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

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

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

An inanimate rant.

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

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

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

Hot Headed!!!

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

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

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

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

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

The Cycle of life....

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

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!

Feeling Raw....

If I told you I find raw cow's milk and cream udderly delicious (come on, like I could pass that up?) would you care? I mean, it's not as peculiarly earth shattering as a desire to eat only green coloured foods or drink only out of clear unfrosted glass. But it's interesting don't you think?
We live in a world where things have become over processed, over thought and over ridiculous and we hardly even notice any more. When was the last time you blinked an eye at yet another commercial for a *wonder drug* that you don't even NEED your doctor to suggest, if it looks good to you then they expect YOU to tell the person who's had years and years of experience in the medical field to order you up some.
Some times I feel weird cause I don't even get commercial whip lash any more. Another commercial for Viagra and warnings of erections that could last for over 4 hours, big deal.
I am though occasionally still shocked to find myself living in a time when the world is tipping into the insanity of the overly processed.
The most processed of it all are us humans. Dye your hair, tan your skin, wear perfume, deodorant, your teeth aren't white enough unless they could blind a small child at 20 paces, your skin isn't soft enough unless you sit on a couch and slither off if you don't brace your body. The body of course that's well toned and doesn't have an ounce of fat and God forbid you don't get your jollies off running round in circles wasting time but gaining muscle well then we can just suck the fat right out of you. Got a wrinkle? We got creams and lasers and scalpels and drugs for that. And once you have your body exactly the right amount of processed......if you're a female slather an inch of make-up on it.....bleck! It's weird. Kind of scary, what will the future people look like? I shudder at the idea. The great great grandkids of today's people might only be a quarter of an inch thick so they can run themselves through a human printer every morning to get that freshly printed, new toner smell and look that all the kids are wearing those days. Wouldn't that be lovely? Now instead of having to try so hard to keep up with every one we could just download a program and be printed out like every one else and avoid anything that even remotely seems natural. Wow............... I've heard theories before that maybe hell is actually EARTH...doesn't sound so crazy at times.
Sorry to interrupt but could you grab that little shiny thing up there, thanks. What is it? Oh that's my point, it got a little out of reach for a moment.
See my point of all this is when you become desensitized to the wackiness of the world you can actually start to see simple ordinary things as weird or even wrong. It's a world that wants unnaturally white teeth, a world that pushes drugs over a natural and usually cheaper solution like diet change, they push so many antibacterial things now a days that I suspect many people are freaked out by the idea of ANY bacterias. A toilet bowl brush you can throw away after each use is considered CLEVER (Do not get me started on those, germs my ass, who cares about the germs on your toilet bowl brush, are you going to use it to clean your teeth? No one expects you to cuddle up to it at night but just because it's a toilet bowl brush and God forbid touches the INSIDE of the toilet doesn't suddenly make it as dangerous as a ticking bomb. Those commercials lead you to believe it's BETTER to throw away needless trash and run up the expense of buying new toilet bowl brush heads over and over and over instead of using one cheapo brush that will last you forever and gets the job done and hasn't made any one sick that I know of so far?!!!?! And if some one did get sick from a toilet bowl brush they were probably sucking on it and got what they deserve. Cripes, who needs friends and relatives for turmoil I get all I can handle from the damn commercials.)
But like I was saying in a world where all those sorts of things are not only acceptable but the NORM something as innocent and pure and sweet as unpasteurized milk can cause a few heads to turn, perhaps even a lady like gasp or two out of the crowd. Or how about this, be BANNED in some places because it's Dannngerrrooussssssssss. Drugs that get injected into your face to smooth out an itty bitty wrinkle are ok....but unpasteurized milk straight from a grass loving cow is not.
Now I'm not a science-tastic person, I enjoy StarGate Atlantis just like every one else but the facts and figures tend to fall out of my head. There's a lot of information out there on this subject though and the people at Organic Pastures can fill you in on all the wonderful health benefits of milk that isn't cooked to death. Not to mention inform you about the possibility of people no longer being able to legally buy RAW milk. Guns you can buy, cigarettes you can buy, alcohol you can buy, a drug store full of dubious medicines with scary side effects you can buy, RAW milk in some states (as in units of America not like in altered states of consciousness) you can't.
Doesn't that seem weird? You can not buy raw, unpasteurized milk that still has all it's living enzymes and healthful friendly bacterias, but you CAN buy what is essentially DEAD milk. Ya gotta wonder you know, if RAW milk gets the boot what's to stop them from outlawing Mother's from breast feeding their babies? It's raw milk after all....... This day and age a cow probably eats better then the average woman if it's part of an organic dairy farm.
All I know is this stuff tastes yumalicious. Seriously, I am a former Starbucks coffee frappuccino stalker. This is different then an addict as I admit to loving (at one time) the sweet caffeinated milkshake like drink but once I looked up the freaky deaky calorie info on one I was able to curb my frappuccino desires pretty darn quickly. Nothing like more then half your daily calorie intake in ONE beverage to cool the flames of desire. Anyways now I just stare at other peoples who have them and feel superior and smug whilst sipping a pure-er coffee beverage like an iced one (minus 10 lbs of sugar). Anyways my incredibly long winded point is the best part of a frappuccino was at the bottom of the glass when the milky coffee drink settled below the frozen slush, one sip of that and wooooooooooo you were in heaven. Turns out I can replicate that flavor, that intense creamy icy coffee sensation at home for 1/zillionth of the calories and 5 zillion times the flavor! I take my standard french roast coffee, sweetened with our friendly zero calorie stevia and after the ice has been added I add a dollop of heavy cream. Not just any cream but RAW heavy cream. This stuff is so thick it doesn't even mix in when I make it. It just sits there, a buttery blob of loveliness in my glass of coffee waiting for me to release it freely into the embrace of my iced coffee arms!

Also, the flavor is soooo rich and creamy it takes literally just a tablespoon or so to turn your entire beverage into that intense creamy flavor I used to get from the you know whats at the you know where!
Since we read so much neat information about the health benefits of truly RAW milk my sweetie pie doesn't even call it milk any more, he calls it nutritional. We're walking through the store and as we pass the dairy aisle he's all like "Oh darn do we need more nutritional?" heads swivel but he just grins and grabs a jug of raw whole milk and a container of raw heavy cream.
Heating the RAW milk would defeat the purpose of getting raw milk as it destroys some of the health benefits so we only enjoy our RAW milk cold, hence adding ice to the coffee first.
The world is messed up, they cancel the Dresden Files tv show and Viva Laughlin and give us more teen drama crapola. *shakes head* Some things you can't control. So many great things are just ripped away without our input and apparently RAW milk could be one of those things. It's weird, we're not the type of people to throw money around left and right for every charity that we see. Not because we're cold but cause we're not rich and chances are we know some one personally who could use a few extra bucks more then an impersonal charity. However we did donate a few dollars to the cause that will try and fight an amendment to the food and agriculture code that could mean no more sales of RAW milk. We really enjoy this stuff and I'd hate to go to the store some day and it would just be gone.
The public I'm sure would hate to see a grown couple sobbing in the dairy section getting snot and slobber all over the containers of un-RAW milk so it's really in every one's best interest to hope they don't ban RAW milk sales.
It seems pretty fricking simple to me, look at all the crazy ass stuff you can buy and then look at what they might say you can't, RAW milk.
And you know what, I'm gonna go one step further....
I'm gonna say it.
RAW MILK...........I love you.
(pssst, I love you too coffee.)

Pet Peeve # 567

People who stand in the middle of the grocery store aisle.......
maybe I'm missing something, maybe it's a nice cheap 'n' easy thrill having fellow grocery shoppers slide up against ya to get by. It's probably the same people who whip out their cell phones in line and carry on intimate conversations at ear deafening decibels....nothing but a bunch of perverted exhibitionists who don't have the guts to strip naked in the parking lot is all they are....
The easiest thing to do if you're trapped in a line with a person like this is to ignore them. The funnest thing to do is to start yelling really loudly everything they're buying.
SO I SEE YOU'RE BUYING WHITE BREAD, WHOLE WHEAT IS BETTER FOR YOU. WHAT'S ALL THAT BEER FOR? WHY SO MUCH BLEACH? ARE THOSE COOKIES ANY GOOD, HEY CAN I JUST TRY A QUICK NIBBLE OF ONE OF THOSE COOKIES?
Some days...some days I hate people.

RANT!RANT!RANT!

I have decided that people, I mean all people, are stupid. No really, think about it. We exist on this beautiful planet and are clever enough to advance from dirt and sticks to huge skyscrapers, cars, computers and oodles and oodles of mass produced things. It's insane, I can't even imagine how we got from rocks and sticks and plants to this keyboard I'm typing at, the screen I'm looking at. It's almost like magic. I won't deny I enjoy all the wonders of new technology and living a bit above the rocks and sticks level....
But the thing that's so stupid about humans isn't that we can create all these amazing things from literally nothing it's that we think it's o.k. to just bury all the old stuff. Or thought it was o.k. to go ahead and create things that we didn't know what to do with when they were past their purpose. Who's idea was that?? Maybe in the *old* days it made sense because everything you buried was a lot closer to it's original "dirt and sticks" incarnation. Like if you buried your left over meal scraps, and old wood bits it actually helped your land be richer. But then we clever humans figured out how to make things that were stronger and last better and don't disappear as easily into the ground as the bones and plants and wood. But the habit was there, bury the trash, If we don't see it and it's not in my yard it doesn't exist. I think I can understand how after an entire human history of just carting your old stuff off to be buried that it would become something we're all used to.
But I don't like it. It hurts to put stuff in the trash can and know it's going to be buried in a hole some where. I looked it up, it's a *lined* hole so it doesn't mess up water systems...so..o.k....then what?? What happens when that hole fills up. And say by some miracle of miracle the whole thing manages to compost itself in like a zillion years? Do you want your great great great great grand babies digging in dirt made from diapers and and old radios and icky Band-Aids? Uggh and that's just some of the lesser nasty stuff that gets buried every day!!
It just seems so wrong that all the world is TRYING to start recycling programs etc AFTER the fact. AFTER every one is already used to just throwing stuff away and not thinking about it any more.
I'm one of the people who enjoys all these new things that come from human advancement in modern technology. I buy clay made from plastic, I buy glue and sparkles and all these things to make MORE things and I wonder if they'll be trash themselves in a hundred years. I try to balance my life though, I try to be aware of the choices I make. So besides the hot glue and paint and ribbon I use old bottle caps and wrapping paper and lightbulbs etc.
My garage fills up with blender motors and old office chairs and assorted doodads that I don't really want......BUT......I can not bear to throw them in the trash. It's frustrating because I don't necessarily NEED 2 working blender motors and an old food processor but how can you donate 2 working blender motors to a thrift store? They're sort of useless unless you have 2 good blender jars and no motor. The bizarre thing is if you want to buy JUST a new blender jar it costs as much or more then a WHOLE NEW blender........what????????
I kind of think that lugging these items around is a sort of penance for the way our society lives. At least if I do have to throw something in the trash I don't do it with out thought. I've had these blender motors for months and in one case years now and if someday (I hope not) we have to finally throw them out it will be with as much seriousness and forethought as deciding to get a pet or have a kid. I bet I give MORE thought about my blender motors then half the world does about making new people. Life is strange isn't it???
In a way I wish I was the type of person strong enough to just say *screw it* and go live off the land in the middle of nowhere and try existing with a zero trash producing lifestyle. Does that sound crazy? Is it crazier than an entire planet of people using NON-RECYCLABLE products every day with the sole intention of literally digging a hole and burying it??? How about if we all had to bury our own trash in our backyards. That seems fair to me. How long do you think it would take for the world to switch over to a more eco-friendly lifestyle if you had to wade through your used tissues, diapers, soured up milk cartons and razor blades and Band-Aids every day? How long would it take to quit buying stuff like that so you didn't have to keep digging deeper every night when you got home from work so you'd have more space to bury the day's trash. I think it's brilliant...oh...but that's right....that would be inconvenient.....oh well then we wouldn't want to inconvenience an entire world of stupid people. hahaha I know every one isn't really stupid, it's more like the whole human race has a bad habit. And lots and lots of people are aware of it and are even trying to fix it.
A gal's gotta blow off some earth friendly steam some times ya know? I'm by no means a fanatic about this stuff I just try to be aware.
Things I hate:

• straws
• take out food containers, sometimes you can't avoid them but doesn't mean you gotta like them.
• containers that have number 5 plastic for the container and a number 2 for the lid...why?? WHY?? Why make the lid something I can recycle and the container not??????
• styrofoam, this stuff might be evil. It too can be quite handy and is a marvelous invention I suppose, but what the hell do I do with the huge pieces that come in practically every thing you mail order. On a side note I have a lovely Styrofoam collection if any one would care to see it. Useful for mailing my own packages and potential crafting use but I'd feel better if they announce styrofoam recycling some day

So you don't think I'm a complete negative Nelly here's things I LOVE:

• packing peanuts that are made from starch! They're biodegradable. BRILLIANT!
• Edco Disposal services, they let me put all my recyclables in ONE bin, this makes it less complicated and therefore more likely a person will recycle. If you don't need to sort cans from plastic and paper life is much easier!
• Number 1 and 2 plastic, cause it's recyclable where I live.
• wrapping paper, a few years back it wasn't on the list of recyclables, at least where I used to live it wasn't, then I discovered that my beloved EDCO accepts it in their recyclables, Oh man that was a happy day. I use old wrapping paper in crafts but now I don't have to be the freaky relative who makes every one save every scrap of it at christmas for fear it will be dumped straight in the trash cause now I know it can go in the recycling, oh yeaaaaaaahhhhh.

Now for a final note I have a general world wide suggestion, why can't take out containers be made out of waffle bowls? SEE why ice cream is the MOST brilliant food, it comes in edible containers, damn....I just realized I didn't get a waffle bowl the other day when I had the chance.
Maybe next time I get take-out I can bring my own waffle bowl and just say fill er up! Mmmmmmm tasty!

UPDATE:
I just found out my Mother gets to recycle plastic 1 through 7 where she is....I am so unbelievably jealous......I wonder if it would be appropriate for me to mail her my plastics 3 through 7 so she could recycle them for me......