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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Eh!

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

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

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

Sandy

(Waaaaay back in the day, like sheesh maybe 12 years ago or more.)

"Don't pet her. She'll bite."
Oh how these words seemed to echo through out my teenage years. When I lived at home they boomeranged about and always came back. Because always there was another person bumbling their way forward, eyes fixated on the "cute little dog."
The outstretched hand and goofy grin gave them away.
The petters.
The ones who stumbled in to nipped fingers before they even knew what bit them...so to speak.
"Don't pet her, she'll bite." I warned in the best no-nonsense tone a teenager can manage.
They never heard, their cooing and awwing and slobbering, over the adorableness of my dog, drowned out my warnings.
It also drowned out the low almost undetectable growl. The one that accompanied the ever so slowly rising hairs along Sandy's back and had her lip just beginning to quiver.
The petter, like some sort of doggy lover zombie, shambled closer, un-heeding my warnings and their own ears with trilling laughter and "pashaws, she won't bite me."
She won't?
Why I had no idea that a person could be absolutely certain. I mean I'm not even absolutely certain that the bag boy at the grocery store isn't going to snap at my hand when I hand him the avocados that rolled away from his reach.
"She won't bite me." They always claimed with pride and that ridiculous note of confidence. Doggy psychic-ism must run rampant in my old neighborhood, as I heard this phrase time and time again.
Most of the time I watched in slow motion horror as the petter, apparently un-concerned if they left our premisses with the same number of fingers as they arrived with, leaned closer and closer to the fairly small, golden haired dog with the floppy ears and lip curling back in a pretty accurate elvis impersonation.
Then, as I saw the fingers dangling like pink sausages, straining ever closer to the eager little jaws of Sandy, saw my dog's control snap like cheap thread, I would break free of my reverie and lunge forward in sync with my pet.
It was a race to see who'd reach their goal first, me to Sandy or her teeth to snapping tight over the petter's fingers.
Luckily I was bigger, and would snatch her up, an armful of angry canine, and spin away from the confused and dazed petter, before Sandy could get her mouthful. A justified bite is no less painful than any other.
The petter would always look on with big sad puppy dog eyes and every one of them, man, woman and child alike, would whisper some version of "She was going to bite me!" The words each petter spoke over the years might have altered slightly but the disbelief was always the same.
Really? REALLY? She was going to bite you? Imagine that.
I'd shake my head in disbelief and bundle my little dog away to our room, sure of the fact she wouldn't bite ME!
Probably not....and if she did at least I'd know enough to realize I probably deserved it.
We were roommates for many years. And like many roommates we became great friends, sisters almost. You have to when sharing a confined space with another living being.
Oh we had our tense moments, I imagine any one would have a fit when discovering their roommate had just birthed a half dozen babies all over your dirty laundry you had left on the floor.
But those puppies were sweet. So sweet. And I touched them when they were just minutes old, even though Sandy's eyes were glazed with a strangely fierce look of concentration reminiscent of how she'd look at the Petters. But I knew. She wouldn't bite ME. And when she did, nipping at my fingers I took the snap for the warning it was and backed off with nothing but bruised fingers and a lesson learned.
Birthing puppies multiple times in my bedroom was a forgivable offense, who among us can not point a finger at any family member guilty of a similar crime. But the time she ate my Halloween candy things got a little tense.
Halloween candy is sacred.
It is NOT to be touched by brothers or Mother's or any one who so much as looks like it has a sweet tooth. I'd give my teddy bear a smack if I thought it's lifeless button eyes had stared a nanosecond too long at my miniature chocolate bars.
So the day I came home from school and flung my school bag on to my bed and met the eager welcome of my dog was almost like any other. Almost. Until I saw the trail of carnage and destruction spewed across my room. As if some devilish monster had snuck in during school hours and found my Halloween candy stash and, evil of all evils, ate half of it and destroyed the rest with sharp toothed drooling bites.
They say small dogs are clever.
But it wasn't words of praise I was thinking when I figured out that my friend, my faithful companion, my roommate, my dog Sandy had hopped on to my bed, from there to my night stand and from there to an even taller dresser and had reached into the open top drawer like it was her own personal candy buffet.
I thought it had been safe. Candy in a top dresser drawer, albeit an open drawer, should have been safe from all manner of candy thieves.
The sticky bits clinging to the carpet and Sandy's wide, dark eyed gaze and wagging tail that swooshed happily back and forth as if nothing was wrong were a defining moment in our friendship. Forgiveness was learned. When someone you love has wronged you in the worst way possible, chewing up your stash of miniature candy bars, you learn to forgive. And hide your candy better next year.
I'm sure I wasn't the best roomate for her either. I tended to hog the bed. I had strange people over and let them in to our room with out asking her permission. I often raided her stash of un-matched socks that she stole from the laundry pile and hid under our bed, returning them to the various owners with out so much as a "May I?"
I threw away the duck foot she found and dragged into our room with the sort of pride that beams like warm sunshine from a little dog, as she pranced through the door, head high and mouth full of duck foot. I snuck it away and hid it outside. I was un-thoughtful like that at times, blind as to the value of of an old leathery duck foot.
Our relationship was not all one of stresses and tense moments. It's funny how those things stand out, when the reality was long stretches of time that blurs together. Cold snow and frosty breath as we huffed and puffed down the drive way to check the mail. Sharp green grass and hot sun on our backs as we wandered through the fields looking for strawberries. Both of us eating as many as we picked.
In the fall we played hide and seek with my brothers and I always lost. Because they'd follow Sandy to what ever bush I was hiding behind. Frantically wagging her tail, eyes full of doggy laughter, obviously not understanding the rules of hide and seek. Or perhaps she knew them very well and was thrilled to always be the first to find me.
Moving out was hard, but Sandy understood, in the way that best friends do. We had a talk, she and I, as I packed my bags to go to California and be with the man I loved. She wouldn't have to travel thousands of miles, she could stay in the country and hang out with my Mom who I knew Sandy loved. And I thanked her for yet another valuable lesson learned because she was my pet. That her needs had to come before mine. And when people asked "Are you taking your dog?" she and I rolled our eyes because of course I wasn't. That would never be fair.
She never did learn the hang of blogging or messaging, and she thought *twittering* was something that birds did. But she posed for endless photos.
I am pretty sure after I moved out she may have been under the impression that she was now a doggy model, as my Mother clicked away with the digital camera and emailed countless photos of her. She no longer sat, she "struck a pose".
I can say with absolutely no bias that she was the most gorgeous, photogenic dog in the entire universe and beyond.
A little golden dog, just the right size to scoop up in your arms if you wanted to carry her, but big enough to snuggle with on a winter's night when the temperatures were below freezing.
She'd have enjoyed biting many more people if given the opportunity.
I'd like to think she's nipping all the ghostly fingers of relatives already passed over. That sounds like doggy heaven.

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.

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.)

The Beauty of the Big Biscuit...

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

How to Enjoy a Big Biscuit:

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

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

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.