Not that I wouldn't want to try.

I wonder, sometimes, if I would die of excitement and happiness if I ever won the lottery. Why? Because I get pretty excited over things that may not be the lottery to you, but to me they're like bricks of gold wrapped in chocolate, covered in honey served on a plate of maple syrup.

What might these things be, you ask? A cooler and a penguin. Wait, I can explain.

First, I had the awesomest childhood ever. EVAR. Seriously, I sometimes feel guilty about it. So I look back with great fondness on it. And being a cook, I tend to remember the food related things (who am I kidding - I like to eat, so I remember food related things).

One of those things was a Scotch Kooler. We used in on family picnics (if les filles Hingston, Mr. and Mrs. Smith or Handsome Rob ever want to see how seriously hippy-like I was even as a kid let me know: I have family video featuring said cooler, my family, me and lots of skipping and some seriously fluffy milk pods), and every fall it was used to ripen fruitcake. Don't bother telling me how much you hate fruitcake. I like it, my dad and sister like it and I sell enough of it at Christmas to cover the cost of making it for us. So BACK OFF, fruitcake haters. (That line originally came out fruitcake hatters. Now you can mock those crazies as much as you want).

Anyway...most grievously, the cooler from said fantastic childhood went missing. Which is sad but little did I know that my brother-in-law is not only awesome to his wife, but he is awesome to everyone. You've heard about him getting me a flight to BC in February, and you may have heard about the cooler but I don't care. I'm telling it again because I can't bring myself to search for it in previous posts. So...I go out to visit said sister and husband in the summer of 2008. And what miraculous thing has he done? He bought me a Scotch Kooler on Ebay!! I just about fell off my chair in sheer happiness.

And it has happened again. We may not have had an actual penguin as a pet during my(or maybe we did. I'm neither confirming nor denying), but what we did have was something that we called the penguin. It was really an ice bucket, but we used it for pancakes. Why? Because it was the perfect pancake keep-warm thing ever.

Yes, I know you can use other things like your oven on keep warm setting or on low, but then they dry out. The Penguin kept them perfectly warm, with just the right amount of moistness. The penguin wasn't lost (dad has it), but I didn't think I should ask if I could just have it. Not sure how often I thought a retired person living on his own would need to keep a lot of pancakes warm, but it didn't seem right to just ask for it. I did, however, mention it to awesome-sis (who is, naturally, married to miracle-man) and she FOUND ONE. And BOUGHT IT. I was so happy all afternoon yesterday that I have no recollection of what work I did after she called to tell me. And even though I don't have the Penguin yet, I made little mini-pancakes as a snack for everyone last night, just to celebrate.

I think Miracle-man and Awesome-sis should keep the one they bought, or get dad's. And then we'll both have a penguin.

Note: I just spell checked this - I did the whole thing writing penquin instead of penguin. If penquin isn't a word, it should be. For something a bit more modern than a quill, but not as new as a pen.