Mrs. Lazarus

In all the questions/answer stuff I've been going through, this is by far the best:
Q: "Why do you feel so certain that your husband was going to murder you and put your body in the furnace?"

A: "I knew cause he done it once before"

Better than

You know what is the upside of the car accident I had just before Christmas a few years ago? The accident that put an end to half of my Christmas baking and made the childless holiday even worse than usual? You don't know? Well, I'll tell you: it is that when you have butter tart disaster that means tossing out a dozen tarts, and a dog tripping incident that ends up in pain and blood (mine, not the dog's so relax) but no actual stitches or anything, it doesn't seem so bad.

I mean, yeah, now I'll have to make yet more tarts. And yes, I'm walking with a limp that I am trying to think of as intersting instead of feeble but all in all so what? Not in hospital, I have time to make more tarts and I'm not running in any races this week. As far as I know. So even if it is a bit frustrating it is still better than the year of the crash, as I think of it.

And this is a great year so far; kids are with me, we have lots of lovely white snow, the tree looks awesome and smells fantastic and I get to play Christmas music without any complaints about it being out of season. Heaven help us if Lyn and I ever live together it would be carols year round. And we'd be round because I'd be baking tarts and cakes year round to go with the music.

Why, Ky?

Last night’s dream wasn’t a musical, but it also wasn’t a nightmare so that’s good. It was, however, one of those dreams where someone appears and says something heavy with import. That has happened before; once it prompted me to do something that changed my life, and once it helped me cope with tragedy. This time though, the message is…ambiguous. Or at least it is if it is supposed to carry some terribly serious second meaning.

I was in a regular saving-the-world dream when Ky appeared and said “The Smaller the Leaf, The Shorter the Steep”.

Now, that is a totally accurate statement. And it is something I am aware of, so I didn’t really need to be told again. But she was saying it with such fervent intent, that clearly my sleeping self is trying to tell my waking self something. But what?

Ladylike, if possible

I would have chosen something other than a skirt slit up the sides heels and a white sweater to wear to work today if I knew I was going to be on the floor on my back. Which sounds promising, albeit somewhat immodest. What was actually happening was me fixing the microprinter (which was fair enough as I broke it). But it would have been easier in jeans and a t-shirt.

Cupids second choice. Possibly even first

I would say that a brilliant first date activity would be something that involved moonlight and water. But the second best date activity is tobogganing. I have known this since I was fifteen or so. For those of you that don't believe me, here's there reasoning:

You not only get to sit close, you HAVE to.
In order to stay on said toboggan, one must wrap one's arms around one's date. Possibly even legs, if the toboggan is long enough and the hill high enough!

Because you need cold and snow to toboggan, your eyes sparkle and your cheeks get all rosy. Even the undead look healthy and happy tobogganing. Actual living people look awesome.
The other great thing about the cold is that it is almost always a given that there must be hot chocolate somewhere afterwards, so said date gets prolonged.

There are some things you shouldn't do, though. For instance don't, on the first run, accidentally break the nose of the person you're there with. Because nothing puts the kibosh or romance like blood and pain. I speak from experience here. As if that's a surprise in any way.

Gliddy Glub Gloopy

I was thinking about the nutbar from yesterday's post and realized that there are things I do that make people think I'm crazy too. Some of them I recognize and some of them I'd probably be surprised to think that someone thinks they're crazy-like. When did this obvious thought occur to me?

In the middle of making banana bread french toast, when I took advantage of being the only one awake to do a happy dance in the kitchen whilst singing along to "Good Morning Starshine". And I am not -NOT- apologizing for the jollity. Keep in mind that this is the same person who as a child built a go-cart and christened it The Happymobile.

And by the way...if you ever happen to have left-over banana bread (which is rare in my house, as I have a teenage boy who consumes the usual amount of food that teenage boys consume), banana bread french toast is yumilicious. And in the same vein, try strawberry jam omelette. Hot and jammy and totally comforting. And apparently just what A. wanted at eleven last night when he asked for something "warm and yummy and...not too much work". Oh come on, you would have made him something too; he said please, and looked the way people tend to when they're chilled and hungry and tired and getting over a cold and just looking for love. I'm just saying, should you be looking for something to make some brunch give banana bread french toast a try. And if you're trying to impress someone, try serving it with maple-butter with pecans. I will divulge the recipe for maple butter (because it isn't actually what one normally calls maple butter) if you ask. And if you've had a hard day and look cold and needy and tired I might even just make you some french toast. Or jam omelette.

We iz all just peeple

Just to give you fair warning: I am going to slap the next person I hear say anything with "these people" or "those people" or "that sort" as part of a sentence. Basically the next sweeping generalization I hear will be met with the whole weight of a month's worth of irritation. I mean really, where would I be if I assumed all Americans were as dumbs as hammers, just because the two down the hall are? Or all men were copies of the pinhead? I'd be losing out on some interesting friends is what would be happening. So there.

Notes from files

No, I'm not allowed to tell you restricted things. But sometimes within the files there are things that aren't restricted that humour me (just as there are restricted things that grieve me), and given that I need a break I thought I'd mention one of them. Just so no one can say I never blog anything anymore.

One would think that the date of this would be 1950 or earlier...sadly, it's from a note about available jobs and who might fill them, dated 1966:
"...and as the job involves the washing of dishes and glasses, I would recommend that only a woman be hired for this position".

I'm not even sure who they're insulting most here, women, saying that it is beneath a man's dignity to do dishes, or men, saying they're too stupid to not break things if they have to wash up. And in 1966 for Pete's sake!

Oh CBC!

I listen to the CBC in the car. Sometimes in French with Radio Canada and sometime in English. I always feel a little bit let down when they make grammatical/pronuciation mistakes as though they should somehow be abouve such things. What I don't often get, though, is a line so hilarious - during serious news - that I either crash the car or serioulsy wonder if I'm losing my mind and/or hearing. Which is what I thought this morning. I mean really, did you ever think the day would come when you would hear a news anchor on cbc radio say "it is thought that they came from the pirate mother-ship"? Freakin awesome, folks, freakin awesome.

But not upside down.

Ah, Monday mornings. I don't mind them, actually. I tend to find Friday mornings harder - I've been at work all week and I just want to be at home. Mondays I'm rested and ready for the day.

Today, though, I was not as ready as I had thought. I got into the elevator with someone from the third floor who said- smiling, so I didn't have to hit him or anything - "rough morning?"

I asked what he meant (after a quick check in case I'd forgotten to put pants on, or shoes or something).

"Your sweater is on back to front. And....I think maybe inside out?"

Yeah, embarassing, but it was pretty funny. So I laughed, and so did he. Maybe not such a bad start after all; how bad a day can it be if you're laughing before you even get to your desk?

Inter-species Yoga.

I read a friend’s blog about crying in front of pets. I don’t often cry, as it happens. I’d like to think it is because I have such steely sangfroid, but in reality I am a giant marshmallow of cry-babyishness. I get teary–eyed at commercials, if they’re good enough. I still get all verklempt at the MASH Christmas episode. The real reason I don’t cry mcuh is that crying is a migraine trigger, so I try not to. It’s never worth the pain. The thing is, if I do cry my puppies are totally different from hers in how they treat me.

First, they won’t let me alone, but in a kind and snuggly way. If I’m lying down they wiggle next to me and lay down with me, one on each side. If I’m sitting, they’ll lay on the floor pretty much on my feet if they can. And then, in a bit of dog-as-human action, the bigger one always rests one paw on a shoulder or, for reasons I can’t figure out, on my head. Which is weirdly human enough but the truly bizarre part is when if I pause and sigh or hiccup, they look at each other, and then at me and then back at each other. I don’t know if they just checking with each other that it is still just crying and not anything suicidal, or if they’re thinking I better stop soon so we can all play, but whichever it is it is unnerving coming from non-humans. Actually, I think having a human lay down next to me and rest a paw/hand on my head would also be unnerving. Regardless, there’s my “what the puppies do if I cry” bit.

Continuing in the same vein (the one that makes non-pet owners cringe, wondering why people keep insisting that their pets are human-like), after 40 minutes of yoga yesterday I decided to try a new pose. It has a name – which I’ve forgotten – but basically you lie on your back, and with your legs straight and together lift them up and over your head, behind you. They you stretch them up into the air, and pretty much balance on your shoulders. I figured I was as stretched as I’d ever be and it was time to give it a try. So I lay down on the floor which made both puppies look at me with interest. “Floor? Maybe she’s going to play something with us”. I managed (yes, I did) to get my legs over, and straight – didn’t even squeal in pain! – but at that point the big one, who was on the couch behind me, decided that clearly what I wanted was to have my feet licked. So she licked ‘em. I’m not ticklish but I was having balance problems as it was. Throwing in some foot licking threw core balance to the winds, and I started to teeter.

I guess the little one was worried that I’d fall, and that I needed help. So he jumped onto the mat and flopped down against my butt, bracing himself against me. Just to keep me safe. Which totally made me fall. Which made dog-on-the-couch decide that if there was going to be laughter and playing she had to join in. Instantly. So she jumped in. Literally. She jumped right off the couch over the coffee table and onto the yoga mat. In a single leap. And onto me. And onto the little dog. It then became a free for all tussle. The noise of which caused the boy working on the computer in the dining room to ask what was going on, as Yoga is normally a quiet occupation. Bar, of course, the occasional “are you KIDDING me?" comment, or the more common “if I HAD core muscles to help with the pose I’d be using them. Idiote (you have to say that in a totally condescending French accent to make it effective). I have occasionally given the screen the finger, when the coach is really bothering me, but neither child knows that. They already have plenty of therapist fodder thank you very much. I decided that the best – and only - answer was “Yoga is just louder if you do it with puppies. But it is better for you”.

Week One Day One

So, in order to accomodate homework time my girl and I have had to give up Curves in the afternoon. The problem, of course, is that Curves is not free, and I am not going to pay for something we don't do. There is an obvious solution, of course: go in the morning. Yes, that went over with the girl about as well as one would expect. But then life is not meant to be a bed of roses.

So today was week one day one of getting up at six and going to Curves in the pitch dark. We have planned two months of three mornings a week at the gym. I'll get back to you later on how well that is working out :)

Of course you see totally different people in the morning than you do in the afternoon. An alramingly large number of uber organized business women with a husband, 2.5 kids, a highly successful career, 2.5 cleaning ladies, personal life trainers and annual vacations in Hawaii. The kind one is sorely tempted to punch, just because well...just because.

There were also a lot of older retired ladies. What on earth are they doing in their genteel lives that they need to be up and working out at 6:10 in the morning?

The woman next to me was on her first visit (I could live any number of lives and I would never choose six am for my introduction to working out). When she got to the machine where you grasp a horizontal bar in front of you and work it up and down, she asked the woman helping her (staff, not a friend) how high you have to lift it, and how far down you push it. The answer? "Tits to Hips". There are some things one doesn't expect to hear before the sun is even up, and tits is one of them. Anytime thereafter, sure. On the plus side...the older you get, the easier that machine should be to use.

Merry and Tragical, Tedious and Brief!

So I decided to go and see A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the weekend. I kept passing by the advertising billboards (yeah, like there is a different kind of billboard. Singing billboards, coffee brewing/martini blending billboards) and thinking “I’d love to see that. Too bad there is no one to go with”.

Finally the smart half of my brain made my hand slap me to attention so it could say that I am perfectly able to go on my own. Even better, really, because getting a seat for one at such a late date is far easier than finding two together. And I’d be sitting with other ticket buyers anyway, right?

Yes, normally that would be right, but of course nothing ever goes according to plan. I did get an excellent seat: front row, seat five. So I figured I would be sitting with two happy-happy couples. May-b thought they’d be secretly unhappy; her because he never picks up his own sock,s and him because she took too long to get ready. L. thought it would be four gay guys. Which would be great, actually.

Turns out that the seats in the front are numbered from 1 to whatever in groups of four, around the theatre. Yes, for those of you that haven’t been the Globe is theatre in the round. So I had three seats with mine. Yippee, people to sit with!

I went in and got my seat and watched people come in. Slowly at first and then in bigger bunches as show time approached. The space was filling up. But…not the three seats next to me. Yes, you’ve got it right: despite being a sold out show, NO ONE showed up for the three seats next to me. When it became obvious that no one was going to be sitting there, they filled them with volunteers. Yup, that’s how wonderful I am, they need to get VOLUNTEERS to sit with me. Awesome.

Seriously, though, you know what was awesome? The play itself. Really well staged given the space they had to work with. Very few noticeable slip-ups, and while the costumes weren’t as dreamy as I would have liked they were still very good. I am very glad I went. I even looked pretty good, all things considered!

Church of Hot Times

On Sunday afternoon I was doing one of those things that mingles church people with street people. (As a side note: the truly irritatingly crazy ones were part of the former group, not the latter). As we're leaving - with various comments about bringing ugly coats, in case they were stolen, one dear old man (really old, 90+ at a guess) decided to add his two cents to the conversation.

The conversation had moved on to the best way to keep things from being stolen was to wear them the whole time. Apparently boot thefts were a big concern. Anyway...his two cents?
"even at church. I always bring rubbers when I go to church with you dear".

Hmmm. I don't know what church they go to...but it might be worth checking out! (It occurred to me as I was laughing my head off over this that my kids wouldn't get it. I don't think anyone uses the term rubber anymore, not for shoes and not for condoms).

Imaginary Man has Imaginary Illness

You’ve heard about the wii, and the fit bit and the trainer who isn’t real. Yesterday I started my usual lame attempt at yoga (I am improving, though) and…my trainer doesn’t appear. Instead some skinny woman trainer appears and says “Hi. I’ll be filling in for your regular trainer today. Let’s get started”.

Now, yes, you can change trainers. But I hadn’t! I’ve no idea why this happened. Did they set things up this way so the mainly faceless figures seem real? As in ”fake trainer is sick today and will be staying home in his wii house ”?

What made it particularly galling – sufficiently enough to make me quit and go back and change trainer – is that she’s just a little bit….well… bitchy. At the same point where the guy says “excellent balance. Doing yoga every will strengthen your core body muscles and help you towards your fitness goals” she says “you will find the poses easier to do if you work on doing them with the correct form”. Not the exact words, but close enough.

So that got me thinking…do they assume women will choose a male trainer (which I did, but would never do in real life) and men a female trainer? And that women perform better with compliments, men with nagging? A man who does better with nagging does not, in my opinion, exist. NO ONE does better for being nagged. Encourage, yeah, nagged no.

Beans are not fruit. But they are magical

I can be obsessive about food. Sometimes mildly, sometimes to excess. Although the boy sure enjoyed months of cinnamon buns during the bun quest (a term, by the way that you shouldn't Google).

One of the things that for whatever reason humours people who know about it is that over the course of about three years I worked on a baked bean recipe, striving to make them be as close as they could be to....canned beans. Why? Because I LIKE canned beans. But can't eat them. Even when they don't have added pork, they do have bacon in the cooking part (as I discovered after a rush trip to the hospital. So just because the ingredients list doesn't say bacon doesn't mean bacon wasn't involved in the making thereof), and as a consequence I can't eat them. But I want them.

So I make the recipe that was three years in the making. The problem - and here is where I step onto the crazy ship lollypop as far as my co-workers are concerned - is that I had already started the long and tedious task when I realized that a) I had no sweet onion. In fact, no onion at all and b) I was working lunch on the desk and wouldn't be able to zip home. So I did what any right thinking person would do:

I brought it to work, and at morning coffee break ran next door and bought a big sweet onion. Which I took upstairs to the coffee room and chopped and tossed into the beans already in the slow cooker. There is still salt pork, but I had it made for me without the nitrite. This is the first time I've used a slow cooker and not the ancestral bean pot so they may not be perfection. But I must have a pretty good reputation, at least with those who have eaten them before: the boy is going to his dad's after school prior to going to night class and this morning he asked me to stop by on my way home and give him some beans. Sweet Saskatchewan Lobster I love that boy.

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving sucked. OK, not entirely but still. I love my family but I had none of them with me. My dad is in BC, as is my sister and brother-in-law, as is a semi-sister. I have two other semi-sisters, but one is in Edmonton and the other had to work. Although we did get enough time in to have a slice of pie together so I did have a smidge of family time.

What I did have big time was a headache. As a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised to be told that my MRI revealed a large number of microscopic miners in my head, all of them working feverishly away with their little pickaxes.

Despite the lack of family and the lack of good health I - for no good reason other than I like leftovers - cooked a turkey. With stuffing. And I baked a pie. Which I did get a piece of, as did MayB. I would have had a second piece but in my headache driven stupidity I left the remainder of the pie on the table. And it's a given that anything left on the table will be consumed by the large black beast that roams the house pretending that no one ever feeds her.

The kids think that the little puppy talked big puppy into knocking said pie onto the floor and that he got some but large puppy definitely was definitely doing the "I-just-ate-the-rest-of-the-pie" guilt crawl, so I'm pretty sure she got it all. I suppose that is one way to diet; make sure all fattening left-overs are within reach of the dog.

I was faced the next day with the bird. Or what remained after the carving fight (if I'd filmed my "carving", it would be a hit on youtube. It was a fight to the finish...and the dead bird won). I packaged up enough for two really large turkey pies, and one meal of hot turkey sandwiches. I gave the stuffing to the dogs and then I made stock with the bits and pieces. Lots of stock. Many many cups of it. 32 cups, actually. It's a good thing we eat a lot of soup over the course of a winter, because that is a whole lot of stock.

My main regret is that I made the pie - because I can't bring myself to go the tinned route - with butternut squash and something from the garden. Because I'm pretty sure that big puppy didn't take the time to consider how much better a pie is when you start from scratch. I'm not even sure she took the time to savour it. I've seen her in action, it really is more of a pelican-with-a-fish gulping thing that she does.

For reals, people.

As you can tell from the list, I occasionally take a peek at photoshop disasters. They're not all disasters, but still, they're entertaining. And if you read the comments, there are apparently large handfuls of people willing to argue as to whether some is a disaster or merely bad. Where do they get the time? Or, for that matter, desire?


Anyway...there I was in belly dancing class, despairing over my inability to bend like an overcooked piece of spaghetti, when my eye, in a desparate attempt to not have to look into the mirrors that line the walls saw the arm of the woman across the room from me. And my first thought was "that arm is SO photoshopped. What a disaster". But then my brain caught up with me. Because I was looking at an actual arm. I'm telling you, though, it was so photoshopped it was creepy. Where was the elbow? And why was it so much longer that her other arm? It is only supposed to be CALLED snake arms. You're not actually supposed to have an elbowless monstrosity in place of your arm.
And then I got smacked - accidentally - by the woman next to me because I hadn't kept moving to my right. So I stopped staring at the creepy arm. But it fills my nightmares even yet.

3.14etc

I have my babies with me this year for Christmas, but not Thanksgiving. That's ok - it is when they are away from me for Christmas that I go insane. Insaner? Anyway...still making a turkey because I both need and want Turkey pie. And turkey sandwiches.

I am also planning on making a pie. And having one piece. Because if I don't give away the pie I'll eat more than one piece and so help me if I'm not svelte by this time next year I'll run away to a fat farm. And yes, I'm making a pie instead of going somewhere and buying a single piece ,because Sweet Saskatchewan Lobster if I get one treat a week - or one every two weeks - it sure as sugar isn't going to be some storebought cardboard monstrosity.

Not a Stork

As well as taking belly dancing lessons I've started taking Yoga. And it turns out that I...I can't stand on one leg. Not for long. And not with any grace or stability either. I'm doing the Yoga with Wii Fit. So at the end of the two poses that involved standing on one leg I always get a very calm voice saying "you seem a little shakey" or, even better "you put your other foot down didn't you?" YES. Yes stupid little man in a box I put my frickin foot down. It seemed preferable to flailing my arms around and crashing into the coffee table. So BACK OFF.