Mama, I’m going to Disneyland!
Oh, ok, not really. I’m actually going to…uh, sleep.
But still, I pulled a rabbit out of my arse hat for the fifth time and completed a 50,000 word novel in less than thirty days!
Thanks to the amazing people at National Novel Writing Month for making it so much fun to rise to the challenge every year!
If that photo doesn’t make your mouth water than you’ve probably never made a pumpkin pie from scratch.
Mix all that together, pour in a pie shell and bake.
15 at 450 then 40 at 350. An hour later you have The Delicious!
Happy Thanksgiving, wherever in the world you are today!
Over the weekend, I was playing a new online jigsaw puzzle game I found. Fun!
At the beginning, you are presented options, Easy, Medium or Hard.
I picked Medium.
When I buy salsa: mild, medium or hot?
I pick medium.
There is a really fabulous coffee place here in the Bay Area where they will add cream and sweeten your beverage to perfection.
When they ask me “how sweet would you like it?”
I reply “medium sweet.”
My shoe size, 8½ is neither very large nor very small. It’s somewhere in the middle. (and always sold out of the good styles)
My dress size is the same as that of the “Average American Woman”
I have medium brown hair. Neither light brown nor dark brown. Just there in the middle of the brown range (thanks to my hairdresser, it’s also more brown than gray).
I live “mid-Peninsula.”
We live a middle-income existence.
When they took my blood pressure on Friday, it was average. As was my temperature.
I’m even starting to take a look at being middle aged.
My god, why am I so blastingly AVERAGE?!
I wondered, while I did my medium hard jigsaw puzzle, who picks “hard” on this game, HOT for salsa, really sweet for their coffee and lives on those wispy ends of the bell curve of life?
Probably someone like Richard Branson, eh? Or that Steve Irwin guy before he passed. He probably could solve the “hard” puzzles.
Ah well. Actually, sometimes life’s not so bad from the fat part of the Bell Curve.
At least I’m in good company.
Last weekend, I went to a book signing by Wona Miniati who is a coauthor of The Trader Joe’s Companion, a fun cookbook with easy recipes.
Wona made a couple items for the audience so we could see some of the recipes in action.
As she was squeezing a lemon, she began to wax rhapsodic about the citrus juicer she was using, like this one:
She told us that it was her absolutely favorite ever kitchen gadget. She made it sound so enticing, it makes me want one!
And it got me to thinking…what is my favorite kitchen gadget?
Well, besides my Moka Pot for coffee (oh sweet love):
And my juicer (I was just singing to you this morning):
Which aren’t really cooking gadgets, they are more for making The Delicious.
I’d have to say my absolute favorite kitchen gadget, the one I use for cooking all the time, never lets me down, always on my side, my god how did I ever live without it is…my garlic press (this one is exactly like mine):
Oh man, do I love that thing. *Squirt* and there’s tasty garlic ready to rock and roll.
I have deep emotional ties to garlic.
It might be my favorite seasoning.
Although…it’s a pretty close battle with:
Cumin is the wonder spice. Don’t let anyone tell you different.
I believe if stranded on a deserted island with a head of garlic and a bottle of cumin, I could make knockout food to sustain. I really do!
Do you have a favorite gadget or spice? Let me know, I might end up with kitchen lust!
I have this nasty little problem.
I fall down.
I’m a faller.
‘Tis true. I don’t know why this is, I just seem to have a propensity for one moment standing, next moment I’m a tornado of arms and legs and I’m startled to be laying on the ground.
I’ve had times in my life when it was really, really bad. Especially right after I’d first moved to California.
I am a sensitive kid, and I do tend to get a little sensory overloaded. Moving to California all by my little lonesome could quite handily be filed under “a skosh overwhelming”.
In the first six months I lived here, almost daily I either locked my keys in the car or fell down, or both.
It usually happens when I’m a little too much up in my head, not feeling grounded, not paying attention.
The last big fall I took was last December. So see, I’m doing pretty good! I mean, I hardly ever fall down anymore.
I had a really smokin’ No Fall streak going…until Saturday.
There I was at the day field trip for my photography class. I was feeling *so* great because I was getting some amazing shots, feeling all artistic, and yes, I’ll say it, a little smug and self-satisfied with myself.
And so as I was leaving the Rodin Sculpture garden to scale the concrete steps leading into the Cantor Arts Center, I was smiling to myself, feeling happy, folding up my tripod, bopping along and then, as fate will do, I missed the top step, bobbled, and fell.
My tripod went clattering. My knee hit first, then my elbow, then my chin (oooh, took it on the chin!).
Then, somehow, gravity took over from its old friend momentum, and my legs were then flung askew and above me.
As The Good Man says, “When you can see the sky between your shoes, it’s not going to be a good day.”
I had the definite sensation that I was going to go clank-clanking down all the stairs. And I knew that would be a bad thing.
So I’m not sure what I did, but I was able to clench, or grab or lean or something, but I stopped my downward thunking progression.
*sigh*
I got myself upright again, and sat on that step, midway down the approximately fifteen-stair set of steps, and just…stopped.
I gazed out on the Rodin Sculpture Garden and shook my head.
And sighed.
My tripod was several feet away, my backpack was laying in the opposite direction, and the camera around my neck was still there, but the telephoto part of my very nice lens was stuck at an odd angle.
If I were skiing, they refer to that as a “yard sale.”
Thankfully, only my pride was seriously hurt.
Sorry for the angle up the ol’ double cannons there. At least I don’t have crazy nose hair!