All Kinds of Stuff...

We Zoo-ed!

2009-07-03T18:17:00.001-07:00

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

Melt

2009-06-28T07:26:00.000-07:00

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

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

Eh!

2009-06-27T04:57:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

Ma poubelle

2009-05-29T04:23:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

Sandy

2009-05-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

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

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

All that's brown and steaming is not coffee.

2009-04-09T20:28:00.000-07:00

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

The technologically trashy life.....

2009-04-04T19:04:00.001-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

2009-03-25T19:57:00.000-07:00

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

Trixies terrible trip aka why she needs to twitter

2009-03-04T21:30:00.000-08:00

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

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

(Kitty yoga)

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

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

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

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

48 reasons I should have been named Daisy....

2009-02-28T19:18:00.001-08:00

And here is where you become fully acquainted with the depths of my garbage guilt.
I am mailing away my trash.
And I am thrilled about it.
I am personally paying, out of my own pocket, to box up and mail away my garbage. And before you even begin to scoff or shoot me a sly knowing looking from under your eyelashes let me specify that this is not a prank. Although can you imagine the look on Aunt Ruthie's face if she received my trash in the mail for her upcoming birthday? I can......hmm.....
But this is not a joke, it's reality.
Plastic #5 and I have a love hate relationship, I love the sour cream that comes in this number, but I hate the plastic. Or do I hate the fact that my county does not recycle this plastic? Or do I hate the fact that people would package and sell stuff and make it available in a county that does not recycle it? Or do I just hate the fact that I have been seriously trying to figure out if I can make my own sour cream so I can avoid all of these packaging issues but the allure and ease of store bought is like a siren in the oceans of temptation and I am the ship full of sailors about to be dashed upon the rocks?
Well, for the time being, I am no longer lost at sea. I have a solution, perhaps not the BEST solution in the world but it's a step. I am mailing away my trash, all of the #5 plastics I have saved up and squirreled away in my closets with desperate hopes for inspiration to come down and conk me in the head so that I may make something with all of these sour cream containers and assuage my guilt that I even have them.
I could throw them away.
In fact I confess I have tried.
I have winged an empty #5 plastic sour cream container in to my trash can and walked a way. I made it about 3 steps before the wave of overwhelming guilt engulfed me. I just can't. Some people can't rob banks, some people can't get tattoos, some people can't say the Lord's name in vain but I just can't throw away a fricking sour cream container.
So I have been saving them. And occasionally when I open my craft closet they stand in there, a towering plastic monument of either my dedication or insanity, or more like a weird mixture of both. As a statue, it symbolizes my love of the environment, of my part in taking care of the earth, my awareness of trash production and contributing to the landfills but also that we might be sour cream addicts.
However no longer will this monument of #5 plastic mock me. Because I am mailing it away. There is a company called Preserve that creates products from recycled plastics and they accept mailed in contributions of #5 plastics. Their program is called the "Preserve Gimme 5". Before the hard core people jump on my back like lunatic monkeys, yes I realize mailing things off, consuming fuels and all that stuff has it's own negative impact on the environment as well but this is a start.
Also the company Preserve has done a study to analyze the impact of mailing #5 plastics away. And since they said it so much better and probably with less words and more punctuation than I ever could:

"The results showed the benefits of keeping #5 plastics out of landfills and remaking them into new products outweigh the environmental impacts of shipping them back to us. We hope that the success of our program will help convince local recyclers of the value of taking #5 plastics back in more communities across the US."

So you see, it's a step. It's not the ideal solution. I do not know what the ideal solution would be. For the world or me. Maybe for me it would just be completely weaning off of items that are packaged in #5 plastics. We already have started this to a point. We buy as many products as we can that come in containers we can recycle. I save what ever can't be recycled and at least try to reuse it, giving it an extra life, one more purpose at the very least before being shipped off to some mysterious hole in the ground.
I have a dream.
Zero trash household. Ohhhh I got goosebumps. Like most things this will be something I will have to work at and for. It's not the sort of thing that is going to happen over night. But you never know......can you imagine how fabulous it would feel to some day not be responsible for any non-recyclable trash? Ohhh goosebumps again.
If you also suffer from #5 plastic guilt then perhaps we ought to start a support group. I can bring cookies and coffee and tubs of sour cream and we can share our woes over the lack of acceptance of #5 plastic in our own counties. And then we can make enchiladas and decorate boxes of trash to mail away.
It'll be fun.
For the time being I have 48 less reasons to feel guilty when I haul my trash down to the curb. Though I do now have 48 reasons to seriously consider the sour cream consumption in this household of two people. Seriously you'd think we gulp down mugs of the stuff for breakfast lunch and dinner. They say the human body is 70 % water, not here, we have to be at least 70% sour cream by now.....

A is for Absolutely Adoring Asparagus....

2009-02-26T19:49:00.000-08:00

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

Card carrying vigilante....

2009-02-23T15:34:00.000-08:00

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

Working Title: License to Flaunt

2009-02-13T12:39:00.000-08:00

Possible Alternates: "I'm on a roll", "Wheely happy", "I'm a happy jalopy", "Driving my own Destiny" or my favorite "Finally oh fricking finally I got the same dang piece of paper (soon to be plastic card) that every other kid and their sister and 4th cousin twice removed got when they were 16 and I some how managed not to until I'm 31 but it's all cool now cause they can go suck it and the cars they rode in on!"
Today I drive free.
Today I can go down to the car and slip the key into the ignition and roll smoothly down the driveway with nothing but my own off key humming to accompany me.
Not that I want to, it's just knowing that I CAN. The devil inside, who so often voices it's own opinion, prompts me to admit I suppose I could have done that any time but let me add that now I can LEGALLY. You know, it's a lot like illegally only less nerve wracking and less bail.
Today I got my license and didn't slobber grateful kisses all over the testing lady.
Today I swallowed fear like it was made of cookie dough, jamming it down into the very pit of my stomach where I chained it, lashed it, tied it up with guts and a sprinkling of positive attitude that was 10 months in the making.
Little motes of good thoughts and pink globs of husbandly love fluttered about my head as my cheeks flamed, my lips dried and my eyelashes tried to once again assault my own eyeballs, all part of a scheme to undermine my confidence. But I willed the panic away, I ignored the sweat, I smiled at the other DMV-ers and not a single snarl escaped my lips when we literally waited an eternity for my turn with the tester.
AN ETERNITY, to most it appeared just an hour, but my husband and I know different, it was an eternity. And it was a test beyond the test.
The focus of the day was the behind the wheel test of course but the Universe was also there, testing my will, my spirit and my resolve. I am pretty sure that as the DMV-er's kids shrieked like demented monkeys, running about the front of the building as their parents idly watched, that the universe was also watching me. Perhaps in it's eyes I was the demented monkey screeching kid who should know better than to disobey it's parents. It kept a keen eye on me to see what I was gonna do, was I going to crack and run away screaming...or stay and take the dreaded test?
I saw it, to every one else it was but a single shiny black crow perched on the edge of the DMV building, but our gazes locked and I knew it was actually the Universe. I may not get an officially stamped piece of paper at the end of IT'S test but I would get to wave the finger of my choice in fear's face.
The universe made that eternity, that endless stretch of time happen. Poking and prodding at my fear, seeing if it would grow and blossom into the dark bloom of terror that it has in the past. But it didn't. I met the Universe's test head on and acknowledged what it was doing. The crow cawwwed, a universal laugh of amusement. Muscles will grow weak and floppy like wet noodles if unused, the universe was providing me an extra opportunity for muscle building. Thanks...I think.
Nerves may have stretched but I'll be damned if they snapped.
I don't mind admitting the nerves. In fact to deny them would remove all the awesomeness of my feat from today. My nerves were giant red pulsing things that snarled like monsters and chewed away at my resolve. I smacked said nerves in their beasty faces with a little standard transmission know-how and old fashioned logic. I COULD DO THIS. Nerves can not deny logic.
Once upon a time moving the car mere feet in the drive way caused me great agonies the likes of which the Victorian ladies of by-gone swooning days could have related to.
Once upon a time the idea of stopping the car on a hill and starting again with out rolling backwards for ever and eventually crashing into something made my hands shake and heart stutter.
Once upon a time I navigated through traffic with arms so stiff they ached when we came home and I named my own sore ankles "clutch foot".
But 10 months passes and as my husband said many a time in a constant cheerful tone, an un-wavering will of support, "We're eating an elephant sweetie. One bite at a time, that's all you can do."
So I bit off moving the car and I swallowed it and damned if it didn't taste like the best fudge brownie you never had.
I hauled at the stopping and starting the car on a hill with my teeth, ripping it to shreds until my stomach was full and the drive around town no longer seemed like a series of straight stretches punctuated by hills of fear and incessant praying that the light didn't go red before I got to it so I wouldn't have to stop and start again right there because Lord help me some buffoon actually thinks they get to drive on this road too and actually has the audacity to be right behind me and what's he gonna say when he gets a face full of my fender?
Driving through traffic became less of a physical exercise and I joyfully gulped down long stretches of street, highway and freeway. I sucked them down like vanilla milkshakes and one day, I found myself chatting about all the miscellanea of life to my husband as we navigated through rush hour traffic, chatting idly about the President, food dyes and peroxide powered jet packs. And I marveled at how that could be?
HOW could that be? How can one go from driveway near hysteria to downshifting through the busy intersection on a Friday evening. Because I was eating the elephant. And it tasted gooooooooooooooood.
But the real test, the behind the wheel of the car with a complete stranger who isn't my husband, test was yet to come. And after years of agonizing, worrying and building up the moment to such a momentous mountain to climb...it was over.
OVER!
15 years, 1 week and 13 minutes later and the tester lady was saying that I could practice stopping just a little more smoothly and I was biting my tongue, and swallowing hard to keep down my elephant and finally blurted "Did I pass?"
And she said...."Yes."
Did I hear angels singing and a chorus of otherworldly creatures cheering me on? Or was that just the pinging and twanging of my facial muscles smiling so hard that they popped and sprung free like over tightened guitar strings? (I am sure I will now need a face cast.)
My husband saw me coming, and he knew I passed. Smiles can spread good news faster than a single syllable word.
So we celebrated.
By driving some more of course, for the hell of it instead of practice. We bought arty/crafty magazines and headphones for the ipod. We dined at El Torito because it turns out elephant isn't as filling as you might think.
And every second thing I have said today has been "I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I called my Mom and bragged.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I updated my facebook status message.
"I GOT MY LICENSE!"
I bebopped around the kitchen like I was the first person ever to figure out how to drive a car and be legally licensed to do so. Then I had leftover birthday cheesecake.
By the way, I got my license today.

Nutella or Sanity

2009-02-04T20:56:00.000-08:00

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

Favorite Flights of Fictional Fancy: Interview with Big Foot

2009-02-02T20:18:00.000-08:00

Interview with a Bigfoot.

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

BigFoot: *sighs* This again????

Me: Is that a no?

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

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

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

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

BigFoot: The deal with what?

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

BigFoot: What?

Me: Not so big.

BigFoot: Oh for the love of-

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

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

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

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

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

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

Me: I thought I could paint your portrait.

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

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

BigFoot: ***Unintelligible grunt***

Bed-lam

2009-01-22T18:28:00.000-08:00

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

Post-Apocalypticness

2009-01-19T01:18:00.000-08:00

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

The parallels between parking and crime.

2009-01-17T18:05:00.000-08:00

(the face of crime today)

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

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

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

Holiday Hibernation

2009-01-13T19:17:00.000-08:00

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

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

Parking Lot Picnics.....

2008-12-19T02:43:00.001-08:00

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

Fairies and dragons and bears oh my....

2008-12-14T21:31:00.000-08:00

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

Semi-Precious Love

2008-11-26T12:30:00.000-08:00

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

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

2008-11-12T01:04:00.000-08:00

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coyote Complex....

2008-11-02T21:11:00.000-08:00

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

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

Un-phonie.

2008-11-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

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

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

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

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

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

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