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.

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.

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!"

I Scream.....

I like shock value. It's thrilling, we the people, we like thrilling don't we. Who cares about a walk down the street we want diving behind trash cans, rolling away from the wheels of an oncoming semi and hurtling through the air over grey haired grannies and their walkers as you skid to the cross walk and THEN...cross...against the red light.
Excitement we love it.
But I don't get bacon ice cream. Is that wrong of me? I don't get it and I'm a wee bit heart broken to hear of so many people apparently *getting it*. I think what they need is an ounce of reality up side the head. Bacon is meat. Therefore IT NEVER TOUCHES ICE CREAM.
I don't get this sudden rash..make that rasher (ha ha) of bacon ice cream recipes etc. It's every where, I can't turn around the ice creamy goodness parts of the world wide web with out bumping up against bacon ice cream. It's worse then accidentally opening an email that your relative sent out to every one in their address book that was obviously and graphically intended for their significant other only....Worse than innocently clicking on a web link for a site that seems like it's going to be about striped mittens but it turns out it's people who like to wear striped mittens...and that's all. Hey, what ever blows your bubbles, but it don't blow mine and I don't like the idea of bacon in ice cream.
I'm ok with it touching pancakes (bacon that is) as that love union was made ages ago. But it shouldn't even enter in to the thought of ice cream. Some things are scared. You can make all the jokes about God, your Mother and the President/Prime Minister but you sure as hell don't F*#K around with ice cream.
I mean I don't care if it tastes good, it's wrong. And I'm fully admitting that it might taste good, bacon ice cream *shudddddddders* to some people but I'm sorry it's still wrong.
If I want ice cream that means I'm having a dessert, a sweet treat not an astronaut-ish all in one meal kind of thing.
Hey here's an idea if bacon is so damned great why don't y'all slap some in your shampoo, cause mmm bacon smells good and we want it every where we can get it. Do they make bacon scented personal lubricants? Well apparently they ought to. Bacon flavored baby teething rings? Genius!
And ladies, nothing says romance like a triple layer chocolate wedding cake with copious amounts of bacon sprinkled through out. Why even crisp it up? Why not just leave it all fatty and nasty, so you can get a real good bacon experience. Why sugar coat it and pretend it's something it's not. Let it retain a little slime factor if you really want the bacon experience.
Hey, I like bacon. But we have rules in this household, no hitting, no hissing at our cats and NO PUTTING BACON IN THE FRICKING ICE CREAM!
Have they made a bacon flavored vodka? Go ahead ya bunch of sickos go ahead, whip up your bacon flavored vodkas see if I care. It makes more sense than ice cream I can tell ya that. Maybe, just maybe I could sort of come to an understanding with a bacon flavored vodka but my ice cream is precious to me. Ice cream is a treat, if done right it's a bit of a pricey treat. Pricey compared to the artificially flavored, preservative filled .33 cent candy bars I could get instead at a grocery store check out. Why would I need to add bacon to that?
When I have ice cream I'm not just filling a void in my diet I'm having an experience. I don't eat/gulp ice cream. I don't want to be so dazzled by anything while I'm having it that I mindlessly shovel it in and forget to relish every taste. Are you telling me that if you eat bacon ice cream you're not gonna be constantly going,
"wow, bacon ice cream, I'm eating bacon ice cream. Who'd a thunk it? This taste better than I would have expected. It's funny, I don't feel weird at all."
Clank. The spoon hits the bowl, treat is over and you've haven't truly experienced a oneness with the marvel that is ice cream because you were so damn focused on eating bacon in it and not gagging.
There's a good slogan
"Bacon Ice cream : It doesn't make you gag!"
I'm all about experimentation, I too have heard the siren's call of the kitchen muse who whispers sweetly in your ear. Try a little salt on that chocolate, try a little cayenne on that strawberry...what will happen if you switch white flour and use whole wheat instead........ Usually I'll give the kitchen muse a whirl around the dance floor and try the suggestions, as extreme as a little dried pasilla pepper in a mega chocolate cookie even....but the day she comes slithering up to me slyly suggesting I put smoked pig belly in my luscious homemade ice cream is the day I bitch slap her ass back to muse-ville where she can dang well stay until kingdom come and I sit back here savoring REAL un-tainted ice cream.
I don't mean to sound harsh and unforgiving like a total kitchen bitch who thinks every thing should be done her way.........that's what I am, but I'm trying not to come across that way so my point can be sharped to a fine honed bit that will pierce the veil of infatuation with bacon.
In a sandwich...good....in a pie...maybe..IF it's a potato pie, in a sweet pie, helllll no. In a sandwich, yes, in a cookie.....have you learned nothing??????? NO NO NO NO NO!
Maybe it's because I have such special memories of ice cream. Maybe because when I was a kid we were far from rich and ice cream was reserved for special occasions, birthdays and...ummmm...that's about it for the most part. We did have ice cream at other times and it was like a miracle, ice cream and no body got born-ed on that day that we know? Hallelujah. Non-birthday ice cream tasted ever the more sweeter for it's rarity and surprise. You EXPECT to get ice cream on your little brother's birthday, you DON'T expect to get ice cream on a Thursday night in the middle of May.
Oh poor me, only getting ice cream on birthdays, well there were other occasions like I said the rare Thursday plus I aligned myself early on with fellow ice cream addicts who appreciated a non celebratory cone in the summer as much as I did. I thank my lucky stars I had such an addict in my life who made ice cream an event, the way it ought to be. Buying a 2 liter tub of it to eat, scooping it up with cookies, no dishes or utensils of any kind. Sitting on the side of the road over looking a lazy river. Silence but for the occasional crunch of cookie. And every crunch was an accidental bite cause no one in their right mind eats the cookie spoon on purpose, it literally was the transportation unit to allow ice cream to travel to our mouths with out freezing our fingers. We were at once with the ice cream, we savoured every taste, letting it melt in cool, sweet glory on our young tongues.
What sort of ice cream does one bask in on a lovely grey day on the side of the road with a fellow ice cream addict.......Liverwurst and onion.
A HA!
Did you flinch???
Of course you did, that sounds disgusting doesn't it. It was Neapolitan, a simple and humble flavor that satisfied every kid, as there was something there for every one....apparently though there were some kids who were jonesing for a little bacon to be tossed in the mix as they grew up and created just that.
Maybe that's the problem, they grew up.
Maybe they forgot how special ice cream is.
One time, actually one of the last times I visited my Grandma while she stilled lived in her home she had an ice cream cake. One of those super hard, pre-made sorts that has an eerily good layer of chocolate crumble between the top layer of vanilla ice cream and the bottom layer of chocolate. You hear that? Vanilla ice cream, chocolate crumble, chocolate ice cream. There was no layer of BBQ steak anywheres at all in there. If there had been Grandma would have raised an eyebrow and flung the thing out the kitchen window...ok she has more class than that but I don't. I'd have flung it. Then I'd have cried.
Another time when I was a really young kid my Aunt and Uncle took my brother and I to get an ice cream cone at a local joint. I ordered something creamy white with swirls of pink and big gobs of red in it. I ordered based on what I saw in the tub not the label.
"Are you sure that's what you want?" My Uncle wisely asked.
I was undeterred, it looked marvelous, it looked rich and delicious, a little fruity and oh so decadent I was practically drooling like a mad dog on the display case.
The scooper handed me the cone and I took that first lick and my heart literally broke. I can still remember the pain. It actually hurt to have another bite. I was a half decent kid so I didn't sob and whine for another cone. Nobody we knew was rich so there was no "buy me another cone cause I decided this flavor doesn't suit my palette."
I was stuck, trying to eat this weirdly sour...crap.
I couldn't understand it. What in the hell sort of ice cream did I get? Finally I did what I should have done in the beginning and I read the label.
Strawberry yogurt.
For a kid, whose ice cream cones were much too scare for her liking this was literally the most painful ice cream experience of my life. I ordered YOGURT ice cream. (As an adult I acquired a certain taste for it but it's not ice cream. Who are we kidding, it's tasty as all heck if you get a good brand but it's NOT ice cream)
I will never order frozen yogurt if there's the option of ice cream. That's like choosing a tootsie roll over a homemade fudge brownie. Nothing wrong with a tootsie roll...but it aint no fudge brownie.
By the way before I forget, how about a nice batch of bacon yogurt? Maybe it ought to be bacon strawberry yogurt. Breakfast in a tub. Friendly bacteria for your innards with a dollop of fried bacon in every bite. Oh boy.
If there's one thing I've learned in life so far it's that every one is different. Every one has different tastes. And I've learned mine sure as heck doesn't run to bacon flavored ice cream.
Y'all go ahead and enjoy it, if you really, truly are enjoying it more power to you.
I'll save my bacon for a BLT and I'll have a bowl of sweet homemade chocolate fudge ripple ice cream afterwards. Or maybe I'll have a scoop of rum raisin. Of course it's always hard to choose between cookie dough ice cream and Irish cream liqueur ice cream. There was that peach pie ice cream that was pretty tasty, that and an accompanying scoop of raspberry cheesecake ice cream would be soooo satisfying.....oh shoot I forgot about the pecan praline..hmmm...oh man pecan praline and a double scoop of coffee ice cream with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce and a wee scoop of pure vanilla ice cream on top.
Mmmmmm
but y'all go ahead, have your bacon ice cream.
More of every other kind for me!

366 Days of a Publicized Big Mouth

"...its like wow she had a lot to say just about that one lil thing"
Yes, yes I do.
I think my sister said it best. Though more politely than I would have.
I have a lot to say about any little thing, because...I....am a big mouth.
Which is good actually, very convenient for cramming such goodies as cakes, donuts and baked potatoes into, AND for holding the umpteen million words that flow from my brain in a mad rush to get off my tongue and into the free world.
Usually there's a verbal traffic jam around my lateral incisor. Words like "dang it" and "frick" not to mention "rump" tend to get caught on the edge of that tooth, causing a crazy pile up of nouns and adjectives, usually I can sort them out though before spewing unintelligible blather upon the public. Though occasionally a few still lurk in there unbeknownst to me.....I can't tell you how much I hate rinsing my mouth out at the end of a day and spitting a few choice words in to the sink, I'm always like "dang, so that's where all my pleases and thank-yous ended up. Damn you lateral incisor, damn you." It's not ME who's the inconsiderate un-thanker, it's my damn tooth in my big mouth.
Today is the one year anniversary of my revealing my amazing big mouth to the world. One year since I starting adding my own 7 cents (I'm worth a hell of a lot more than 2) to the internet instead of just reading every one else's thoughts and ideas. There's nothing wrong with all those other blogs out there, I enjoy many of them tremendously but none of them are written by me and therein lies the problem.... I want to be a blogger tooooooo, I want to share my amazing meals, crazy random ideas, my rants about things that really tick me off, photos of my wine, lips and hair, memories about my childhood, wild schemes to hide from God, poems about dead monkeys, my occasional threesomes and how to's, like fixing a saggy seat. I wanted a place to showcase the 48 rolls of toilet paper we buy at a time, our forays into rotten cabbage, drunk cookie videos, recipes and lessons I learned from Super Mario. And this, like so many other kazillion people before me, this *blog* thing is the place to do that. (call me crazy but you all better keep an eye on these *blogs* I think it's really going to catch on)
Ya see the thing is you can't walk up to people on the street and launch into a description of what you had for supper, complete with snapshots hauled out of your pocket, slightly wrinkled as you forgot about the bend affect of jamming pics into your jeans pocket and then sitting in a parked car on the side of the road for 2 hours until you see a likely candidate who looks like they could use a freakishly detailed accounting of your meals. I have found, that either people don't care or that wrinkled photos detract from your humorous commentary on apple pie. People are less likely to run screaming if you have nice digital photos on a computer screen then wrinkled ones pulled from your pockets....I guess.....I couldn't say for sure....I don't make people run screaming.......perhaps there's been the odd time or two where COINCIDENTALLY some one ran screaming and I had wrinkled photos of my French fries....but that was NOT my doing. Perhaps they saw a spider and were deathly afraid of spiders...yes that's it....
A blog solves all of that, now I can just roll with style down the street calling out a casual yet elegant "read my blog at www.StuffByTace.com" to persons waiting at the bus stop. There's no screaming, no running, and even if they were doing any of that what do I care? I'm rolling down the street to the next bus stop.....
I love my blog.
Plus I'm sure all my friends and family can't get enough of me and a tiny peek into the inner workings of my mind could be a joy and a cheap thrill not to mention satisfy that little piece deep inside their hearts that wants a voyeuristic peek into our lives with out committing to getting a damn passport and hauling ass down here for a visit.....(this portion of the blog entry is brought to you by relatives who like to guilt other relatives into hauling ass down for a visit while turning a blind eye to their own negligent hauling ass duties)
Remember folks, hauling ass goes both ways.
So here I am, lil ol' me splattered all over the world wide web for all to enjoy and roll their eyes at. Go ahead, eye roll all you want but I'm pleased to be contributing original content to the internet, mind you some of it is hopeless drivel and most of it is examples of the world's most longest run on sentences but it's all original. Call me kooky but I get a peculiar little thrill out of announcing a blog update to people in my address book, I suppose I could just forward the "missing iguana/dog/whatever" emails, the "funniest thing I ever saw" emails or the Viagra spam I keep getting...but...I just can't bring myself to do it. You can be damn sure if I ever send you Viagra spam I'll have written it myself, I don't care if it's long and hard and takes all night, I'll write it myself.
There are a few things I've learned from my year of blogging though. (That's 76 posts in 366 days, that's a NEW blog post every 4.81578947 days. Wow, I was a prolific/blabbermouth wasn't I? I mean sure there's people who blog every day but I also gotta eat, bathe and get a little sun every once in a while so as not to turn in to a bag of dirty bones mole person.) But anyways things I've learned:

• Number one is that I am my biggest fan. I have an unhealthy amusement with my own writing and will snort most un-lady like at my own words until my husband looks up from his work to ask what's so funny.
• Number two is that you have to use your common sense, all uncommon sense should relegated to the back of the closet, buried deep in the sub folders on your computer or to secret blogs that you anonymously write. Common sense is the most essential thing in a blog, no ranting about Aunt Petunia's predilection for sniffing nail polish, no giving away secret Canadian knowledge that we're all sworn to keep when we reach the age of 10, no photos of cleavage, rear ends or middle fingers unless tastefully done. No slacking off from household chores just so that you can write another blog entry about coffee or ice cream, like the world needs another long winded love letter to dairy.
• Number three, and most importantly quadruple check your facts, don't be running your mouth off about how great a dancer you are until you video yourself trying some of the moves from "Dancing With The Stars" and see for yourself just how fricking *great* you are. Also don't tell amusing anecdotes about relatives who could beat you up for revealing a secret recipe, secret dog or secret love child. If you should reveal such things you should ensure there's a few thousand miles between you and them not to mention you should get a one day head start.
• Another thing (aka number four) I have learned during my year of blogging is that comments are gold. No better than that, they're chewy pink edible gold! Meaning, woohoo they're great BUT, first and foremost I write my blog for me and for my sweetums. If you rely on comments to fulfill your blogging satisfaction you just might turn into a dried up, puckery old prune who can only write scathingly cruel posts about un-commenters. And I have a sworn oath to only pucker up from a lemon or for a smooch. Though like I said, comments are great and I'm not above leaving subliminal messages on my blog for people to leave them, such as barely visible text or just going ahead and leaving myself comments.

Nothing warms the cold parts of my little heart more then getting an email with an announcement that myself left me a comment. Aww shucks self, you're too good to me, and most often myself has been quite kind in it's complimentary and flattering comments. I think I might like me!
I've been kicking around the idea of what I can do to celebrate my entire year of blogging. At first I considered getting the words "I rule the blogging world, oh yeah, uh huh, that's right!" tattooed on my arm but there's no room there what with the "honk if you love Jesus" and image of an apple pie already holding a place of honor there.
Then I considered having a wild party, you know with all my friends and relatives and fellow bloggers but I'm not a people person. I'm more of a sit in the corner and watch every one else with a mild look of disgust on face, sucking down coffees sort of person.
I also considered writing a poem but all I could think of to rhyme with Blogger was hogger, flogger and snogger. Trust me, you don't want to read the sort of poem I could write with those words.
Finally, I thought I'd do something I've observed other people in the blogging community doing. You don't need to start getting scared and begin covering one eye in preparation of anything nasty. What they do is award a little treat to some lucky reader/commenter to celebrate their blogiversary. Usually by a random drawing, entering every commenter who leaves a comment between a specific set of dates. Well sounds cool huh?
EXCEPT......
What if there's been a commenter who has been faithfully commenting all this time and some yahoo I don't know from Adam happens to stumble across my blog on the day of the contest and leave a comment and win the little treat I'll send...is that fair?
Hell no!
So first thing I did was look over the number of comments I have had on my blog for the past year. By my calculations, as long as my fingers weren't too jittery on the calculator buttons from the overdose of celebratory caffeine, I have had a whopping 173 comments!
Wowsers!
Who knew? Then I tallied up the comments to see who left the most, so that I could award their faithful commenting, their generous spirit, their kind words and often visits with a treat.
The number of most comments left by a single person is an astounding...(can I get a drum roll from the people please? thanks)
119!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations to the lucky commenter who must seriously enjoy what I've been writing...umm...er.....what's that? Ahem, seems I'm that commenter. Wow, I ought to get myself something really fricking nice huh? I had been thinking along the lines of a really good chocolate bar or some such thing but now I'm thinking I ought to be endowed with magical powers or at least the ability to turn water in to port. I suppose I should admit that at least half of those comments I left myself were actually in reply to real comments people had left me...makes you wonder about the other half though huh? *grins*
In the interest of fair play, since no one could be as big a fan of me as I am, I then looked to see who came in second. A much more reasonable number of comments totaling 18 by a single person. My Mother-In-Law! Wow, thanks Mary you can expect a little treat in the mail before too long!
NOW, if I do a random drawing I've already taken care of the fairness side of things. Myself and Mary will be excluded from the drawing. Leave a comment on THIS post between March 4th and March 11th and you will be entered in a drawing, the winner gets a little treat and my conscious is clear because it'll be fair to all involved...*howl erupts off screen*
Ah shoot, my sweetie pie howls a good point. A lot of my commenters are family members....soooo...it's gonna look pretty suspicious if I have a random drawing and my dear sweet mama happens to win, even if it's completely random...I mean I wouldn't even buy that. So I will have TWO drawings, one for the strange people...er...I mean strangers and one for family. The winner from each category, strange people and family will be announced on the 11th (as long as there's nothing good on tv and then it might have to wait till the 12th)
You can only be entered once and every one who wants to participate for a surprise treat can! (and I can avoid having an angry mob on my doorstep....again)
Holy cannoli I'm glad this only happens once a year, it's fricking exhausting trying to keep this all straight.
It's been a fabulous year, though I expected nothing less. I became a permanent resident of the united states, I co-wrote an entire novel with my husband (maybe we'll get it published some day, a whole book full of run-on sentences, cool huh?) I only bought 3 or 4 loaves of store bought bread (that I recall) because I made all the rest, I learned to start the car, made my own Marmalade jam, did NOT get a cow, drank a hell of a lot of coffee, made our own Halloween costumes and not once did I ever scream bloody murder at who ever the heck it is at the grocery store that's been fondling the cilantro so much it's falling out of it's bundles, I resolved a few personal wrapping paper issues, and I turned 30!!!! All that PLUS 76 blog posts.
*pats self on back*

Hello Again All Hallow's....

(me and my sweetums 2004, regular ol' store bought costume bits)

I loved Halloween. Seriously, deep in love, will you marry me and live happily ever after in a haunted mansion type love with Halloween. I was totally committed, Halloween of course knew all about Christmas and was ok with our arrangement. BUT, October was dedicated solely to it's needs. We didn't talk about jingle bells, the man with the white beard and trees were ignored in favor of fake spiderweb. Halloween turned a blind eye to the Christmas projects that would creep up earlier and earlier in the year and I'd make the extra effort to carve a jack-o-lantern that had at least 5 spiky teeth. We got a long great.
Halloween let me dress up as a grim reaper, a jester like clown, a black scary cat, an old woman, a cow and a dead bride.....all back in the hay day of our relationship of course. Perhaps I'm actually legally married to Halloween and don't know it.....I'm not sure that spraying one's hair black with fake-o-colour in a can constitutes a binding agreement with a holiday but it damn well should.

(me and my sweetums 2005, costumes made frantically in about 2 hours as Halloween breathed down our necks)

Of course like any relationship, at least like the ones you see on tv (and you just know those are all accurate depictions of real life), Halloween and I grew apart. What with the whole "you're 19 and have been out of high school for a year and are too big to go trick-or-treating any more" attitude I was getting back then.
Now I know better, it wasn't Halloween who pulled away from us...it was me...me and my fear that a 20 something woman was more creepy than cute if she dressed up and kept trick-or-treating in to her thirties..... So I bit back the urge to keep trying, shoved aside years and years worth of feelings and Halloween faded a bit........though I know it was seeing other people. Didn't those little neighborhood brats show up anyways, dressed to the nines as ghouls and goblins, just to shove it in my face that Halloween was with them? I had to satisfy my urges to rip off their masks and just politely hand out the treat bags by pilfering candy from each one before hand. You hear that you little kids of 10 years ago??? You were supposed to get TWO mini chocolate bars plus the soda and chips in each treat bag but you only got..ONE! So ha, sweetest damn chocolate I ever stole.
The nice thing though about a soul mate is that a connection like that just doesn't disappear.

(me and my sweetums 2006, awesome handmade skull heads, wigs and sweetum's armor!)

I know what you're thinking but it's o.k. My sweetie knows all about Halloween, in fact we've come to a pretty good understanding about the whole thing. I don't do any housework during the month of October and he gets to play with my paints and clay. It's a good arrangement, a solid marriage should always be based upon letting your husband paint his own skull and make his own teeth.

( sweetums 2006, check out those teeth, I love a man who can make his own teeth!)

In the beginning, when I moved away from home and got married my sweetums and I experimented a little the during our first year. Dabbled our toes in the spookiest of seasons, bought a little candy. A few hats and some rubber masks.....Testing each other, and of course Halloween...would it have me back??? Would it have us both together? We eyed each other over the wads of fake spider web and tentatively both reached for the little plastic spiders...fingers touched, our eyes met and we both knew.....we both wanted Halloween back. We wanted to experience it together.

(me 2007, a very scary fairy!)

It doesn't happen all at once, you have to work at it but after a few years of marriage we were ready for more. We needed to take Halloween to the next level and we did...oh my we did. We embraced Halloween with open arms, fake blood and teeth bared and were met with the loving acceptance of a holiday that had waited patiently by my side when I stumbled, ready to take me back at a moment's notice. I had just been too blinded with stolen chocolate and stupidity to see this.(me and my sweetums 2007, handmade wings, helmet head pieces etc.)

A holiday that's been turned in to the celebration of costumes and candy....that's my kind of day.
We started out with a few easy costumes, store bought bits and pieces that we wore with childish glee. Then we graduated to embellishing with more custom bits...now the custom bits are embellished with just the occasional store bought bits. Now all our bits and pieces are thrilled and October seems to get bigger every year.
I'm thinking we might even...can I say it? Dare I? We might even go trick-or-treating again some time. Sure our knees will ache like a son of a gun from crouching to look like 10 year olds but...candy...free candy.
Of course I'm jumping the gun here, look at me dreaming about Halloween in February. When I really ought to be planning my latest scheme to catch that damn rabbit. He's got a lot of explaining to do, one year he leaves me a basket full of candy and the next he just ups and doesn't...ever..again. They got names for people..and rabbits like that but they aint purty and my mama reads this (she taught me most of them words, but still, you get my point)

A sweet bone to pick.....

(saigon cinnamon)

I have the loveliest memories of crunching on chicken bones.
Gawwwd, I would munch, and suck and crunch to my lil heart's delight. I would smash them bones with my teeth until all but little pink shards remained in my mouth, slurping on the dark innards, letting the whole mass melt away to sweet nothingness on my tongue. Then pop, crunch..... Start all over again.
My tongue would become incredibly sore but I ignored it's plaintive wail.
“Shaddup tongue, it's chicken bone season.”
And it was, I never lied to my tongue. I might lie to my brothers about who had the last chicken bone...but never to my tongue.
Ahhhh chicken bones.
The last time I had the intense cinnamony, chocolate filled delight was when some kind benevolent soul from the Canadian side of the family sent us a bag for Christmas.
I don't see chicken bones very often (if ever?) in California. In fact I am not even sure the American side of the family would know what I was talking about if I said I had me a hankerin for chicken bones. I might end up with a dismantled piece of poultry if I wasn't careful with my words!
In Nova Scotia, chicken bones (the candy not the skeleton of the bird) were readily available during Christmas. Light pink little round tube-ish bits that were was almost a danger to eat, between the *hot sizzling cinnamon shell that splintered like real bones and revealed the dark chocolate within* AND the addictive *can not possibly just eat 9 and leave them be* nature of them.
So I associate chicken bones with the holidays and a sore tongue. Because I seriously did eat a whole bag at a time, the texture and flavours were that addictive. My goodness I was a chicken bone addict...when Christmas passed I'd shake and shiver for a full hour, licking the pink dust from the bottom of the bag and cursing the fool who only bought enough of the good stuff to last us a few days.
Our supplier was some chicken bone pusher in Truro, Nova Scotia.
We used to sell crafts at the Zonta craft fair every November and some how...coincidentally (yeah frickin right) the chicken bone lady was always set up across from us. It was a pretty dang big fair for the area, over 70 booths, and she some how manages to almost always be across from us? I don't believe in coincidences, I believe in the fine art of stalking your customer and knowing their weakness. I mean she probably tailed me, noticed my nefarious and lustful glances at her goodies and then bribed the candle lady to mover over so she'd be in my direct line of sight!
And there I sat, as innocent as the day is long, surrounded by all our crafty goodness, looking directly across at a lady with nothing but a table piled high with candy.
Chicken bone candy.
Sometimes we'd buy a few bags, all friendly like, to keep the peace in the snooty atmosphere of sly looks and whispered words about each others booths. Better a friend then an enemy in the hot and frantic world of a Christmas craft sale put on by a charitable organization. Hoo boy it could get intense, what with the lil old men tottering up and demanding in suspicious tones if we'd actually MADE all this stuff.
“Yes sir we did!”
“You actually MADE it?? (asked suspiciously with enough derision in his voice to have me thinking I can take an old guy down right quick between chomps of my chicken bones.)
“YES!....ahem..yes sir, we made everything ourselves.”
“Hmmm, some people they buy stuff and then pass it off as their own. This here's a lot of stuff.....Yep, lot -o-stuffff.......... What sort of saw blades you use?”
Quick as a snake this old fool would try to trip me up, as if I might suddenly crack under the pressure of his intense questioning and admit that I own and run a small but tasteful sweat shop.
Luckily I was saved from saying something foul and very un-Christmas like by quickly popping a couple of chicken bones in my mouth and crunching like mad, smiling fiercely, teeth exposed in a pink speckled grin of unwavering intensity as I stared the man down and forced him with nothing but the heat of my gaze back to his own booth to whisper to his wife and glare back at me with vindictive eyes.
Good times, good times.
The closest thing to a chicken bone flavour I could replicate till recently was to eat a handful of red hot cinnamon hearts followed quickly by a chunk of chocolate. But I must admit, though that got me like ¾ of the way there, I haven't done that very often because of my deep and abiding fear of food dyes.
Seriously, the more I think about yellow number 47 and Red number 42 the more I shudder. EVEN if I didn't know they make some red dyes from insects, I'd be bothered by it.....it's just so...wrong.....so damn wrong...
But those chicken bones, those succulent, mind numbing, gots to have as many as I can get chicken bones......I have to face facts....I know cinnamon isn't pink so I'm even beginning to think my memories of chicken bones are sweeter then the actual thing....
But cinnamon...cinnamon hasn't let me down...(yet)
In fact if anything cinnamon has only gotten better or have I?
For I have discovered REAL cinnamon. I mean cinnamon that makes the stuff you buy at the grocery store taste like bitter brown nothingness. BLECCCCK! REAL cinnamon actually tastes so good you can dip your finger in and mmmmmm, straight from the jar. NOT that I do that.
Heck no, even though this saigon cinnamon we get is sooo flavorful that it has a sweetness all it's own and can make cinnamon toast with little to no sugar. EVEN though it's as spicy hot as those dastardly little red hearts...I don't stick my finger in the jar. AND if I did.....by accident several times then y'all can just bugger off it's my cinnamon and I'll slug it from a shot glass if I choose....which I did.
Oh dear, If I can pass along one bit of advice from my wise and doddering age of 30 to all the youngins out there...don't slug cinnamon from a shot glass. Even if you've just stuck a chunk of chocolate in your mouth and a wee tip of a teaspoon of cinnamon to follow so that your mouth can become the scene of a chicken bone flavour factory...even when your senses start reeling from the exquisite combination of reallllly good chocolate and reallllly good cinnamon do not, I repeat...DO NOT SLUG CINNAMON FROM A SHOT GLASS.
It may seem like a brilliant idea to just admit you're going to eat more cinnamon and more chocolate in a slightly manic, one bite after another, after another...after another moment that stretches into at least a half a dozen moments so you might think that being mature and admitting this you ought to just sit down and fully commit to your snack of chocolate chunks and cinnamon.....
But let me tell you, sitting down with a plate of chocolate chunks and a little shot glass of cinnamon you can tip back (hypothetically) and have a little taste of doesn't work. What does work is you ending up breathing cinnamon in a choking out puffs of cinnamon, coughing extravaganza, none of which resembles the desired chicken bone flavour experience you were going for.
Waving wildly at your husband in the universal “I'm ok, Im ok, I'm only breathing cinnamon powder and trying to recover from my lungs violent, albeit correct, response to said attempt at breathing something other than air” hand gestures.
I expect in the future I shall whip up some sort of melted chocolate and cinnamon type delight, something a little safer that doesn't have me coughing up a red hot spicy dust storm and causing my husband to think that any normal person knows what a shot glass is for and it's not for a snoot of cinnamon.
Can I get a “DUH” from the crowd?
But do not worry, I don't blame the cinnamon, it's not to fault. No, I blame the Truro, Nova Scotia craft sale chicken bone candy lady for instilling in me a deep and abiding affection for a treat I can't readily get my hands on.
If both my saigon cinnamon and a bag of chicken bone candies were dangling, prec