soak

In the overnight settlement, I was awarded custody of the sheets. Sweet W has visitation rights.

Also noted for the record: When I do the dishes, I don't do them all the way. I stop at somewhere around 90% of completion. This is an acceptable percentage in our world----beautiful, even, in that leaving the task incomplete mirrors our imperfect humanity, like the intentional mistake, the marring thread designed into tapestries. Leaving the dishes slightly undone keeps us humble; a perfectly polished set of dishes and silverware would be sheer hubris, an affront to the divine. So I usually leave the silverware to soak in the sink overnight. The divine is okey-dokey with that plan, but Sweet W is NOT PLEASED to find a sink full of cold greasy water and dead suds in the morning.

I could say more, but I'll stop now and leave the remaining rhetorical knives and forks to soak overnight.

superthick, now with fortifying vitamins and minerals

We are huddled in our bubble of warmth on this frigid-ass day, making pancakes to ward off the cold. When the temperature drops far enough below freezing, it's an obligation to insert an exasperated "ass" into any descriptions of how freezing-ass cold it is.

This just in from the kitchen: Ohhhh. The first flip is always a bad flip.



But I have faith. Besides their standalone raison d'etre as a healthy, tasty breakfast food, the pancakes are integral to a larger plan. Apparently we need to go grocery shopping later today to restock the larder with syrup and other staples (the pancake/syrup dialectic is dizzying, and clearly too complex to get into right now), and the pancakes are baksheesh to persuade me to 1) come along, and 2) behave.

Kitchen report: Fruit toppings options are mixed berries or peaches.

Actually, I'd like brown sugar and raisons d'etre on mine.

It's not that bribery is necessary for my participation in errand-running. It's that I immediately go into a fugue state of uselessness and distraction as soon as the flourescent lighting hits my retinas. My psyche becomes a battleground where the spirit of Wild Bill Knowlan makes frenetic, splenetic war with Franz Kafka and Chuck Jones. My Sweet Wife's hope is that somehow the pancakes will keep me grounded. We shall see.

Meanwhile, inspired by MC's beautiful rant about Rachael Ray, that "perky foghorn" of the Food Network (yes, Mary, we too have been stunned into insensibility by her Marshall stacks of foodie rhetoric and her pit-bullish cheeriness), Sweet W is putting on a speculative cooking show of her own. She's in character as cigar-chomping, gravel-voiced Max Lindner: Shallots? Shallots?! What you need, kid, is a martini. Get over here. . . .



Those are some tasty-ass pancakes.

no stop, drop, and roll

NOTE TO GENTLE READERS: The Toby we lovingly eulogized in last night's post is not the same "infamous chowhound" described in this horrifying tale from Lynchburg, VA, of a college snack gone wrong.

To Hudgins' surprise, the squirrel--described as an infamous chowhound named Toby--snatched a piece of the strawberry Nutri-Grain bar she was holding.

"I said to myself, 'That doesn't happen every day.' "

But when Toby went back for a second bite it locked on, and bit through Hudgins' right thumbnail.

At that point, the communications major said she tried to unlatch Toby by beating it against the bench.

"What else do you do in that situation?" she asked. "There's no stop, drop and roll."

After Hudgins shook Toby off, she sat in shock.

"He's looking at me, I'm looking at him," she said of the moment just before Toby grabbed the Nutri-Grain bar that she had dropped during the struggle and ran off.

toblerone and the great leap forward

Leading through the meadow, down to the river;
eager for the trees from his highlander wayback.
Sandy paws on Rialto, that running leap
from leashed zone to free zone, clearing
creek with feet to spare, and kept going.
He was a good dog.



mht5 [Tula typed this part]