared at the tree.
Funny thing about instantaneous moments of sheer genius, they are hard to recollect after the moment passes. Alan and I can't remember who exactly said the idea first, he or me? Not that it matters, except it lends proof to the notion this idea just grew on it's own with no help from he or me at all.
Handmade, lovingly crafted ornaments sculpted by yours Truly hanging to the left of my desk, giant naked Christmas tree to the right....
And just like two atoms colliding there was a burst of pure radiant thought so clear and bright I am sure it illuminated the room. My husband and I basked in the radiance for only a minute before succumbing to the giddy delight of decorating our Christmas tree.
With all the handmade ornaments I had hanging to the left of my desk, moving them exactly 9 feet from the left to the right.
It was a beautiful moment, and perhaps just maybe the reason why it seemed so impossible to take the cache of regular Christmas ornaments stored in the garage up stairs.
Sometimes the universe confuses me, it makes me cut my finger on the cat food lid, spill my water on the remote controllers, sprinkle coffee beans around the kitchen with spazz-ing fingers all willy nilly as if I am the coffee bean fairy. Sometimes it causes coat hangers to damn near spit in my face defying my will and mocking me with their simple yet secretly evil existence. The universe has me trip on non-existent rocks in the middle of the living room floor and maneuver me in line behind strange people at the stores so I can fully experience their weirdness. The universe and me have a tempestuous relationship.
But I am thinking I now need to find a Christmas gift for it, as it has provided me with this simple but brilliant holiday tree decorating solution.
Now what does one get the Universe that equates to moving ornaments 9 feet?
Do you think it would like a scarf?

Semi-Precious Love

Our love is semi precious, diamonds schmimonds, those things are expensive, and hard and what's the point?
Our wedding rings cost 15 dollars each, well, the second ones did. The first ones, the really cool copper bands we bought in Arizona for the grand total of 3 dollars, and I think that was for both of them, the ones we wore even though our fingers turned green and they squished and dented because copper was soft and eventually starting breaking, the ones we wore before we were even married, ohhhhhhh, living in sin people, just had to be replaced.
When they broke, our hearts did a little too because they were our first rings but we traded up, tucking the pretty, tarnished, turning greenish bands of half broken copper away and picked out the ultra cool celtic-esque bands we wear now.
We're doubly married, not because these are our second rings but because we wear one on each hand and it looks really cool. And when we are together, which is always, and people comment on the rings and query as to their significance we smile and say it means we're doubly married and they turn pale and start thinking about polygamy. But then they get brave and ask what doubly married means and we just smile, and gesture elegantly with our hands so that the store's fluorescent lighting glints on them and we try to look mysterious, which is a little hard to do in toe shoes, and we gather our grocery bags in our hands and float out of the store like royalty.
Our wedding cost 250 dollars. And it rocked. 60 dollars for the marriage license stuff, 75 dollars for 3 seafood meals, and 100 dollars fr the dress.
I didn't need a fancy dress but my husband steered me to the poofy section of the Macy's store and I gulped and we had a fine time together as I tried on every dress they had. I am pretty sure it was the prom section. But it was our wedding, and we had fun. Most people say they remember walking down the aisle, I remember the time spent modeling dresses for my husband. He liked the strapless, sizzling black dress with sequins. I liked the penguin colored dress that I figured could double as a vampire costume in the future. I am thrifty that way.
I am pretty sure I saw at least one eyebrow raise because I chose a predominantly black wedding dress.
I am pretty sure that I saw two eyebrows raise because I wore Halloween socks with my sandals. Dirt cheap sandals I bought at a Longs Drug store the year before, big black rubber soles and velcro straps, the perfect place to tuck one teeny tiny Canadian flag pin. They showed off my Halloween socks like nobody's business.
In my wedding photos, that we took ourselves with the camera on self timer, trespassing, literally trespassing, in somebody's Orange Grove show us as a deliriously happy, and damn swanky looking couple. My husband sporting a tie that made his blue eyes pop, me in my penguin coloured ball gown-esque dress...and no body knows but me that under the layers of floor length tulle and faux satin that my feet are adorned with Halloween socks and beach sandals. Well except for the double eye brow raiser, my husband and the world because of course I was so proud of my feet that I took a photo. (Incidentally I am pretty sure I have worn crazy socks to most of the momentous occasions in my life. At least momentous as defined by laws and society, my high school graduation, INS appointments and marriage. Cool.)
We celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary not long ago. And just like when a birthday, his or mine, rolls around we haul out the calculators and do the math. Because we can not remember not being together, and assigning a number makes it seem weird. How can it only be 7 years of marriage????? ONLY 7?
And then we grin because we can remember when we hadn't even met in person yet but were engaged, though I suspect there was more eye rolling by folks unnamed back then, and the moment comes back with a harsh crystal clarity that makes my face flush because it was all such an accidental meeting online. So random, that it scares me. What if I hadn't messaged him? Right out of the blue, a complete stranger, just to chat, like the hundreds of other people I'd messaged and chatted to every day? But he laughs because he doesn't believe we couldn't have met. If it hadn't been that it would have been something else. We're like magnets, though I do not believe we are opposites, only magnetic in that if you shook us up in this giant world full of people the pull would eventually draw us together.
Snap.
We spend more time together than I suspect people married twice, or even 3 times as long as us have. We are together 24 hours a day with the incredibly rare exception when he has a business meeting and for the hell of it I hang out at a store while he business-izes.
We finally bought 2 cell phones, the cheapest ones they had because during the second last business meeting, he couldn't find me at the mall. The cell phone we had which we hadn't used in a year had apparently died and we didn't have 2 because why would we? We're always together. But he was clever and played Rockford and staked out the most likely place I'd eventually show up. The book store. He's ingenious that way, and he showed me the note he left in the Nora Robert's book inside in case I came in the store from a different side and we laughed because I had already bought the book. But not the one with the note, darn.
So we got 2 cell phones.
We celebrated our anniversary with style. One bottle of port, a loaf of crusty homemade kalamta olive sour dough bread, 7 kinds of cheese, smoked salmon and the new Jim Butcher
book. We took turns reading chapters.
We thought about going out but why would we? The best place in the world is at home.
I really do think our love is semi precious, I have always thought it weird that diamonds are associated with love. Because they're *rare*? That's sad. Made under pressure? Weird. Cold, clear and expensive? That is not my love.
Our love is colorful, plentiful and in some ways cheap. Puffed out chest with pride, cheap, because love doesn't cost anything and should be easily available to everyone.

Following thoughts to their natural conclusions......

...even if those conclusions are at the end of a twisted path of darkness strewn with piles of mental weirdness.

On the rare occasion I have to..well....do in a bug.

Now I have to insert the zillion and a half disclaimers before I can get to my point.

• 1. I don't like killing anything.
• 2. I go to great lengths, incredibly convoluted and most likely comical to watch lengths, to safely remove an uninvited guest from our home, depositing them back out into the wild aka the patio. I do the same for bugs as I do for Aunt Frieda.
• 3. We even leave spiders in the corners if they've made a web there because spiders eat little bugs and then that's just the circle of life and me not having to worry about the fate of one less bug.
• 4. We have a dedicated bug catching jar. If you've ever ran for a glass and a piece of cardboard or what ever during a visit by a bug you wish to evict you know how un-nerving it is on every one to be shrieking at ear blasting decibels as you frantically look for proper eviction materials all the while keeping one eye on the bug that is MOVING, and not staying in one damn spot and patiently waiting for it's free ride out the door. Having a dedicated bug catching jar means when we spy a bug, say a moth that is trying to drive our cats insane by having the audacity to flit about in their field of view, we can quickly launch into Plan A:BUG-BE-GONE-BYEBYE and have that moth safely out the door. Before the cats start climbing the blinds whilst yowling and desperately swiping at their desired prey...the moth. Cats, go figure. (That's how you know house cats really are domesticated. Ya don't see the National Geographic people filming a pack of wild lions swatting at butterflies for an afternoon snack now do ya?)
• 5. We have rules, a sort of truce with the spiders. Should they obey the rules of said truce, we leave em be. Stay the heck off the kitchen counters, the sofa, the bed and the cats and we will stay off of them. Now that seems pretty fair, there's been a time or two I saw a spider scuttling along Mission Impossible style in the hallway along the baseboards. I turned a blind eye.

BUT...there are times we have to do the unthinkable and resort to drastic measures. There is much mumblings of "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorrrrrrry" as the deed is done and done quickly. Yecccccck.

So I got to thinking about the taking of a life, albeit itty btty creepy crawly ones.
And I got to thinking about how people say they've seen their dead Grandmothers and Uncles and what not after those relatives have passed over. And how some people, like the Medium/Clairvoyants you see on television say that those passed over spirits are often with us.
So I wondered, are the dead bugs with us too?
And suddenly, when I had that thought I could easily envision a dark cloud of little transparent bugglies hovering about me like a grey aura as I skip through life.
And I wonder, when people say their homes are haunted, why would Great Aunt Bertha be knocking on your walls? Wouldn't the victims, the squashed ones, the dead spiders and ants and icky creepy earwigs have more of a reason to come floating about wreaking havoc than Great Aunt Bertha?
And then I started thinking about how even though I take great pains to not have to *do in* any bugs, that if you added up all the bugs I have *done in* over the years that it's one hell of a lot. And since I'm married and my husband and I share everything I have to add his buggy victims to the pile as well. And the shroud of creepy crawly ghosties expands even further in my imagination.
In fact, I wonder if the whole world, if we could see bug ghosties, would be thick with them. That there'd be not an ounce of free space left, that we're swimming through the souls of all the critters we *done in* and when I thought that I got a shiver up my spine.
It crawled like creepy fingers over my skin until my flesh had erupted into goosebumps and my eyes, which had already stopped blinking 5 minutes ago when I first started my ghoulish thoughts, were watering with the effort to prevent them from drying out. My arms itched, in fact the right one itched the most and I looked down, gasping in disgust at the ant that had mysteriously made it's way through various obstacles like the windows and doors and what have you and before I could even say poltergeist my left hand reflexively slapped down on the little bugger and.....
Poof, one more bug ghost to haunt me.
Great.
One more thought, ants are probably going to be the majority of my bug ghost populace for a very long time. But Black Widows are running a close second. I can't decide which is worse, Black Widows stringing their webs across the foot of the stairs we have to go up and down every day or Black Widow ghosts, most likely very very angry black widow ghosts hanging about my head doing what ever nasty thing black widow spider ghosts do.
HEY! Let's end on a bright note. Maybe the Black Widow spider ghosts are eating all the ant ones. Sweet!

Coyote Complex....

(Photo courtesy of me, cause I took it last year. I am thinking just by examining the details of the coyote's posture that this is feller I heard outside...)

A dog began barking at 4:07 in the morning from a distance of a few hundred feet of the house. Oh do not worry this is not going to disintegrate into a "shaddduupp" ya dang dog type post. First of all being the revolving schedule type people that we are, we were wide awake and about to make some fabu garlic fries.
Second of all he probably had a reason for barking, even if it was a silly reason it was his reason. Like he'd like to go for a walk now, or have some extra crunchy food or voice his opinion on the neighborhood rabbits.
Bark, bark bark, he went.
"That dog sounds really close." I say to my husband in that way a person does when they are unable to stop themselves from stating the obvious.
Sucked into the conversation pit of obvious-icity my husband looks up from his computer, cocks his head to the side and listens, answers, "Yep, close."
Then, as if things couldn't get any more exciting the barking dissolves into the mournful, goosebumps raising, ear piercing wail of a coyote.
"Ohhh, it's a coyote." I say (see obviousness is a disease. Treatable but pretty hard to shake)
Alan agrees, "Yes, it really sounded like a dog but it's a coyote." The circle of obviousness continues and we wallow in the pit of boring words that surrounds us.
But the coyote, he keeps howling, and barking.
Which is nothing new, gangs of coyotes run through the area on a nightly basis, serenading us with their eerie songs and scaring the beejesus out of us during scary vampire movie scenes when the victim is jusssssst about to get their throat sucked and the silence is complete as the vampire shuffles closer and then..... "Awooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo".
Chorus of coyote howls, which sound suspiciously like a pack of crazed lunatics on the loose, whooping it up California style, let loose so close to the house it actually sounds like they're on the sofa next to me. Which is saying something because our sofa is a love seat, and the coyotes would have to be in my lap to be on it with us.
Can I get a breathless "ohhh, yeah that's closssse." from the crowd?
Thanks.
But this night in particular the solo voice of the coyote seems mournful, sad and desperate.
This isn't just any coyote I realize, as I rise from my computer chair, half frozen with indecision and an instinctive need to right what ever wrong is causing this coyote such emotional pain that he's out there all by his lonesome in the dark crying.
This coyote is obviously separated from the pack and is crying out, his voice the only coyote voice on the damp night air, bouncing off the hills around and echoing back at him in a cruel mockery of his aloneness, perhaps tricking him for just a second, one second, that he's not alone that there are other coyotes out there also calling the same sad wail of his own, looking for company.
I stand.
Something needs to be done.
Some sort of chemical reaction has happened in my brain. I can almost see the bubbling beaker of frontal lobe potion being poured into the parietal lobe test tube of calm rationale and causing a frenetic explosion of a super-hero-wanna-be complex that froths through my nervous system like a 4th grade baking soda volcano's lava flow.
"Alan that coyote, he's alone. ALONE!" I say this to my husband with all the intensity as I would if I saw a brush fire, or a car jacker or ice cream on sale at the grocery store.
My tone alerts him, his auto pilot for stressed wife situation kicks in and he rises from his computer, fingers blindly hitting Command S, (saving what ever work he's working on) and turns to gather his wide eyed wife into his arms as we both listen to the lone coyote cries.
"Well it's NOT like you can go out there and do anything." He says in that calm, "everything is A-OK " way he has. The same voice he'd use if he saw the moon exploding, or a nuclear bomb about to crash on our heads, calm and collected his voice is the base to my acid frothed brain that is insisting I go help that coyote.
He emphasizes the "Not" in that way he does, with just the slightest firming of the word that I'm sure no one else would notice, but I do, because I can hear all the things he says even when he's not actually saying them.
I hear, in that slightly deeper, gently amused "NOT" that a coyote is a wild animal, not a dog. They could have rabies and at the very least sharp claws and teeth. That it's not our place to go out and interfere with the emotional needs of a wild animal and that I'm inferring a helluva lot into one lone coyote's noise. I also hear, as the "t" sound from the "Not" rolls off his tongue that he can practically see me in my super hero outfit that I really oughtta make some day to go with this complex I have. Popping up at strange noises outside, on alert, ready and willing to run out and fight on the side of justice and scared coyotes.
I sigh, deflated.
And suddenly, another coyote starts yipping from the other side of the house. It's voice joining the first.
No Disney movie music started swelling into a triumphant crescendo indicating dramatic and life changing, happy ever after events were taking place now, in case you blinked and missed it with your eyes...but it should have.
I gasped.
"HE'S FOUND!!!!!!"
Alan laughs, the coyotes do indeed sound like they're talking to each other and is that a hint of relief I hear in the first coyote's barks? Or is that relief just in my own head?
"The second coyote is telling the first one he thought they were supposed to meet over by the old road and that's why he's late." Alan says, because he can translate coyote and can hear what I'm hearing.
We barely have time to grin foolishly at each other, still hugging, still standing in the middle of the living room, a human part in the coyote soap opera of the night when the 2 coyote voices become what sound like dozens.
It's a coyote party, a reunion!
Everything is going to be o.k, oooookaaaaaaaay.
We separate and head back to our computers, the coyote party drifts away until their voices no longer are carried to us on the night air.
Having a wacky schedule means more than garlic french fries at 4:07 in the morning. It means getting to be part of the secret, dramatic life of the neighborhood coyotes.
I'm sure the coyotes could care less.

Un-phonie.

(rock station, place where the cell phone charges.)

I talk on the phone about 3 to 5 times a year. *gasp* Half my audience just fainted and the other 3 of you are clutching your chests in horror. Because I don't have a cell phone glued to my ear? Because I don't consider conversation via actual.....VOICE as necessary to my day as good coffee and oxygen?
Apparently that's so.
The ones who fainted are most likely slowly coming around now and are thrusting trembling fingers at me in accusatory points and are stuttering out "B-b-b-but your mama? You only talk to your Mama once or twice a year on the phone?"
Yep.
O.k., you quit your eye rolling right now, there's this thing. Called the internet? Might have heard of it? I am almost positive I can type as fast as I can talk, well...maybe. And there's this other thing called messenger that makes life so much fun. I probably talk to my Mama more often than those phone caller types do to theirs. And also if we're typing a conversation I can do sporadic bursts of ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, WHILE she's typing too. If I do that on the phone she'd be forced to stop talking until her loon daughter caught her breath.
Now don't get me wrong, I do not think phones are evil nor do I fear them nor do I suspect the American government might think I'm a Canadian spy and are listening to my every "The weather's warm down here EH, How's everything going EH, how much snow have y'all got now...EH?" that falls from my lips during my semi annual actual voice telephone call.
Perhaps it's not that I dislike phones, because I don't, but it's that I love the internet sooooooooooooo much. The internet makes the telephone seem like the sad little hunch back member of the family that no one wants to make eye contact with but you feel like you should give the obligatory hug to anyways. The internet lets you type out your words and then immediately hit delete, delete, delete, delete until you come across as a person who swears a helluva a lot less than you actually do....
Not to mention it lets you simultaneously watch a video, chat to multiple people at the same time, email photos and look up the definition of the word you couldn't unscramble from the damn game that keeps defiantly not letting you beat your own high score because you're prettttty darn sure it's lowered itself to inventing words just to mess with your head. Maybe the game designers decided to ignore a major glitch like the computer will blow up if you get past 14962 points so instead of acknowledging your superior intellect and word un-scrambling abilities it just cheats and says that mystery word was ghsuuiz ( a word you'd never guess) and that it's a disease of a horse's joint. (That's not the actual name of the *so called* horse joint disease but I can't be going and remembering words like that when I have so many phone numbers to keep track of...hee hee caught me huh? All right I lied I don't wanna remember joint diseases for horses because I want to save lots of grey matter room for more important things like the release dates for all future movies that involve any kind of super hero.)
Despite my apparent ill will towards the internet word unscrambling game who shall remain nameless because to utter it's title would give it more power than it deserves, seeing as how that mind numbing little sucker has caused much dual gasping and annoyed "no way, that's not a fricking word" from my husband and I as we play on our computers, the same game mind you....Is that cheating? If so do not tell my Mother as we have racked up that magical 14962 score and she is till only at 6721. Muaahhhh ahhh ahhh. But despite that bit of ill will I love the internet.
It makes my phone look like an archaic piece of plastic that I only leave plugged in because I am pretty sure it's not a number 1 or number 2 plastic that I can recycle and I have not as yet come up with a nifty craft made from phones and so it's just as easy to leave it plugged in and make fun of the telemarketers who occasionally call and leave messages on our machine.
One could say I am unfairly biased for the internet since I met my husband through it, on it? Under it? I met my husband via that wonderful magical sticky web that is weaving ever tighter every day, invisible strands of data that I'm sure if we could see would be glistening, sparkling vibrating threads that cover the world in a breath taking blanket of information. If you could see this blanket of interwoven communication threads you might see that the blanket's tightest, strongest, prettiest weave is the bit that connects Nova Scotia, Canada to California. As obviously that bit is the part of the web's history that was my husband and I meeting quite by chance via Yahoo messenger and then chatting back and forth every day for months until we met in person and he whisked me away from the icy cold that is a February in N.S. to the brilliantly warm, palm tree speckled land that is California.
Those that like to nit pick at such details as "your phone is left plugged in" are probably gasping again, most likely the same people who fainted earlier when I confessed the bit about not talking on the phone much. To calm their racing hearts before they give themselves palpitations let me quickly add that YES I do have a cell phone.
And, I'm quite proud to admit it's the cheapest cell phone out there and doesn't do anything but actually let you talk on the phone to another person if you so had a desire to do so. Which I don't unless its my husband and for that oddball once a year meeting he sometimes has to go have with clients and I tag along and browse around a mall near his meeting location. It's nice to be able to call each other and say "Hey, I'm loitering around the Barnes and Noble cooking section and people are starting to give me strange looks for drooling over the cookbook photos so come get me now and lets go have lunch." If you're doing the math than you have also just realized that at least one of my 3-5 phone calls a year is with my own husband. I bet you can't tell if you're appalled or jealous. I'm thinking jealous.
Not having a cellphone glued to my ear is probably increasing my life expectancy anyways, that and my ability to spot a UFO in the sky should one ever whiz down to do a fly by over the Starbucks near the grocery store we shop at.
I say it increases my life expectancy because since I AM paying attention when I walk out of the grocery store, I can SEE all the other people. And an alarming number of them are all apparently talking to themselves, until I realize they have their itty bitty phones glued to their ears and lest any one think they have no friends they feel the need to carry on that all important conversation as they walk the 30 feet from the grocery store to their car. Eyes glazed, hands full of purchases, narrowly avoiding the cars by the their rapidly fading luck alone.
I do not know how much luck each person in this world is assigned but them zombie-ish cell phone parking lot walkers have gotta be blasting through their share like there's no tomorrow. And I know they DO know there's a tomorrow because if you DID know there wasn't one would you spend your last day buying dish soap and diet soda? Lord I hope not. AND on top of all that the cars narrowly avoiding hitting them don't know their luck is rapidly depleting and is displaying a blinking warning symbol in violent red because they too are glued to their cell phones as they back up out of their spaces, narrowly missing the parking lot zombies as they also conduct their oh so important conversation that s worth risking their own lives, the parking lot zombie's lives and my sanity.
Because watching all these near misses with out the cushioning fog of a voice babbling in my ear is gonna crack my poor mind some day. Though I hope not because like I said, when I come out of the store I am not distracted and I can see the pretty pink flowers on the tree some clever person planted through out the parking lot, the paleness of the blue sky and the way the clouds look like the soft fur on the belly of my cat and how the air smells like something sweet, like sugar burning (which is actually a nice smell) and is most likely coming from the bakery next door.
See if I notice all that then I will most likely notice the UFO that hovers over the StarBucks and I will enjoy every minute of it. (Unless I forgot to take my digital camera, than I will be doing less enjoying and more of a tackling sort of thing as I wrestle some one's cellphone with a camera out of their hands so I can get a picture.)

6 things you learned about me throughout the course of this rambling post.

• 1. I rarely use the phone.
• 2. I'm Canadian eh, specifically from Nova Scotia.
• 3. I may be cheating at that word un-scramble game because my husband and I play it together.
• 4. I met my husband through Yahoo Messenger.
• 5. I have an interest in UFOs and coffee.
• 6. I like the smell of burnt sugar.

Why grab six random bits about me from my own blog post, am I just that repetitive and full of myself I think I warrant a list? Umm, yes but also Ms. Tumble Fish from Tumble Fish Studios *tagged* me and I wasn't able to run away fast enough. You remember playing tag as a kid and you'd run until you either hit a tree or fell over gasping for wind and your brothers would barrel into you gleefully shouting "You're it" in your ear, near deafening you and now leaving you with the responsibility of being "IT"? It's like that but with out the increased pulse rate.

• ***7. Here's one bit you didn't learn from this post but I'm tossing in as a freebie. (I'm a rebel that way, some one says 6 and I say 7.) I once emailed the local radio station from my hometown area to ask for information about the Christmas program featuring the Christmas pig that they aired every Holiday season and...they...NEVER...wrote back. I'm not saying I hold a grudge or have a list of wrong doings done by people but I am saying they NEVER wrote back.

A stop motion adventure at a pumpkin farm

When we arrived, the parking lot was a field. Row upon row of glistening cars, the sun bouncing off of chrome, glossy windshields and So-Cal bumper stickers, blinding all the new comers. It was un-like any visit to a farm I'd ever partaken in before.
Getting out of the car I was struck immediately by the scent. You'd think it would be animal by-product in nature but it wasn't. If you can imagine what dry smells like, this was it. Dust rose in little clouds with each step we took, tickling our noses and mingling with the clashing aroma of a Piña colada. But alas there were no such tropical drinks on hand, instead I was smelling the people. Slicked up in layers of SPF123, varying scents of coconut and perfumes that every one seemed drenched in. Perhaps they hadn't really showered in essentials oils before arriving though, perhaps years of scented products were being released from their clothes and bodies with every sun-baked minute they stood out there.
We only made it a hundred feet before retreating back to our car for Plan B. Which included more water, our hats and a few moments to wave our hands in front of our faces Southern Belle style and proclaim to each other that "It surely was hot out here today."
"Spicy!" My husband said, and I agreed.
Despite the heat and the insane amount of people who all had apparently decide en masse to get a pumpkin this very day we bent our heads under the weight of the sun and kept our eye on the shadowy glory of the trees up ahead.
As we reached their cover, and a wisp of blissful coolness caressed our flushed faces I found more than comfort under those trees. I found tiny ponies, that I longed desperately to have ferry me about the place like Lady Godiva but with clothes. But whether it was the fact I was 3 times as tall as these gentle, hay munching beasts or because the idea of straddling a hot hairy animal on a hot harried day was melting my brain just thinking about it I can not say.
We spent the first 20 minutes in the fair like atmosphere of the farm taking umpteen million photos of the tiny ponies. Or, more accurately, my husband stood sweetly by my side as I kneeled in the dirt, un-caring about my behind stuck up in the air as I got my 17th photo of a horse eating hay. He was amused at me but understood. It isn't like one can just walk outside and take a photo of a little pony when ever one wants, so when one finds a little pony at their photo taking disposal one should take as many photos as their little camera card can hold.
Eventually I was torn away from the animals by the lure of meeting up with some relatives. We greeted each other in the age old manner of relatives with nods, ourselves reflecting back at us from their dark sunglasses as we traded boisterous versions of "Hot enough for ya?"
It was decided that we'd all visit the straw maze the farm had erected and here I truly saw country living at it's best. The availability of thick strong straw bales to construct a chest high maze was like ambrosia to my slightly citified mind. We ran through at break neck speeds, having adjusted to the heat or perhaps with delirium from the heat.
With the aid of our nephews we found the hidden mailboxes with stamps in 8 different locations and quickly filled our card. Our joy at the completion of the A-maze-ing task was quickly dimmed by the lack of prize. No statue erected in our honor, no small but tasteful gold leafed trophy that one could display upon their mantle. No instead there were the snickers and wide eyed stares from strangers at our baffled arguments that surely there was a prize.
We decided, after a few moments of pondering that the point of the maze hadn't been the filled card with stamps but the journey getting them, and we felt quite clever, giving smug knowing looks to the people who entered the maze as we exited. Newbies, we had come a long way mentally since entering that very same spot not 10 minutes ago.
The family slowly split apart, each doing their own thing and ours involved scarfing down a bratwurst, a straw bale as our seat. Our hunger had made itself known so hugely and violently that we didn't speak, passing the bratwurst back and forth in a fluid motion so that just as one of us finished chewing the tasty snack was handed back. Fittingly, like cows, we chewed constantly for 5 minutes with the sounds of kids and the murmur of crowds of people as background music.
We let our eyes follow the gentle slope leading downwards towards the un-shaded fields and the promising orange globes that dotted them in comforting numbers.
Despite the amazing amount of people I was sure there'd be no pumpkin shortages and I would find my very own to take home with us.
Re-fueled we made our way towards the fields and as we drew near I was amazed. So many pumpkins. I should have expected a pumpkin farm to very well stocked but the sheer number of the fat little fellows, in piles, scattered about, lonely giant ones, squat white ones and itty bitty baby ones boggled my mind. So many pumpkins.
The large ones beckoned me and I quickly found myself in the throes of a passionate hug with a pumpkin I couldn't even get my arms around. It was an enjoyable moment but even as I drew away I knew there'd been no spark. That what I needed wasn't one of those logic defying beasts but something small and perkier.
I scanned the many piles and slowly a strange feeling drew over me. Something niggled at the back of my mind and I looked about warily, trying to see what my brain was already sensing. It struck me suddenly, it looked as if every one was pregnant. With swollen orange bellies as they cradled pumpkins low in their arms and waddled up to the pumpkin check-out.
I shook the strange feeling away and resumed my own search for the perfect pumpkin to bring in to our lives.
Surprisingly, despite the many choices, the thousands of pumpkin possibilities I zeroed straight into the one that would be ours.I suspect it started calling me with veggie mental telepathy as soon as we entered the field. Magnetic field? Hay field? It doesn't matter, what matters is I swooped down and gathered our pumpkin into my arms and waddled my way to the checkout, no longer apart from the pumpkin impregnated crowds but now one of them.
I caught several people just arriving at the field eying my pumpkin with un-disguised avarice but I just smiled, and held little Arnold all the tighter.
Our feet were starting to protest as the sun was beginning to hang lower in the sky, most likely it was exhausted from such single minded burning intensity it shone with all day.
Before leaving we turned in a full circle, tired but pleased with our decision to go pumpkin adopting at a real pumpkin farm.
The stacked bales of hay, the petting zoo, the fair food and kid's games, the endless supply of pumpkins and happy crowd made for a lovely afternoon.
The strange feeling snuck over me once more and it was Alan who figured out what it was.
The people around us did not flow. They stopped and started, freezing in place like statues, fixed grins plastered on their faces and almost half of them stood with their arms raised, co-ordinating little digital cameras in their hands. The other half held their pumpkins and the scene about us moved like a stop motion animation.
Bursts of stillness, a frenzy of photo snapping, strike a new pose, freeze and snap again.
It was so strange.
It was surreal.
It was a day at a pumpkin farm in the digital age.

A selfish grain of sand.....

Blog Action Day 08 - Poverty

Poverty......I had to look up the definition.
Am I going to hell for admitting that? Heaven's no, I'm going to hell for all those uses of God's name in vain. Now look, I'm not an idiot, I know what poverty is, but when I really thought about it...I mean quelled the inner hamster of my mind, racing in circles, distracted by sitcom laugh tracks, coffee and the looming decision of a Halloween costume, I found myself a little stumped. Muddled.
Where there should have been clarity, meaning my brain, one topic to ponder, clear concise opinions should have made them selves available to me. Instead there was confusion and chaos. It made my head hurt.
Perhaps part of it is that poverty, the very idea of people out there starving and dying from horrible diseases with no place to live, is so hard to believe.
Though I do believe it. I see the commercials. Right between mascara and a wonder drug for your libido you can learn all about saving lives for just pennies a day.
I've also been appalled and horrified by the sight of people sleeping on the side of the road. A handy bush as their roof and a shopping cart apparently the house of all their worldly possessions.
Is that real? That really happens?
I do not believe I'm the only one who feels like their life is cushioned by a fog of surreality when it comes to things like war, natural disasters and poverty. There's even a tiny part of my brain, the part that hides it's face from the idea of death, of scary things that are too big for the mind to grasp like what if there's no God.....or what if there is...? This little part of grey matter tries to argue it.
Sad little portion of the brain that it is, trying to convince me there is no poverty. People can not be homeless. There can not literally be thousands and millions of starving people because if there were we'd fix it.
WE, the rest of us.
US, the un-poverty stricken.
The ones who buy 6 dollar coffee drinks, 50 dollar Wii games and 80 dollar shoes.
WE, the ones who inject poison into our faces to reduce wrinkles, put stripes on our cars, cell phones in every pocket and people in to space....
WE surely would not do any of that if there were starving, dying children in the world...would we?
My brain hurts. I think it hurts the most because I know we do, more so because I do. ME.
The guilt of having credit cards and a fridge full of food and gas in our car and the good kind of cat food for our kitties can weigh pretty heavy on my mind.
Then another layer of guilt handily belly flops down on the first and snarls cruelly at my quivering mind, "You think you feel bad? How about not having any food, how about your family not having any food? No bed to sleep in, no house, no car, no work, bad water.....you cry baby."
So my brain does what any cornered animal does, it goes on the offense.
Billions of dollars in space crap?
Problem solved. Lets funnel it in to all things poverty-wise. Lets not see what Mars rocks look like, lets not give a rat's ass if there's water on other planets and deal with the water on this one...and the fact that some people don't have any that's safe and clean.
See how that worked?
See how I managed to tap into a little righteous anger without doing anything personally myself to help the world?
See how it's not my fault and how I can't really do anything?
See how the few dollars I could spare doesn't make a difference, not when there's such a big need and the space people are blasting millions of dollars up to the moon and beyond?
Pretty clever of my ol' noggin eh?
The brain, it's a beautiful thing...and it's evil.
If it weren't we'd have no issues with poverty. If the area a large group of people lived in was horrible, they'd up and move to a new location. Borders schmorders, we'd welcome them with open arms. (The kind that hug, not the shooting kind.)
Bad brain.
See how it twisted it up again? Yes it would be lovely if the world was all about free love and peace. But it's not. Unless every single person immediately decided to completely alter the way humanity exists....it's not gonna be that.
See how my clever little brain made it about people? Not me...but people. Bad, bad baddddd brain.
There's a part of me that wishes I was strong enough to open my doors and invite any who needs a shelter to come and stay. But I'm not. I am admitting that. I like privacy, I like my life. I love the quality time I have with my husband. I am selfish. Most of us are. Even when we do good things, it's not EVERY thing we could. I see the homeless person on the street but I don't bundle them up into the car and invite them to live with us. I don't move from a house to a one bedroom apartment and donate the difference of rent to a worthy cause. I am selfish.
BUT, tricky, tricky, tricky brain....Oh how you like to twist my thoughts into knots. Large, pulsing, blood red knots that squeeze my insides until I feel I am too exhausted to think any more, and I want to escape into the mindlessness of some frivolous book or tv show.
It whispers how I can't really make a difference with the world. I think that could be true. BUT, you naughty brain there is ONE thing I can change. ONE thing I have control over.
ME!
If I was meant to have power over the actions of everyone. To make great decisions about where people could live, how we would alter the every day runnings of human life to save others, I suspect I'd have that power already....so far this hasn't happened. And yet I have this teeny tiny speck of power, nearly drowned out in the crowd of human life. Power over me.
ONLY me. Each of us has the same speck I think. Power over ourselves. And I can make it so I do not hide from fear. Or escape the responsibility of a wounded world and hurt people by shrugging my shoulders.
Instead of doing nothing, I can do something. I can change me. If I throw dollars at a problem that continues to exists, at least I did something. If I think about a problem and my brain starts a slow leak out of my ears, my eyes cross indefinitely and still I'm no closer to the perfect solution to fix the world.....well...at least I gave it a thought.
And maybe, call me a rose colored glasses, glass half full, pot o' gold at the end of the rainbow kind of person but maybe if I do my little bit.....teeny tiny as it may be....and every one else does there little bit, maybe things will change.
Maybe some day some one in the future will look up the definition of poverty too....but they realllly really won't know what it means.
Because maybe all the itty bitty teeny weeny minuscule things we all do, and keep trying to do, will erode away the insanity of the world. If not in this generation...maybe in the next one...or the next...or the next...or....

Dear great great great great great to the power of 57394757494758495 grandchildren of humanity, I will try and do something, I will be the best little grain of sand I can, even if it makes my brain hurt. Love me.....

p.s. having made a conscious effort to try and find some thing I can do to help, even in my own tiny, grainy sand way, it was as if the universe presented me an opportunity to follow through with my good intentions.
And I did.
And it felt good and bad.
I can admit that throwing a few dollars at a greater problem, POVERTY, knowing that some one out there has had it sooo bad, that even a few dollars can make a difference...it's humbling, scary and heart breaking. But knowing I did something, anything, instead of nothing.......what's that I see? Would that be a tiny spark of hope? A glimmer or a shiny future filled with peace and equality for all?
Damn right it is.

All Fired Up!

I have more than a chip on my shoulder.....
You know how a person can rant and rave about how inanimate objects defy them and how the Universe is testing their patience, their will and their sanity?
And how if a person keeps blathering about things like coat hangers that nearly cracked the fragile and tenuous hold some one has on their mighty reservoir of frustrated anger how other people start to raise their eyebrow, just the one ala Spock?
And how it's pretty damn hard to gather evidence of these inanimate objects etc to bring before one's peers to shine the light of truth upon their evil little ways?
Because throwing a handful of coat hangers, carpet tacks and miscellaneous spilled trash before one's friends doesn't prove that they did you wrong. The stuff not the friends, they didn't do me wrong yet but I keep a careful eye on them. If the old adage "keep your friends close and your enemies uncomfortably closer" is true then doesn't it stand to reason that some of the people I consider to be my closest friends must actually be my enemy, or at least I theirs?
It's something to ponder when life hands you small moments to reflect on the weirdness of the world...
But anyways I was rambling on about the defiance of things I face. People with kids think they have it tough? Ha!
Finally I have proof that either the fates are in cahoots with the Universe, or the Universe is in cahoots with the inanimate objects or perhaps I have an alter ego type personality that is constantly trying to undermine my smooth sailing through the day or.....and this isn't just the conspiracy crazed voice of fear just talking here, maybe they're alllllllllll in it together......
How else can I, or you for that matter explain THIS?
(Please read that last word "this" as dramatically as you can ala your favorite mystery movie when the culprit is revealed with much dramatic finger pointing, British accents and Shakespearean flair. Thanks)
These are my corn chips....or they WERE....
Let me take us on a slight detour from my point.
Corn chips are a staple in our household. In fact if there could be some sort of blended cornchip coffee concotion I am pretty sure my husband and I would drink it and enjoy it and never have to eat another thing but said concotion. (I exaggerate for the purposes of expressing how important corn chips really are. We don't like name them and treat them like salty members of our family but we do panic when there is only 2/3 of a 1 lb bag of the delicious lil devils left. They call the 1 lb bag "family size", we call it "barely big enough to get us through the week-end." I'm not going to tell you if I was exaggerating that time.)
So about corn chips and me.
I like em warm and toasty. This is actually a fairly recent discovery on my part. That if you take store bought corn chips and spread them out on a cookie sheet and stick them under your broiler for a few seconds then magical corn chip deliciousness happens. Your home starts to smell like your favorite Mexican restaurant, the chips gets toasty brown and they are so crispy and delicious you will actually risk burning your lips to nibble a few right away.
Well............I am here to confess that in the eyes of every one who is not in the *know* about defiant inanimate objects and Universe ploys to trip me up, I have carbonized our favorite salty snack. Reduced those pretty little golden chips to a fiery pile of ashes. Literally FIRE. It was quite exciting, you can't eat flaming chips by the way....bad, bad BAD idea.
Accident?
Forgetfulness?
Just leave them chips under the broiling hot broiler for a little too long?
Perhaps......
BUT If this is so then explain to me THIS!
(You can apply the same dramatic reading of the last usage of the word "this" as you did to the afore mentioned dramatic "this". Thanks)
NOT ONCE BUT TWICE in one week have I completely destroyed a beautiful pile of corn chips. Watching them burn, burn away their corny goodness and salty exterior as my own face is salted from my tears.
I might accidently set fire to a cookie sheet full of corn chips once....but not twice. AHA! J'accuse you Universe! I accuse the stove, the cookie sheet and...dang it, even those chips if I have to because I know dang well I am not responsible for carbonizing TWO batches of corn chips. I'm just not. The Universe slipped up there, now I have more than two useless piles of inedible corn chips (I tried them they taste like ash...darn it).....Now I have proof.

*****Corn chips really are tasty when they've been lightly toasted....LIGHTLY being the key word here. Do NOT turn you back on these guys under the broiler, they are just waiting to burst in to flame and make you cry. In fact if you do this do not walk away from the stove and check them literally every 5 or 10 seconds for *done-ness*. Seconds make the difference between a "happy meal" and a "muttering bitter infused obscenities at the Universe" meal........

Attack of a tack....

Dear person who invented the patented torture thingies that are used to hold down the edges of the carpet.
I hate you.
Smiles from me

P.s. O.k., look...it seems like a brilliant idea in a short sighted, get the job done, sort of way. The job in question being, holding down the loose edge of carpet that runs along a wall etcetera, wherever carpet runs out and other flooring begins.
We couldn't have loose carpet flapping about like a loose tongue now could we? No.
Why?
I do not know. Maybe because the carpet oversee-ers probably fear that us lower carpet user non-installer types would break our fool necks on the edge. So, they brilliantly hide a strip of metal with pokey up things...which in my world they also call TACKS, NAILS, SCREWS AND INSTRUMENTS OF PAIN, under the edge of the carpet. Which I suppose I can see from my pain filled seething view point that the padding and under side of the carpet is gripped by these little spears of cruelty, thereby holding the carpet down.
*hangs head and whispers* I hate you...I can't help it.
Look it's a lot like trying to be friends with the bully at school. How many times do you have to have some meany kid smack you in the face with your own hand before you declare "Ya know what? I don't like you. You are just not right."
The thing about carpet is it doesn't always run along a wall, or other non-walkable surface...though I'd like to LOUDLY point out that if I wanted to walk with my back pressed tight against the wall, Spy style, I damn well oughtta be able to do so...and I would...if it were not for the hateful little slivers of metallic evil that lay under the carpet edge..... But here's the thing...carpet....does NOT JUST RUN ALONG A WALL.
Sometimes it runs right up to the linoleum that covers the kitchen floor and sometimes that merging of floor materials must be crossed over and on a zillion and a half times a day.
I am not exaggerating, I counted.
Between the cooking, the getting of coffee, working at the kitchen table, feeding the cats and impromptu gleeful slides across the slippery linoleum floor, I cross that nasty little area a zillion and a half times a day.
Sometimes I can feel the slight poke of the carpet tack nudging my foot cruelly as I walk over to fill my glass with water. I can ignore that, shrug it off the way a person shrugs off strangely intimate phone conversations people blare loudly in front of you at the super market.
But some times...when I least expect it, mid meal preparation, pot of quinoa boiling on the stovetop, bowl of half prepared accompanying salad fixin's on my cutting board I swing round in a lovely poetic move (I think) to grab one of the newly bought red onions from the table behind me, a few short feet from the counter. And sometimes, as my foot lowers on to the merging of carpet and linoleum that just happens to line up with my table's legs I feel the full force of the brutality of those....*sighs*....I don't have enough good swear words to describe them little frickers....(I really oughtta hang around with more bad influences so I can cuss better)...anyways....my foot and the carpet tack that must be 3 fricking feet tall merge....it pierces my poor foot skin....but my momentum has my foot turning, red onion in hand, pain blossoming, spreading, horror growing in teeth baring leaps and bounds, scream of pain and disgust bursting free as my poor defenseless foot hits the mate to the first evil carpet tack and gets jabbed good and hard as well.
Cursing, bloody foot, pain, hobble to the bathroom, pot of quinoa boiling dry......equals.....one very VERY annoyed woman at the inventor of carpet tack edging.
O.k....
*Another sigh...this one of frustrated disgust* So look, I try to make it a policy not to hate any one, the world has got enough of that so hear me, and hear me good carpet tack inventors.....I shall take all of my hurt feelings and disgust for you and funnel it into my general displeasure with inanimate things that defy my will. Inanimate things ye shall feel my wrath.
By the way, carpet tack people.....there's two less of your little minions standing at attention now...muahh ahhhh ahhhh.
Pounding them with our little hammer...that felt fine. It felt very fine.

The case of the blue bin:

It was a hot July day when EDCO (trash disposal service) sidled up to us, slid it's imaginary eyes left and right and muttered out of the corners of it's non-existent mouth, between just as non-real clenched teeth, "Tomorrow, Early. There will be a...delivery. Expect the noisy trucks at dawn."
That wasn't spy talk, the garbage trucks really are noisy and like to do their rumbling business at dawn. But nonetheless a spark of excitement ignited inside me.
How often do the garbage people bring you something?
Take, take take. You'd think they could drop off an old table, a used bookshelf or some broken marionettes (my personal dream) from what I imagine to be a wealth of California garbage, every once in a while.
By the way, there IS a wealth of California garbage. You gotta realize I am from the boooonies. That means the garbage truck came every 2 weeks and if you felt like walking a zillion steps to peer at one, maybe two neighbor's trash you could. But who would wanna? Cause no one throws anything cool away in the boonies. It's completely different than the quick, turn-over apartment lifestyle of a city-ish place in California. I'm almost positive that when people move from apartments around here that 30% of them just toss everything out into the trash area and buy new stuff when they get to where they're going.
And yes, I do enjoy making up statistics....well 72.39% of the time I do.
CONTINUE to keep in mind, I'm from the boonies, and yes I have been to thrift stores and yard sales but there's no use lusting after some dresser or table or what ever even if you did happen to see one whilst browsing cause then you'd have to have your heart broken by leaving it or go through the hassle of finding some one with a big enough vehicle that can haul a broken dresser 40 miles into the woods, up a long dirt drive way and preferably for free.
So imagine my amazement when my first few visits to a California trash area in an apartment complex I feel like I just walked into a thrift store. I back up a couple paces, swing my head left and right, step back into the walled area and behold....chairs......screen doors? Lamps, picture frames, dishes, more chairs, night stands, more screen doors, pipe???? and goodies galore.
I am not ashamed to admit that a helluva a lot of our possessions we have acquired together came from the trash area of an apartment complex. I mean hell, you didn't even need to dumpster dive, the stuff was just sitting there.
2 night stands, hardwood tv stand dresser thingy, 2 lamps, picture frame, 3 chairs, window screen, giant wooden book shelf thingy, quaker oatmeal sign (I kid you not), 4 baskets and a plant stand. I'm sure there's more but I'd have to get up off my chair and run around the house cataloging our possessions and I'm not gonna do that, honesty compels me to admit I'm thrifty AND lazy.
If I could some how clone myself and my doppelganger clone person would obey my every whim then I'd have that alternate self open up a thrift store some day. I swear some one out there could probably make a fortune picking up all the discarded things left for the trash man, maybe refurbishing them and selling them in a "new to you" type second hand store....ahhhh...the dream...cloning I heart you.
Well anyways all of that is to say the garbage man takes, but he never gives...until recently.
That sweet little love note from our local disposal service left my heart all a pitty patter pat patting.
Did I sleep that night?
As anxious as a child on Christmas eve waiting for Santa to go the hell home so they could rip in to their stockings?
Hell no..I mean I didn't sleep, such was my level of excitement. You ever wonder what palpable means? If you'd been near me on this momentous occasion, waiting for the trash trucks to drop off our present you'd have seen the very real excitement I was experiencing...excitement that was truly palpable. You could literally touch my excitement and palpate it, that's how thrilled I was.....maybe...or maybe I'm just hepped up on caffeine again and the ol' exaggeration train has left the station. Now this has gotta be like the millionth blog post I've wrote about trash so I'll leave it to you to figure out...exaggeration train? Or sadly excited Canadian gal living in California with her hottie husband waiting for the trash man to bring her a present.....
It was blue.
It was big and blue and a beauty to behold.
A giant blue recycling bin....oh, don't start shivering with joy yet. It gets better...it had wheels. (Those of you with clever murder-she-wrote type minds has picked up on the use of *had*)
Immediately the first thing I did upon meeting our new company issued recycling bin was raise the lid and sniff inside.
What?
I just wanted to make sure it was as clean and sweet as it looked....and yes...I wanted to get inside...I mean this beauty had wheels, serious business wheels and if I could get my husband to push me around in ol' Blue before we started dumping tin cans and papers in her that would be one of my dreams come true. The dream on my list of dreams that I wish come true, the one that's right under "Find antique marionette for cheap or free" and right above "clone self so alternate self can fulfill alternate life role fantasies like owning a thrift store".
Let me just say that dream still remains un-crossed off.
Turns out getting IN a big blue recycling bin, especially without getting hurt, is dang hard. It's like they built that sucker knowing people would want to get in and so they made damn sure we couldn't.
Alan offered to lift it up and put it over my head but come on, how long would a recycling bin as a hat satisfy me?
3.4 minutes tops.
Who knew the turmoil these blue bins would cause.
But, emotional tug of war on my sad little recycling bin heart strings aside...there was more to come.
One fine Thursday evening we took ol' Blue, loaded down with tin cans, papers, flyers, jars and so on, down to the communal garbage area near our house. The spot where about 7 or 8 other neighbors all put their bins. What pride we took in seeing the still gleaming blue bins lined up like earth saving soldiers, waiting to do their duty.
We happily tucked Ol' Blue in amongst the neighbors and walked home, holding hands as the sun set gloriously behind us, the last dying rays glinting off the blue plastic.
The next day we went down to retrieve our empty bin...and....
I can't even begin to say it as I can barely stand to bear it....
N-n-n-n-n-no bin.
All the neighbors had already collected their bins because they don't have strange sleep cycles like us. This was nothing new...but the glaring absence of Ol' Blue, who we'd only had a week or so stuck out like a giant wrongness that produced strange keening wails from both Alan and I. (Ok just me but I didn't want to sound weird)
A ha we thought, clinging to the one sliver of desperate hope that brought light to the cloud of gloom that had enveloped us upon seeing the space devoid of our pretty new blue bin...a ha, a neighbor has probably accidentally taken our bin mistaking it for their own because they're stupid..er... I mean...they got confused, yeaah, having collected their bins in the early morning dim light...or...maybe the husband took the bins home not knowing the wife had already collected them so they ended up with double...I dunno.
Look I was desperate, trying to see the glass half full, hoping our bin would show up on it's own when some one realized their mistake.
We waited 2 whole days.....no bin.
We left kind notes that didn't sound accusatory in any way on everyone's mail boxes suggesting perhaps the possibility some one had accidentally mistaken our beautiful blue bin for their own? Perhaps?
You know how easy it is to accidentally see two giant space hogging blue bins as actually one...right?
No bin.
*sigh*
I'm not sure what's more satisfying to the mind. That a neighbor accidentally took it and can't see that they have 2, or that a recycling bin thief was on the loose. Acquiring massive piles of giant blue recycling bins for their own fun and glory. Doing strange, sick things with my recyclables and putting their dirty thief hands all over my pretty blue plastic.
For days I cast a wary eye on my neighbors as we came and went along the road here.
Harshly whispering to my husband as I slowly drove past a sweet elderly woman who actually had a sweater around her shoulders, "Psssssst see if she looks nefarious would ya hun? I can't take my eyes off the road for too long."
She didn't look nefarious. Damn it.
Genius thief or sweet old lady?
I dunno.......
We finally accepted the facts, our bin wasn't coming back. And it's not like we can just replace the sweet plastic blue box on wheels that I was beginning to think of as my trashy child...oh wait...we could!!!
Sweet.
A quick call to our disposal company and a new bin was brought to us the very next morning.
Our new bin has been just as fabulous as our old one, the one we barely got to know before it disappeared.
And dare I admit it?
This new one is even better in some ways...like the foot high house numbers we adhered over every side of it so that no one could *accidentally* mistake it for their own....that and the pretty pink note with Edwardian style font that reads "touch my blue bin, go ahead, I dare you. I might not see you but GOD is."
Nothing like hauling God out of the dusty corners of my mind where I've relegated him to put the fear of me in to would be recycling bin thieves.

******confession: I didn't really leave a note like that on our bin...but I thought about it...muahhh ahhh ahhh.

Sale Tale......

I am so not suave.
Sophistication doesn't stick to me. Cool, elegant airs of refinement and casual-ness roll off my skin like I'm made of Teflon.
Every sale is like a personal thumbs up from the world at large. Do I raise an eyebrow and smile, subtly. A slight curving of the lips to indicate a general air of pleasure but not so much I seem like I'm desperate and really care?
Nope.
Do I squawk?
Oh, oh yes. Like a chicken. More like a chicken in love on a fine spring day, with bees buzzing and roosters giving me the lecherous eye. I squawk.
"Brawwwwwwwwk"
"What?" Alan looks over, smiles. He's obviously used to my squawking as he hasn't run for a chicken net.
"I sold something!" I try to say it casually but casually has left the building and took all my calm, slow, patient, non-vibrating with joy composure with it.
"Oh wow! Cool!" He's as happy as me, but he doesn't squawk like chicken.
"Brawwwwwwwwwwwk! Ohmygodthat'ssocoolIlovesellingstuff!!!" "That's terrific!"
"Brawwwwwk, brawwwk, brawwwwwk!" My hands shake a wee little bit as a thousand things to do floods my mind. Reply to the buyer, update my inventory, add a sold sign to the store, think about packaging, get a coffee to celebrate, double check my list to make sure I'm not forgetting anything important...but...all of the things that need done are in a log jam in my head, bouncing with childish glee on the nerves connected to my fingers so that my hands hover over the keyboard for what seems like an eternity. "Brawwwk"
Well eternity to an ecstatic, chicken sounding lady.
I need to update my inventory list, first things first but I can't. Every second thunders by, I am sure an hour has passed since I first learned of my latest sale and started transforming into the crafty chicken lady.....I glance at the clock. Alan is walking over to see my sale and I realize his foot is hovering in midair, his mouth is stuck in the same sweet "O" of surprise and supportive happiness. A Ha, times is not thundering by, in fact, it's me. With the beating heart and shaking hands and nervous energy as my brain skips to packaging materials and back to the inventory list.
Do something fingers. DO SOMETHING!
"Brawwwwwk!"
Not that!
"Brawwwk. Alan, I'm sorry I can't be cool about this. I try but......BRAWWWWK BRAWWWWWWWWK, I SOLD SOMETHING!"
Time has returned to normal and my fingers flex. Alan is beside me and we hug, near to bouncing up and down like school children from the 1920's (modern school children do not bounce with childish glee any more, they text message with eerily adult glee)
My heart rate slows and my brain thanks me for the mental jolt, the wild thrill ride that is totally and completely created by me and some stranger from the middle of America who is now my new best friend and they don't even know it.
I update my inventory, I reply to the buyer and my words are so succinct and articulate on the screen that you'd never know I was squawking like a chicken moments ago.
Except...
You do, cause I had to share. The reality of me is a chicken squawking person who doesn't have an ounce of placidity to her name.
I make stuff.
People buy it.
I squawk like a chicken.
You gotta love this world.

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.

Do cats have belly buttons and dish drainers are a luxury....

(Please note the lack of belly buttons...)

You know how when you're in the middle of sculpting a cat, I mean out of clay...not a real cat...sheesh well we're off to a great start aren't we? You have visions of me putting cats through their paces, toning their abs and encouraging them to lift their legs a little higher, run a little faster and all I'm trying to do is figure out if they have belly buttons.
Course now if I'm the one creating the cat, in clay, not gene manipulation of course then logic dictates in loud and snooty tones that I can MAKE my cats have belly buttons. The clay ones at least.......
As it turns out after a wee bit of side tracked Google-ing, a few moments discussion with my husband, a trip down a faded memory lane back when Ninja, our old Siamese, gave birth on my bed.....ick...some memories are worth fading....I have come to the conclusion that cats DO have belly buttons.
Not cutsie little dimple-y buttons but an elongated scar some where on their stomach, under all that fur. I am the proud knower of this fact thanks to the handy dandy internet. (Providing me with useless bits of trivia since the year 2000.)
Have you ever searched your cat for it's belly button? Then felt mildly guilty because your cat is rolling about in slobbery, purring, roaring ecstasy because it's perceiving a legitimate belly button search as pure petting? Well feline mis-perceived affection guilt aside, I can't find their belly buttons, though both our cats were willing to undergo hours of legitimate belly button searching if I wanted.....it's weird that cats aren't just born with a human hand attached to them...evolution happens everywhere else....why not here?
I opted not to give my clay cat one....though why I feared it I dunno.... I'd already painted a cat pink, orange, purple and even green. A belly button is the least of my concerns regarding accuracy.
Perhaps, to head this wee bit of kitty belly button confusion off before it builds in to a life long crippling fear of sculpting belly buttons on cartoonish, strange coloured cats I ought to sculpt a new cat. And give it not one...but TWO belly buttons. muahh ahhh ahhh Thereby not only defeating my clay cat belly button fear but actually I'd be kicking it's ass. Fear's I mean, not the cats. By the way if you could take all the words I have wrote for this entire blog and totaled them all up in to like phrase categories you would find that I have said "kick the ass" or some variation of it like a hundred million times. Or there abouts, like I'm actually going to add up all my words..sheesh I'm only a certain level of geeky, which means geeky enough to think of it and make up a fake statistic but not quite geeky enough (aka am too lazy) to find out the real "kick the ass" or some variation of, statistic.
So there I am, happily sculpting little kitties, muttering like a mad evil genius as I paint little toe pads, curl little whiskers and come up with a series of delightful names. (Puddums, Puhleez, Pinky, InkSplotch, Nib and Pigment if you're curious, and if you're not then you should definitely not be poking your nose past any brackets or parentheses on my blog cause that's pretty much where I always shove the useless--er..I mean useful trivia that I feel is important enough it should interrupt the regular flow of my words....)
So there I was happily creating a whole litter of kittens, I mean I was practically a cat God, or kitten mother, or maybe both and my dishes were in the meanwhile cluttering up my kitchen sink.
How are these two connected?
I am a crafter, which means I suck at housekeeping.
I do not begin to say all crafters suck at house keeping, I'm saying my craftiness means that it's easy to sit and immerse myself into the world of kitty cat colours, back stories for them, arranging web pages and taking photos of my creations....rather than clearing out the kitchen sink.
Not that I'm a total pig, I work damn hard at trying to stay on top of my messes so as not to have them overwhelm me. BUT as a crafter, inspiration hits and before you know it you've been sitting cross legged in your chair with a million and a half tools scattered across your work surface, blue and purple paint staining your finger tips, your coffee glass has gone empty and you're cackling at old episodes of Arrested Development that you catch up on from Hulu as you craft away....and the dishes...are easily forgotten.....for hours.
Yes we have a dishwasher....did you know they only work right if you keep emptying it and refilling it? It's a never ending, quite depressing cycle if you think about it. Which I do, and try not to or else I'd cry.
Now I have a deal with myself, and maybe this is a shameful thing to admit, but I have a deal with myself to switch the dishes around every day, at some point at least once, so that the cycle of dueling dishes keeps spinning round and round, re-filling the cupboards with sparkling clean glasses and loading up the washer with all the grungy used ones. For most people I'm betting this is easy, for me it's harrrrd, but I keep trying. That way my counter doesn't become some sort of weird quicksand like trap for all the dishes that have been abandoned half way between their destinations, be it the dishwasher or the cupboard. Perhaps this is like dishes purgatory.....though that means the cupboard and the dishwasher are hell and heaven though I'm not sure which would be which. I think I could work up arguments for either side......
ANYYYYYYYwaaaaaaaaaays.....we have this nifty dish drainer basket that straddles one side of the kitchen sink. This sweet little deal that is supposed to make me a house-keeping genius, in that if I'm too lazy....er....I mean busy to empty the dishwasher etc I can rinse the occasional glass and leave it to drip dry in the basket and voila I am a cleaning genius. Sparkling acres of laminate countertops, neatly tucked away dishes in the cupboards and the dishwasher happily chugging away as it scrubs up my days dishes.
Only...it doesn't work like that....What happens is, the basket fills, the empty side of the sink fills and getting at the water tap becomes a chore.
Now you're ewwwwing and making faces, you really oughtta stop that.
See that's what I was saying earlier, that every day I suck it up and buzz through my dish cycle and try and empty the sink, the basket, the washer and return everything to it's illusion of complete organization that I am trying to maintain. But there's been this small chink....this basket while genius in it's design to straddle the sink means I basically gave up half my sink to become one helluva glorified dish drainer.
Hence why I needed a little plastic tray doo-hicky to sit on the counter to drain off into the sink and my sweet little basket can sit on that. Voila, doubled my sink space for filling pots, water glasses, setting dishes to soak etc.
If you're rolling your eyes at such an obvious housekeeping necessity well pbbbbbbbt at you. I am not a natural housekeeper, it takes work, the part of my brain that should in theory be a natural at scooping up socks to throw in the laundry hamper as I walk by is usually humming Betty Hutton songs, or Eartha Kitt. How can I think of picking up socks let alone keeping the kitchen organized with Eartha Kitt's voice buzzing in my head about rather being burned as a witch? (Most awesome song ever)
So housework is a never ending lesson in life for me and I am ridiculously proud every day that I can stay on top of my messes, keep the cycle of dishes spinning AND on top of that get some crafting, writing, blogging AND cooking done. Put it that way I sound fricking awesome right?
Now the thing is, how long did I hunch my shoulders and turn my back favoring little sculpted kitties over getting a dish drainer tray?

(example of my fricking genius multi-tasking. Seared Ahi steak, homemade mole sauce, homemade green epazote/tomatillo sauce with avocados, sour cream and cilantro....this is only one of the many reasons my dishes can sometimes get neglected...)

Ummmm.....a while.....lets just say.
It was something we needed but I swear to you I felt like I couldn't just go GET a dish drainer tray. I needed to think about it, I didn't want to get something that wouldn't really be useful, would mess up my counter top system which is tenuously holding at best. I didn't want to buy something that would break or be nasty or something in a year and then throw it away. I needed to think about it. I mean can you think of anything more extravagant and luxurious than a dish drainer tray thing-a-majig? I mean I have the dishwasher here, I have a double sink, I have a drain basket and my own two hands and apparently that's not enough? Honestly...for now...I guess not.
Little kitties, sweet little cross eyed looking kitties, with your simple smiling purr-fectly adorable faces. You're so much less complicated than my damn dishes. Well except for the whole belly button thing...yikes. That was a nerve wracking ordeal...to poke a dimple in your soft clay bellies or not to?
So I decided, and I got a drainer.

(see my new drainer? Of course not, it's see-THRU plastic..woooooo if they made see-THRU dishes my problems would all go away...oh wait...they do...its glass and if it gets dirty they're no longer see-thru...what I need is see-THRU food....)

I bought the expensive 9.99 one too. I know!!!! For a piece of fricking sloped plastic....wow...but I wanted to make sure I got a dish drainer I really liked. One that spoke to me, one that had the shining gleam of a promise to help me stay organized so I can poke my fingers into clay with wild abandon rather than as a distraction from the growing pile of dishes in the kitchen. It had to be a dish drainer that felt like it could be the last dish drainer I'd ever have to buy, a dish drainer that seemed sophisticated enough to justify my need for it.
Life is all about balance I believe, you're either free falling or flying and from one second to the next. For the moment, I am flying in the house cleaning category. But it takes so little to knock me off course, a tv show, a new Nora Roberts' book, a blog entry that screams to be written, a lump of clay that's begging to be squished, a meal that's whining it needs to be made, a husband that's sweetly whispering, "the dishes don't matter".
A ha but they do, to me.
I shall bask in the glory of my new dish drainer tray until the newness wears off and them I'm just muttering over the sink about how I ever did with out it and be content in the knowledge that my cats have belly buttons.....some where.

Heretical Chips...

The Kettle chip company has made a grave error, they keep titling their super crispy crunchy salt and black pepper kettle chips wrong, they're NOT salt and fresh ground pepper they're "Alan's chips", "His Chips" or if he's the one talking about them "My chips"
I don't know if they fully realize that we must be at least 30% of their sales. The least they can do is properly name them.
We popped over to Henry's earlier this evening to get some nutritional (raw milk) and Alan's chips. As we wandered down the chip aisle Alan was overjoyed to discover they were on sale. Score!
Grabbing a bag to put in our basket he paused half way, a small line of concentration appeared between his eyes, "I noticed you haven't been eating my chips as much as me."
"Oh well they're a little hard and crunchy. They're good though." I explain.
"O.k.," he continued putting the bag in the basket, relieved I wasn't secretly hating his chips and sweetly offered, "you should get some other chips. Something you want."
I scanned the options, I'm not as big a potato chip fan as Alan but one of the bags by the Boulder brand caught my eye. I laughed and grabbed one off the shelf.
"Artichoke and spinach? That's so strange. Ok I gotta try these." I start to put them in the basket, pause and look down at the bag.
The small line of concentration has leapt straight off of Alan's forehead to my own, digging in between my eyes as I re-examine the chip bag.
"Wait. Do these go against what we believe in?" I peruse the list of ingredients making sure there's no weird dyes to turn them green or strange ingredients like cat tongue from the planet zenon's 4th quadrant.
Alan understands what I'm asking and we both examine the bag another moment.
"They look ok." He pronounces and I happily stuff my bag of chips in to the basket, decision made.
Turning to go I finally notice the woman on the same aisle. As we walk by she bobbles her basket and presses up a little harder than I think is necessary against the corn chips.
Out on the main aisle a slow dawning of realization sweeps over me...my feet slow....my brain clicks in to what just happened...
"Was she on the aisle the whole time?" I ask Alan.
He's grinning and starts to laugh, a laugh that just like the line between our eyes is quite contagious and fully infects me before I can finish my whole thought. We sputter and snicker our way past the tomatoes to the milk aisle.
"So, so...." I try to catch my breath. "So she was there and all she heard me say was 'do these chips go against what we believe in?'...ohmygawwwwwwd."
The cold floor of the super market and the piercing stares of strangers, not to mention my husband's arm is the only thing that kept me upright and from completely falling down in a puddle of guffaws and potato chips.
Our funny bone was thoroughly tickled.
By the by, the chips were tasty, in case you were curious. With strong garlic and Parmesan flavours and not only that they haven't mounted any snack-food rebellions against my beliefs even once since we've had them home.

Crafting is Harrrrrrrrrd: Supplies Are Everywhere.

(tattoos are a good way to alert people to your craftiness....)

Crafting is harrrrrrrrrrrrd, on the crafter yes, but most especially on the non-crafty people around them. See examples below:

"Oh a rock, a smooooth rock! A smooooth rock with a faint sparkle in it?! I could paint a bee on it!"
"Uh huh, yes dear. Neat idea."
"Ohhhhhhhh a branch! Do you know they CHARGE for branches some places?"
"Really?"
"Oh my gawwwd yes, and here's a perfectly nice branch just laying there on the ground."
"Disney Land's ground...."
"It's still ground. Oh the things I could do with a branch like that."
"What? What can you do with a branch like that?"
"Look, I hear your skepticism but it would look lovely in a jar. A very rustic arrangement, tres chic you know. Well rustic chic, don't ya think?"
"Would this be the same jar you asked for from our hostess at the meal we were invited to, once as I recall, it was only once they invited us wasn't it?"
"Ummm, yes I believe you're right. Hmmm, that is a nice jar."
"Yes, so you said. Something about the shape, and how she didn't need to wash the dip out of the jar, that you could do it at home." Sighs... " They were nice people."
"Hmmm? What? Hmm yes I suppose but you know...... I really don't think that's the jar for this branch. Too short, the jar I mean. Perhaps I could create a natural sort of collage on the side table, I could put the rock beside it."
"There's already a pile of rocks on the side table."
"Oh shoot you're right. LOOK! Holy fricking heck, look at that!!!!!"
"What? What's wrong?"
"Some one just threw that bouquet of flowers in the trash!"
"Yeah. They're all wilted see."
"Well duh, I have eyes. Perfectly fine wilted flowers. I could do a lot with wilted flowers."
"You're not God dear. Those things quit taking water a lonnng time ago."
"EXACTLY!"
"What? Exactly what? Do I keep holding this stick, and rock?"
"Oh yes, I'll put them in the trunk."
"There's a big metal lamp in there we took from the neighbor's garbage. Remember? I don't think the stick will fit."
"Branch dear, it's a branch. I'll put it in the back seat, but the flowers.... More water isn't what they need, it's LESS. I'll press them. I'll put them between the pages of all those phone books I've been saving. You know those phone books I've been collecting since 2002? Well they'll be just the thing for pressing and drying flowers."
"So, the flowers come home too?"
"Yes, lay them on the flyers. Gennnnnttttlly, I don't want all the petals to fall off....though......"
Heavier sigh..."Though what? More potpourri?"
"Well you can never have enough, you know they actually-
"Charge for potpourri at the stores. I remember. It was my orange you took and sliced up before I finished eating it. Remember? You dried that too."
"Looks gorgeous too doesn't it? All that rustic gorgeousness."
"I was eating that orange..."
"Just put them on the flyers."
"Remind me to throw those in the recycling bin when we get home. There's gotta be a law against that much paper in the back seat of a car in California, in the summer time anyways. Fire hazard if you ask me."
"You can't throw those out!!!"
"I'll recycle."
"No, I mean I'm saving those! Savvvvvvvving them."
"For what?????? Honey those sales ended 5 months ago. Hell I think this one is for a store that's been closed down for at least 3 weeks."
"I don't care about that, it's for a craft project. Paper Mache."
"I worry when you say things like that...."
"Like what dear? How do I say.....papier mache.....?"
"Your voice gets all breathy and your eyes glaze over, and you start talking with a french accent. It's unnerving."
"Hmm? Sweetie paper mache isn't unnerving, it's ART! The ultimate art. Making something from nothing, less THAN nothing, from trash it's...........it's...mmmmmm. It's verrrrrrry satisfying."
"Ummm....people are staring. Lets just load the car and go home. I'll drive, can I have the keys please?"
"Lets see, they're in my pocket, no...wait, haha would you look at that?"
"That's a bottle cap, not the car keys."
"I knoooow what it IS, it's a FLAT bottle cap. I might make a necklace, something...now where are those keys? Here's a rubber band I found on the floor."
"The grocery store floor wasn't it? I wish you wouldn't do that. It seems too much like...well...stealing. If you take something out of a store and didn't pay for it......."
"Relax, it's a rubber band, it's not like I ripped open a package and helped myself. Besides it was ON the floor."
Sigggggggggghs...."Yes, the floor, a lot like the ground, anything on there is free by your standards....what's this? This isn't the car keys."
"It's a shiny candy wrapper. Do you know that's been through the wash 7 times at least. I'm going to make a flower out of it, or a christmas ornament. I havn't decided yet. Water doesn't seem to have hurted it any though, looks shinier if you ask me!"
"I'm not. Keys?"
"Here, they're here. I didn't lose them. They got tangled up with this bracelet. The clasp is broken and one of the links, see? It caught on the key ring."
"Where'd you get that?"
"I found it when we were at the hardware store."
Siggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhs. "Some one might be looking for it."
"Well it's broken! I'm sure no one's looking for it, and look it's mashed a bit from tires and plus I found it. It was-
"On the ground?"
"YES! Exactly. I'm going to use it on that sculpture I'm making."
"Oh. Well ok. The one made with all the sour cream containers?"
"Noooo, God it wouldn't go with that at all. No I mean the other one, the one made with last years wrapping paper from Christmas. Here's the keys. We should get home. I've got a lot of crafting to do."

(This is an exaggeration. Not the craft supplies part, Lord no...that's all true, I have a house full of rocks, a cupboard full of sourcream containers and several dozen liberated tree branches to prove it. No the exaggerated part is the male, mine isn't like that at all. My male is right there with me cramming things in the trunk of our sweet little Civic to take home and craft with. Mine figured out he can drive the car home from a video shoot with one arm out the window to hold the palm branch that was too long to stuff inside the car.... he understood you see...you don't BREAK a branch like that. No siree, a long palm branch is as good as gold to a crafter.)

The evolution of me n' beans.

Beans and me go waaaaay back.
Back to childhood when my nose turned up at the idea of any vegetable that wasn't a potato or corn on the cob. What a sophisticated palette I had. Only verrrrrry occasionally stepping boldly beyond my gastronomical comfort zone by eating an iceberg lettuce leaf with bottled, creamy cucumber dressing. This was as gourmet as I got.
I've mentioned being a picky eater before but unless you had witnessed the full scale archeological type dig I could do to a plate of food, mining for hidden vegetables and other nasty bits adults were always gunking up good grub with, you can't fully understand how far I've come.
My first recollection of beans was at my Grandma Prest's house. I'm not sure how she managed to do it, but she could get me to eat food, that if any other parental type unit had stuck it before me I'd have thrown a fit.
Maybe she never tried to MAKE me eat beans, and hence my curiosity. Parents, you're good people. God knows I couldn't handle the job you all take upon yourselves but here's a new flash from a former kid...MAKING some one eat their peas causes a years long rift between said kid and peas.....I'm just sayin'.....Kids are are not just young people, they're mini adults. I remember being told I HAD to eat my peas when I was 7 or 8, I'm 30 years old and it still pisses me off. I understand the logic behind it, health, nutrition, wasting food...blah blah blah....but me and peas had us a real long acrimonious relationship for a damn long time because of that.
Here's where I balance my Karma and say thanks to the universe for parents who provided me with food when lots of kids had none...they could have given my peas to those kids though...I wouldn't have minded.
So a visit with Grandma, meal time rolls around and out of a can comes this brown sludge that was not only beans BUT sweet.....how odd. Baked beans.....beans are a vegetable and I had a war on vegetables, but they had brown sugar or molasses in them lending not only a lovely shade of brown but a definite sweetness that was whole heartily approved by my childish taste buds. It was like some adult some where had screwed up and made a meal that was more like dessert. It was perfect!
I became a fan of baked beans.
Then the universe laughed in my face and caused me great pain one day after I'd become a fan of baked beans. It was when asked, by some distant relative whose house I was having lunch at "What do you want to eat?"
Ahh....the glory of a question like that, no slapping some food down on the table and saying "eat it" I was being given a CHOICE. THE POWER...SUCH DELICIOUS POWER.
"I'll have beans." I say.
*sigh* You can probably guess where this train wreck of a childhood moment is going......I didn't realize I'd have to specify what sort of beans. I didn't realize the bean manufacturer type peoples would waste their time canning anything OTHER than sweet delicious baked beans.
A few moments later a bowl of something horrible, a wet pile of nasty red giant THINGS that were most definitely not flavored with brown sugar, was placed before me.
"What is this?" I asked, hardly daring to breathe, hardly daring to believe that I was expected to EAT this stuff, hardly daring to believe any one would even BUY cans of disgusting red lumps.
"Kidney beans." I was told.
Well hell.
I didn't say that then, I probably didn't even think it, as I was too busy trying not to bawl, such was my disappointment. I could be a brat at times when I was a kid, I can admit it, but I didn't throw a fit THIS time, realizing this was IT, this was lunch. I was stuck. I pushed them around my bowl, as miserable as a kid can be, before heading back to school. Too depressed to be hungry. I can still remember the disappointment, the horror.....I think those kidney beans scarred me for life.
Fast forward a few years. I've learned a valuable lesson, always specify what sort of beans you want, lest some crazy adult thinks a 7 year old kid would enjoy a bowl of kidney beans for lunch. I learned something else.
My mother can MAKE baked beans, the RIGHT kind. The sweet, delicious, smokey from a bit of bacon, and dark from molasses kind. She just whips up a batch one day as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Didn't I stand there and watch in awe and amazement as she made them? Didn't I taste them myself and realize that HOMEMADE baked beans kicked canned baked bean's tin can ass?
How gourmet I felt. Helping dump the brown sugar in with the beans after they soaked all night. MAKING baked beans. Making them...imagine that.
I always made mine a little MORE gourmet by dumping extra brown sugar on my bowl of beans after they dished up. Hmmmmm......just had an epiphany.....a bittersweet one...childhood sweet tooth equals adult root canals, methinks.
Me and baked beans enjoyed a companionable relationship for many years. They accompanied me through adolescence into adult-hood until I'm all grown up, I meet the love of my life online.
I move to California, and he proudly takes me out for his favorite meal. Something completely foreign to my Maritime taste-buds. The enchilada combo plate from an Alberto's drive through.
I can still remember when I opened my Styrofoam container and beheld the strange mass of brown and bright red that my husband was salivating over.
Refried beans, enchiladas and rice.
I hadn't a clue what an enchilada was, why any one would eat rice without soy sauce and why beans would be RE-fried???? What sort of world had I tumbled in to. And get this...these beans were NOT sweet!
I ate most of the enchilada, discovered the rice wasn't too bad but steered clear of the beans....for a while. Something happened though.
Pop, pop, pop went my taste buds. I think it was new ones growing. They can grow anything down here, it's all the sun.
Pop, pop, pop.
And anyone who has had a take-out combination plate knows there's no force on earth that can keep the refried beans from getting friendly with the enchilada. They softly cuddle up with the red sauce, they ooze under the tortilla, they embrace the cheese and find mysterious refried bean ways of getting on your fork when you only meant to get rice.
My taste buds grew, new refried bean taste buds that were inhabiting my tongue for the sole purpose of tasting salty, creamy, delicious refried beans.
I thought I was pretty hot stuff.
Willingly sucking down tons of refried beans from combo plates from every Mexican food place with in our neighborhood. I was on a stomach and brain awakening journey. The little kid who cowered from peas and onions was willingly buying them to cook up veggie delights of all sorts, most of it inspired by Mexican food.
Mexican food was like nothing I'd had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I bragged about the refried beans to the folks back there. I took pictures and sent them off, pointing out to my Mom how mature I'd become, eating non-sweet beans, willingly, loving every creamy bite.
I found out the stores around here carried cans of these marvelous beans, you could walk right in and have yourself a can of refried beans for a buck.
I cast less and less a wary eye at new foods my husband introduced me to. My palette expanded even more, my world was flavored with cilantro, chipotle and sour cream.
I made my own enchiladas, something that seemed so exotic and foreign 7 years ago became an easy meal to make in a hurry. Burritos a cinch, I started making my own tortillas and chili gravy was it's crown. It seems like the speeding train of expanding taste buds whizzes by faster every day. New food discoveries enlighten my tongue.
AND the bean evolution continues!!!
I went from refried beans to cans of whole beans, that I could flavour and mash myself. My husband's eyes rolled in ecstasy the first time I threw handfuls of spices in with a can of pinto beans and mashed it up. Beans are now a staple of our diet. Where once I raised an eyebrow over a bowl of beans for a meal I now willingly and greedily accept beans for my breakfast, my lunch and my supper. Not a drop of sugar in sight. No desert-like mash masquerading as beans for me...well.....not often anyways....maybe occasionally I doctor up a pot of pinto beans with brown sugar and onion for a little childhood reminiscence.
Then, just when I thought I'd reached the height of bean brilliance, I went higher.
Dried beans, that I slow cooked all day with spices, turned out to be the most brilliant, mouth watering beans you could ever imagine. I'm not just honking my own horn here. (honk honk honk honk honk honk!) In fact maybe you already know this and are scoffing at my innocence, but let me tell you the veil has been lifted.
Beans I cooked myself kick the ass of canned beans. There's a lot of ass-kicking in my kitchen. Including my own because why didn't I have this realization sooner?
All I can do is live in the now, and raise a spoon to the kid I used to be. The one who only ate potatoes and corn on the cob. Wouldn't I freak if I could see me now from the eyes of the me I was then? How far me and my beans have come.

I have been playing with more beans than just pinto, most recently black beans.
My favorite usage of dried beans is as follows:

This is a method not a recipe per se.

POT-O-BEANS

• Rinse a big bunch of beans in water and then put them in a big old pot. Your biggest one so that you can make a vat of beans and eat beans for a week. They get better every day.

• Cover with lots of water, and put on the stove. I start mine on high and then turn it down to simmer once they get boiling.

• I throw in a few tablespoons each of cumin, Mexican oregano and chili powder. Do not be stingy with the chili powder. Lately I've been toasting dried chilies in the oven for a few minutes and grinding them up in the blender to make my own chili powder. I use a lot of spices. I don't actually measure but it's a lot. I also will add about 3 dried peppers in there as well, ones that haven't been toasted. They'll get soft and disintegrate and you can pick the skins out later. Or leave them floating in there and call it a garnish. Don't think I haven't noticed that's how fancy pants cooks operate, anything inedible is labeled a "garnish".....sometimes I garnish my plates with my one and only barbie doll.
  
• She adds a lot of class to a bowl of beans...o.k., I kid. She's not classy at all.

• I let the pot of dried beans, spices and water boil and bubble all day until the beans are soft and tender, adding more water to it when ever it gets low. I like them soupy the first day, it's almost like a bean soup. (As they cool, and days go by they will thicken up, the beans, as well as me, absorbing more of the liquid.)

• When they are cooked enough I put a big dollop of oil in my cast iron frying pan. Maybe as much as half a cup. I chop up half an onion (give or take), two pasilla peppers and about 6 or 8 cloves of garlic and frizzle it all up in the oil with some salt. Softening the peppers and onion, infusing the oil with garlic, yummmmers. This part smells soooooooo good.

• Once the pepper mix has been cooked I dump all of it in to my pot of beans, and hopefully I've left enough room for the oil and peppers. ( Sometimes, an emergency "come help me find a place to put some beans" call is hollared to my husband as I realize physics is causing my addition of peppers/oil/garlic/onions to the beans is making the beans overflow in a very unpleasent, stove messing way. Wouldn't be the first time physics pissed me off.) I stir it all up, add more salt to the whole mix and then...step back.

• They're done. All they need now are a spoon and an appetite. (Though they're mind blowingly good with cheese, sour cream, cilantro, corn chips etc.)

Rooting for it!

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Root Of All Evil....

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

Things I have learned:

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Understanding Marriage.

(me and my sweetie)

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

An inanimate rant.

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

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

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

It's Bloody Delicious.

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

America's got BIG balls....

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

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

Hot Headed!!!

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

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

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

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

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

A Slice Of Life.....

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

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

Consolation du chocolat avec crème glacé.

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

Stopping Stalling.....

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

The Cycle of life....

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

Bulking up.

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

Spacial Mass and Proportions....

"You have spacial mass and proportions."
That's just one of the sweet little somethings my husband doesn't whisper in my ear every day so much as he calls it out as I stumble into the corner of anything, and everything........yet again.
You gotta love a man who doesn't mind repeatedly informing his wife that she is NOT a gaseous entity as she seems to act like she is, that the laws of physics and human bodies DO apply to her. That sharp corners WILL dig into hips, painfully in fact, that cast iron skillets WILL burn her fingers and unfortunate wrists should she bump them, that testing to see if the water is boiling hot yet by sticking the tip of her finger in it will result in a painful owie moment and she WILL feel the repercussions of her denial over basic human laws.
Laws like hot water hurts, corners hurt and door jambs don't move out of the way of ditzy females as they skip to the loo. They instead stand steadfast in their harsh and unyielding ways and will cause nasty bruises on shins, shoulders, and any other flying parts that misjudge the space that makes up a doorway and bashes straight into the side....ow.
It's not that I'm clumsy (some of us are still in denial ok), it's not that I'm constantly tripping and stumbling over invisible rocks in the living room...very often. It's more like my precious grey matter in the old noggin has better things to occupy itself with apparently than calculating trajectory, speed and collision potential.
If I want a glass of water I will pop up from my seat and rush towards the source of my desired beverage and will not take into account the tv tray, the chair, the table or even cat between me and what I want. I just sort of...bash into any and all things between me and my goal. Over...and over.....and over.........
It gets to the point where I have clumsy days, days where I honest to Gawwwwwwd have hollered, screeched and cursed OWWWW so many times my husband will kindly offer the suggestion that I should "take it easy" as it's "going to be one of those days."
The sort of day where I might poke my head out the window to look at the lizards sunning themselves and smack my head into the glass........I have done this....but it wasn't lizards I was trying to look at...if that makes any difference at all.
The other day in the space of a few hours I managed to cut my thumb on a cat food tin, smack my right arm into the the dryer as I was tossing wet clothes into it, burn my wrist and scrape the back of my hand on what I don't even remember now....after so much pain things just start blurring together....and why?
WHY? I do not know...I ask myself these questions every day.....I might even find the answer to this burningly painful question if I watch enough late night infomercials, they probably make a nice super drug for clumsiness, something with pleasant side effects like despair, diarrhea and death.

Legless Lizards My Ass....

Occasionally, like any normal 30 year old woman, I surf the net and look at photos of lizards. You know, so I can find out if the blue bellied beasties in my yard are poisonous and going to gather together in a cold blooded strike force against me one day if I keep snapping photos of them. Never once asking their permission, never once asking them to sign a waiver that states I am free to use their likeness in perpetuity, never once considering that my heavy humanoid breath blowing across their scales might be delivering a stagnant breeze of ill will and fear into their poor little lizard hearts.....
Anyways during one such lizard look up on the net I ran across.....legless lizards.
HA!
I wasn't born yesterday, no one dropped me on my head and my leg can't be pulled any harder. I'm dragging out all the colloquialisms in my arse...ok I mean my arsenal but wouldn't arse be a fricking riot instead? Made ya blink didn't it?
The wool has long since been removed from my eyes, I'm no dweeby dunce, I know about legless lizards only where I come from they're called Ssssssssssssssssnakes. Genetics Sche-metics, if it looks like a s-s-s-snake...it's a s-s-s-s-snake.
BLECK!
I know about snakes too, oh I know all about them, snakes ARE EVIL.
I'm not throwing any biblical references around here either, I just know from looking at them and by the very nature of their existence that they ARE EVIL. I mean you don't have to have a degree in slitherin' snake-ology to figure this out, all it takes is one interaction with the belly crawlin' varmints to realize THEY ARE EVIL.
I can not stress this enough, I'd need a helicopter, a bull horn and a big ass stick to make my point as crystal clear as I can, SNAKES ARE EVIL.
Like any gal who's got a pure and unfettered hatred of snakes I have a brother who must have a few screws loose, a few marbles lost and a bat or two in his belfry (see colloquialisms all over the dang place today) because this boy....liked snakes. I mean he deliberately went about the fields LOOKING for them, not realizing looking for a snake is just looking for trouble. It's like walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night with a hundred dollar bill stuck to your forehead and a can of whip cream in your hand...it's just stupid.
Occasionally he'd find one of...them...them wiggling, slithering, squirming, twisting, writhing little demons and brandish it in the air like he'd won a fricking trophy. I developed super vision when he did this, I could be a million yards away and my eyes would zoom in on the thing he held in his hand.
My heart would slam against the inside of my chest, hard enough to jolt me out of my frozen immobility and I'd holler across the slowly decreasing distance between my brother and I as he smiled happily and advanced on me to show off his new..*shudders* friend.
"Michael, don't come near me with that thing!!!"
"Why? It's not slimy, you think it's slimy don't you? It's NOT slimy."
Oh yeah, right like that's gonna make all the difference in the world, the evil spawn of satan isn't SLIMY????? Well bring it on then boy, bring it on. HA!
NO, H, E, double hockey sticks NO!
I'd calmly start backing up in a dignified, lady like retreat and holler to him,
"Michael, if you come near me with it I am going to freak out, I mean seriously freak out, I am GOING TO FREAK OUT!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME???"
And then, I'd hit him with the best piece of logic that cuts through a younger brother's delight at his sister's drooling, backwards scramble away from him, I hit him where it hurt most....I jabbed him right straight through the heart of his deep and loyal love of s-s-s-s-snakes.
"Michael, if you come near me with that snake, I will freak out and I will hurt the snake. Do you understand, I don't want to but I will, by accident.....but I will."
Michael would pause, a frown wrinkling his forehead as he cradled the tiny bit of earthly evil in his hands and now it was he who would back up. A truce realized, at least for the moment.
I have never hurt a snake, let me make that clear.
Unless seeing a grown woman shudder like a Californian earthquake is damaging to the snake's psyche, I have never hurt a snake.
Not even when I lived back home in Canada and would be merrily traipsing down our country drive way, on my way to check the mail. Day dreaming about ice cream, how to get ice cream and wondering when I'd get ice cream again, and then it would happen....
I would freeze midstep and suddenly become aware on some unconscious level that's hammering on the door of my conscious level to start haulin' ass because "look down, look down, there is evil about!"
To this day I remember, finally looking down and a s-s-s-s-snake was curled up in the middle of the drive way and I had already taken a step over and was frozen for an eternity of 2 whole seconds realizing I had yet to complete the step.
I think I levitated, I seriously think I must have spontaneously levitated for a moment, for one gigantic physics defying bound later I was over and past the curled up evil sunning itself evilly in the middle of our now evilly tainted driveway, I leapt forward in giant strides and didn't stop till I was off the gravel driveway and on to the safety of the cement road where I shivered and quivered and broke out in enough goosebumps that I hardly recognized myself....and still I couldn't quell the rising stomach churning nauseated feeling that can only be described as "ughhhhewwwwwwwwwwecccckkk"
I am not sure the logic behind my next actions though it made a hell of a lot of sense at the time but I started freaking out a wee bit more even though the snake was no where near me and beat at my ankles as if it was twining itself around my limbs, I ripped off my sneakers and bounded a good 6 feet away on the cement in case any snakes should be lurking within in them and kept on the move, ya know, dodge and weave, a moving target is a less likely to be snake attacked target.....
My brother Michael thinks that is hilarious, he tries to explain how silly the whole jumping in the air like a mentally un-balanced ballerina doesn't do anything, especially if the snake is practically a mile away by now....uh huh, he thinks I'M CRAZY? He who looks for, touches and...l-l-l-l-likes s-s-s-s-snakes?
To this day ever since the un-expected encounter with a supposedly harmless snake that deliberately chose the middle of our drive way as a lovely place to snooze so he could mess with my mind when I went to check the mail I have been on alert for snakes.
In California there are...r-r-r-rattle snakes and I'm sorry I just can't wrap my head around that, any snake is bad enough and now there are supposedly musical ones that can BITE YOU AND POISON YOU?
When I walk outside I have my very own patented snake expert walk that I do, every step I take I bring my foot down on to the ground like thunder, as a warning to any hidden or invisible snakes in the area to get the hell outta here cause I'm a comin' through. You think I'm exaggerating?
The last earthquake california had I'm pretty sure was just me out back getting some oranges off the tree.
I wish I was joking, but you have no idea how unbelievably tiring it is to stomp my way through 15 feet of rugged terrain (aka grass and dirt) to the orange tree, with my head swiveling about like it's coming unhinged as I'm becoming unhinged trying to grow a third eye so I can keep an extra look out for hissing coils of evil in the grass. Luckily the neighbors don't think too much of me stomping and scowling about with my arms full of oranges and eyes bugging outta my head, they just think "There goes that Canadian again."
Legless lizards my ass. You know who came up with that don't you? S-s-s-s-snake lovers, trying to put a nice spin on the un-spinnable, you can call them marshmallow frosted dimples for all I care, if it's long and squirmy and has no legs....it's A SNAKE.
p.s. May I just say how calm and collected I am being right now, if you fully understand my deep and abiding vault of distaste and...dare I admit it..fear I have of s-s-s-snakes then you'd be clapping your hands at my being able to add the photo of one to my blog. Also that all my typing hasn't been reduced to lkc.nasqw .kvncc,m nm,xhfjkd.
By the way, what cruel joke is it that I should meet and marry the love of my life, a California resident and find out that the s-s-s-s-snakes around here are at least 4 or 5 times as long as the ones we had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I snapped the photo of the s-s-s-s-snake above with our telephoto lens from the safety of our patio and that was a year ago and still I have not calmed down or quit absent mindedly beating my ankles to be sure no s-s-s-s-snakes have snuck up on me and taken up residence there......
The only thing that makes me feel a little tiny itsy bitsy miniscule sized amount better about that s-s-s-s-snake photo is that we identified it as a California King s-s-s-s-snake and supposedly they eat rattle s-s-s-s-snakes.
Oh yeah, I know I feel a hell of a lot better knowing the greenery that looks so pretty at a distance is woven with insanenly long living ropes of evil with bellies full of rattles...ughhhh.
S-s-s-s-snakes...they're just so very wrong.

A Chocolate Pardon...

Dear Mr.Bunny.
I suppose you suck ass a lot less than I had thought. Because this Easter you finally came through for me. Mind you I do not know yet if I can completely turn a blind eye to your mysterious absence all these years, after all I know it wasn't some horribly crippling illness that kept you away. Too bad. Didn't all the youngins in my family strut their never ending parade of eggs, toys, chocolate and Easter Bunny related goodies past my face time and time again, year after fricking year? Further rubbing salt into the deep and festering wound that was your absence in my life? I can answer that, yes, they DID!
But this year, something changed. What was that?
Seriously, was it the pink sneakers cause I'll wear them every day if that's what made the difference. Was it my constant whining for the entire month of March about the lack of YOU shaped chocolate in my life any more? Wait, it wasn't the fact that I'm finally learning how to drive is it...did that scare you Mr.Bunny? Did you see how challenging it is to apply the brakes at night time when one of your fluffy little kin crosses the road....was it the fear of me possibly having my driver's license by this time next year that finally broke your silence? A little road rage goes a long way huh?
Well what ever it was I suppose I should thank-you, grudgingly of course. Upon waking on Easter morning......o.k. it was Easter afternoon, I pried open my sleep crusted eyes and looked blearily into my husband's and rasped with out much hope, "Did the Easter Bunny come?"
Blue eyes widened, darted wildly about for a moment like crazed blueberries trapped in a bowl of white milk until finally settling back in to place. My sweetie looked straight in to my eyes and finally, the answer I've been waiting 10 years to hear, 10 long torturously Easter chocolate deprived years...he says..."Yes."
I bolt upright in bed looking wildly around, the Rabbit wouldn't just visit and not leave a treat, not after 10 years of candy-less Easters, 10 years of accumulated anger and frustration and dark mysterious plans to exact my revenge upon him.....
"Where's the chocolate?" I demand.
Alan haltingly, strangely stutteringly explains "Well you see, um, I heard the Easter Bunny calling for me to come outside to get the chocolate from him but I was sooo tired. I told him I couldn't come down and he could leave it. But the Easter Bunny didn't want to leave chocolate out in the hot sun so he said he'd leave it inside the coolness of a local store. We just had to go pick it up and pay a small handling fee to the employees for holding it for us."
I stare deep in to my husband's eyes, completely awake now.
He seems to be holding his breath.
I tilt my head absorbing this...this strange twist of events. This non standard Easter Bunny practice....
For 10 years I've been harboring ill will and confused emotions towards this rabbit, for 10 years I've waited and wondered how I'd react if I ever saw or heard tell from him again.
I smile.
Alan expels an oddly long breath of what almost sounds like relief. I suppose he was as worried about the Easter Bunny as I was.
Turns out, a little chocolate goes a long way towards repairing a damaged relationship. Come to think of it I know a few people who could use a pound or two to sweeten their complicated interactions.
And what lovely little goodie did the Easter Bunny leave for me at the local store? Imagine my surprise when my sweetie tells me it's Godiva chocolates!
SCORE!
Looks like some one is trying to suck up, looks like you-know-who has quite the brown nose this year. Sorry to all you kiddies who got .99 cent chocolate that feels, tastes and smells like wax. SURE maybe the Easter Bunny ignored some of us to the point of risking some of us having a small mental break down but when he made a come back he did it with style. And with fancy pants chocolates that some of us had only read about in Nora Robert's novels and seen on trashy female sitcoms.
Ya know, revenge is pretty sweet....but I gotta admit a box of high falutin Godiva chocolates is a hell of a lot sweeter. (and legal)
Love from me
p.s. I only sign off with love in a completely normal amount of affection a woman should have for a giant rabbit, plus I'm married so don't go getting any ideas, my husband has seen enough karate movies to lay a good whooping down on your furry behind should you ever bring me anything more than chocolate.

The rabbit shaped hole in my heart.......

(This rabbit is hollow and empty, just like me on Easter Morning)

We were heathen hillbillies. So forgive me but when I think of Easter my first and only thought is "Why the hell did the Easter bunny stop bringing me chocolate?"
Seriously?
What's up with that? Did I do something to piss the E.B. off? It's not like I was enjoying rabbit stew or pie every other day, its not like I ate his kin or something.
For many a year this freakishly large but painfully shy rabbit hopped his way through our neighborhood leaving treats for all the kids. I never saw him but I'm no idiot, I saw the evidence of his visit. Chocolate rabbits, chocolate eggs and jelly beans don't just manifest themselves you know.
I mean there's a lot of things in this world we're expected to believe based on heresay and faith but the rabbit...he left some evidence. A little "I wuz here" in an edible form, occasionally he'd even display a sense of humour and leave a few non-edible treats. Pink rubber boots one year, a stuffed bunny toy (perhaps in his own likeness???), another year he left me a Star Trek:The Next Generation Collector's plate with Data's face on the front...my God, it's like he was looking right in to my soul. Chocolate AND Star Trek??
Maybe the Easter Bunny was in kahoots with Santa. Maybe he was paying the old guy off with pastel coloured candies in return for the dirt on all us kids. But unlike Santa who's all judgey judgey about whether we've been good or bad the Easter Bunny just wants to know what kind of candy you'd like, what size boots you wear and which Star Trek: The Next Generation character was your favorite.
Until he stops coming.
Parents are pretty sadistic if you think about it. When you're a kid it's all Easter Bunny this, the Tooth Fairy that, Santa Clause every Christmas and then....they wait...until your eyes have reached the soft doe eyed expression of a true believer, your world is full of magic and make-believe and sweet candy and Star Trek: The Next Generation collector plates....they wait until they have you just where they want you. Expecting the Easter Bunny to make his yearly deposit of sugary goodness in a pretty little basket and hop away to the next place and then.......
He doesn't come.
The parents stay in their room snickering at the bewildered howls of the 20 year old in the kitchen who is sweeping her busted illusions off the linoleum floor. There's no taste of cheap rabbit shaped chocolate for her any more, just the salty bitter tears of reality.
Oh yeah.
No one ever explains AWAY the Easter Bunny.
The adults take great pride in their skill of weaving the reality of old dudes in red coats who have magic powers that let him fit down any chimney. They craft incredibly detailed accounts of what the tooth fairy shall do with the tooth she collected under your pillow, and they lure you with sweet promises of a giant rabbit who for no apparent reason at all in the dull tail end of winter, when spring is still a distant promise of green away, will sneak in to the house at night and bring you.......CANDY.
Just like that, free candy and you don't even need to slather an inch of makeup on your face and go begging at the neighbors for it all night like on Halloween. FREE candy from a GIANT Rabbit.
Until......it stops.
There's no funeral to go to, no graduation ceremony, no party wishing a giant, grizzled old hare a happy retirement. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch...no more......the end.
I never give up hope though, perhaps the Easter Bunny lost my address. Maybe he and Santa were using the same database and it crashed, these things happen you know, and would conveniently explain away old Saint Nick's lack of appearance these last few years. And of course I have a moved a few times.....that could have muddied the waters.....
I'm not quite ready to set any snares in my yard just yet. I'd give the hairy old hare a chance to explain he and his lack of chocolate away for a least a full minute before I had me one hell of a pet rabbit chained up in my garage.
So I sit, and I wait, one on eye on the clock and one eye on my growling, barely restrained craving for bunny shaped chocolate, trying to hold my stomach and emotions in check.
Sure I can buy it in a day or two for 90% less than it's price right now but it's not the same.
I don't want store bought chocolate, I want it from HIM...
Every year I wait........fingers drumming on my desk....until sleep knocks me unconscious for refusing to go to bed. And every year I awake to bright morning sunshine, a new day and a decidedly depressing lack of any rabbit deposited chocolate.
Do I cry?
Maybe a little, till I tuck those tears away in to a hard little ball of revenge that resides under my heart. Where I will harbor and nurture and grow my anger like a dark and lovely plant that's riddled with thorns and poisonous berries and one of these years....one of these years...... I won't be waiting by the door for a damn rabbit and his crappy chocolate.
I'll be out there.....he won't need to come find me cause I'll be looking for him.
And in the immortal words of our beloved Elmer Fudd..
"It's Wabbit season, and I'm hunting wabbits, so be vewy, vewy quiet!"

Why we carry 200 granola bars in the car.....

I snapped the photo of this handsome lizard when he was sunning himself out on the patio the other day. I think we had a moment, I looked in to his eyes, he in to mine and suddenly I remembered something....

Once upon a time, a few years back, my husband and I drove through the desert. And no it wasn't on a horse with no name, and anyways you don't drive a horse you steer it...ride it???
What ever.
We rolled along through seemingly endless desert. Great seas of sandy rock and scrub brush. ACTUAL tumbleweeds were seen. Blackened stone that looked like it was more than done, baked under the heat of the sun.
Why is the desert hotter than other places anyways? Is it because there are no trees? If you added up all those little scrabbly brush things shouldn't those equal a few trees? Maybe the desert is being punished, or maybe we are. Maybe there's something really ultra cool in the desert if we just had the stamina to withstand the insane heat during the day and freezing temps at night. (Damn.....I wish I had me some desert stamina right about now so I could get me hands on what ever it's hiding out there........)
Anyways driving through the desert does weird things to one's mind. You start wondering how you'd survive if the car suddenly broke down, the bottles of water in the back seat suddenly evaporated and the cell phone ran away with to make sweet cell phone love with a signal it picked up in a sleazy cell phone bar......
See, desert makes a person think strange things!!!!!!!
How would we survive?
Food and water and shelter are the obvious things to be concerned with. Being found quickly is all well and good but if you're all dried up like those tumbleweeds I mentioned, drifting across the road, a dehydrated version of yourself...that's not gonna be good.
Shelter seems the easiest. I swear I could build a decent shelter better than most. Having the woods as your playground when you're a kid means a) you can curse a lot and not get in trouble cause no one's gonna hear and b) you build a lot of *cabins*.
Maybe some kids were swimming in pools, riding horses and coloring in useless coloring books (probably even staying inside the lines), but my brothers and I built cabins. Sure they were made from fallen branches and twigs but show me an adult who knows his way around a twig cabin the way we did and I'll show you the copyright paperwork on twig cabins...oh ha ha, o.k. we didn't invent making cabins out of twigs. Every one we knew did the same thing. Kids in the boonies make cabins, kids in town make gangs.
Sure I might be bragging it up now how I could survive in the desert in my lovely 3 bedroom tumbleweed cabin I could probably construct in half an hour but I'd probably be disastrous at starting a gang. Like first off I'd ask my mom to join and I'm pretty damn sure that's a gang *no no*.
Alan said we'd have to worry about food and water as well.
And that I could decorate the hell out of my multi level 3 car garage tumbleweed home all I want but if we didn't have food and water.....well........I'm basically making a kick ass tumbleweed mausoleum right? (By the way did you notice how my tumbleweed 3 bedroom cabin turned in to a multi level, 3 car garage tumbleweed home by the next paragraph? That's how expert at twig cabins I am. By the time I get through my ramblings here I'll have built a twig city and named it Ralphie the Third.)
We considered all the possible nutrition available to us in the desert. How much protein is in a rock anyways? Is it measured in ounces or grains?
Now I don't hunt, unless it's mushrooms and then it's not really hunting it's just sneaking up on unsuspecting shrooms in the woods and popping them off their little stems. I guess that makes me a mushroom mass murderer. Does it help if I say they were chanterelles, it's been at least 8 years since I went on a spree and they were soooooooo tasty? It does? Good.
Anyways I don't hunt and neither does Alan but we both agreed that if we HAD to we could do it. We could catch some wild game and make a meal, and start a fire by rubbing sticks together (I'm sure we could do this, we've watched so many episodes of survivor I could probably rub sticks together in my sleep and create a cozy fire. I've also watched politicians so I can be both president of the united states as well as Prime Minister of Canada and once I saw this dude on a motorcycle jump over a canyon so I can probably do that too. I have a PHD in watching TV.)
After miles of desert scenery whizzing by in a dully coloured blur as we both pondered what sort of wildlife lay in wait for us should we need to partake of them Alan announces "A HA!"
"NOT SNAKES!" I say.
"Oh.....oh...o.k." He says.
Silence.
Alan announces again "A HA!"
"what? You found something?"
"Lizards!"
I was impressed, I hadn't thought of them, surely the desert was ripe for picking, bursting at the seams full of ripe juicy lizards. Hey I don't wanna eat a lizard but if you're stuck in the middle of Godforsaken no where in your sprawling 2.3 acre twig mansion with built in twig movie theater and twig bowling alley you'll eat what you can get.
Alan has other plans.
"We wouldn't actually eat the lizard."
"Ummm......so we....name it and raise it as our desert dwelling child?"
"No." he says.
"Oh." I say. "Well what do we do with it then?"
You know those silences that descend like a heavy cloud of expectation? The kind that are so thick you can practically see the silence, the shape and colour. If you were to open your mouth (which you wouldn't cause you're in the desert and you can't be evaporating moisture for no reason) you could even taste the silence? Well one of those silences happened then and I hushed in anticipation.
"We'd suck on it."
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
But I listened as he was obviously serious and we still had some zillion and a half miles left to go before we passed through the desert back into the populated land of sanity and could get a Starbucks with a side of reality.
So I said "ewwwwwww, but please, elaborate."
"Well if we caught a lizard and popped it in our mouth we could leave the head poking out so it could breathe etc and we could just sort of suck on it. I'm sure we would gain nutrition or at least a little flavor from the skin which would slowly start dissolving a tiny bit from our digestive enzymes in our saliva and instead of consuming our most likely hard to get food supply all at once, it could last for days before we'd need to get a new one. DAYS! Kids suck their thumbs all the time and you never see them with dead thumbs. Think of it, we could survive and so could the lizards!"

• Please note we don't suck on lizards. we don't even eat them. We don't get lost in the desert and we dont build mansions out of twigs....though I could build one so fast your head would spin. Also this is an idea from a former vegan so you know how unlikely lizard sucking really is even if we were stuck in the desert. By the way lizard sucking is copyrighted by me....yeah......uh huh, I keep them papers right next to my imaginary twig cabin copyright papers.

"Alan you're.................."