Today's Haul

I must have been smoking crack on the 4th of April when I thought I'd cycled 35 kms. A Freudian figuring, at best. I totally misremebered certain marker distances. Today I cycled further and it was 28 kms, which leaves me thinking the 4th had to have been an underwhelming 21km or something. No matter. It was a hard ride today but a good one. I came home completely whipped, which is a strangely good thing.

And one or two of these photos are decent, but I'll share several.

In other news, hurray for Justin Trudeau! The eldest son of Canada's greatest prime minister ever has just won the nomination for his riding in Quebec. Scanning the political landscape of Canada, there is no one who holds promise of the kind of idealism and zest one might have had when looking at JF Kennedy the first time -- until now. There's something about that Trudeau kid. He'll be his father's son, but he'll also be the kind of voice today needs -- passionate about the environment, modern in his thinking about families, but devoted to his own history, too. I'm pretty stoked. I can only hope he has dreams of being PM... that he's been nominated in a federal riding has promise.

So, without ado, my pics. Again, all along the Fraser River.

This first one's pretty standard fare. There are a lot of patches where the trees hang down low and pilings dot the shoreline. Me likes it.


This was the dead end of the trail and behind me was the shore of the river. It's just a strangely juxtaposed bit with the brilliant green of the spring foliage and the funk graffiti on the utility building. Hey, you can take the trail outta the city but you can't take the city outta the trail, it would seem. Kinda coolies.


I call this one "irony". Three guesses why? Nothing like sitting on an end-product wooden bench with a view of the river, a stand of trees, and a boom full of fallen, dead trees -- on the river that's singularly responsible for the transit of such logging reaps / rapes. There's a lot of controversy in the province over logging these days as the Mountain Pine Beetle continues to decimate the entire forest industry for the lower half of BC. The province of my childhood no longer exists, and it will be a century at least before it begins to look anything like it did 20 years ago... if it ever looks that way again.


Ah, what's to say? Standard trail-meets-bridge with shadows shot. Whoopty doo. Purty tho. :)


These leaning river trees just rock. They and their funky-assed roots will never cease to entertain me. Go nature, go!

Broke Off My Ass, But It's Okay

I have a whopping $13 left until I'm paid on Monday, and I don't really care. It sucks, but hey. I'd be angry if I was this broke just because I was being negligent with money, but I was actually charitable, buying probably about $150 of groceries for my brother this pay period, not to mention my own.

I feel oddly wealthy, despite my bank account. I have mac'n'cheese in the cupboard, some little steaks in the freezer, and I'm using my broke status as motivation for cleaning up the homestead and planning some lunches I can cook Monday night to avoid this next pay period.

I was stupid and bought lunches every day this week for the first time in a number of months -- I blame the fact that I've been exercising a lot. I swam a couple days and had a bike ride, etcetera. If being broke is the price I pay for finally getting into an exercise rhythm, then so be it. Like I say, it's the first time in a long while that I've spent money on lunches, and it certainly wasn't planned. I was just exhausted and disorganized.

Hell, I was so tired last night (Friday) after my week of work and working out that I fell asleep in the overtime of one hella-good hockey game. I woke up when I heard the outcry of the Anaheim fans as Vancouver's Cowan won us the game. Then I yawned, flicked off the set, and fell back asleep.

Today I'm cleaning house as I mentioned, and will probably continue throughout the day and tomorrow too, in between bike rides and a walk up to the store or something. I'm biding my time until Tuesday --- the big day of reckoning, when I finally achieve my back-of-the-mind goal of the last three years: BOXING.

I'm very stoked about it. I'm a little scared, a little excited. I'm certainly NOT looking forwards to how sore I expect to be on Wednesday, though. I'm told there's nothing more hurtin' than a body after the first few times out at boxing. I'm getting prepared -- I'll have a cold beer in the fridge and ice packs ready for my body. I'll buy epsom salts Monday night and be prepared for a soak and then some icing. I'll probably be missing some of the playoff game Tuesday night as we're talking up the notion of eating after the workout, but I'm trying to think of a way to buy my way out of that -- I will seriously need to spend most of my night rehabbing my injuries in order to minimize the all-body pain-fest that will settle in Wednesday.

I mean, seriously -- four instances of whiplash from four vehicular accidents in a decade, thrown off a horse, a fall down a bare-wood flight of stairs, and three blown knees, not to mention tendonitis in the right elbow from cycling? Yeah, I'm gonna fuckin' hurt, man.

But that's all right. The pain'll be a couple weeks and with the pain comes the pride of knowing what's brought it about. There's a difference between all-body muscular pain like the kind I expect from this and the body-out-of-sorts discomfort I was getting from jogging and stuff. The impact of jogging was that my body was going out of alignment. That's not cool. Overextended muscles can be stretched out and iced and numbed. Fucked-up skeletons cost $40 a pop at the chiro, and can't be helped at home. So, yeah, I'll go for the muscle thing, thanks. I'll just expect to maintain my habit of the last few days -- spending more than 40 minutes a day just stretching.

Besides, I'm hurting already from swimming two days back to back. :) The good hurt, though.

Anyhow. Back to cleaning. Fun, fun.

And to "Ass Bandit" and anyone else wondering if commenting is cool -- hell, yeah! Me loves the comments. :) I've been neglecting responding to them but plan to get cracking with that again, so definitely say hi if you're so inspired.

Fitness Update

Well, my jogging experiment was short-lived. I don't think my body's cut out for it right now. Maybe some other time.

I've been cycling a lot, though. (Hence the photos.) But the weather's shit this week, so today I went swimming for the first time in many months. It was great and I'm glad I went. Tomorrow I'll hit up the gym and push myself hard. If the weather improves on the weekend, I'll take a long ride.

One of my new friends at work has invited me to go boxing with her next Tuesday. So, I'm going! I'm strong and have decent reflexes, so I'm curious to see how it plays out. But back when I had my scooter accident in '04, I healed really quickly considering the severity of my injuries, and my practitioners said it was thanks to the variety of exercises I'd been doing.

(You do one kind of exercise and your muscles only know one thing. Do three or four or more, and that muscle memory's greater.)

But boxing! I've sort of been wanting to box for two or three years, but the whole big-fat-girl thing's a hard mentality to overcome in a gym like that. But fuck it! I'm done with the "but I'm not the right shape" excuse. I'm stoked. :)

My cardio's already improving this month, so I'm keen to take things up a few notches. Should be an interesting summer.

My friend's invited me over to her place for dinner with her family after, too, so I guess it's a get-fit/get-fat double-double scenario. I'm cool with rewards, though! All good. I'm going to live life and be active, but I'm not going to starve myself into submission!

Put'em up, suckah!

Turtles! And Stuff

There's a nice route along the dykes out in Richmond, which is where these were taken. This first one's a classic Vancouver-area shot -- trees, shoreline, mountains, and hills. One hell of a city I live in. In between where I stood and that mountain lies some 1.5 million people. They're just hiding.



Turtles! Found floating on this raft in the canal between the dyke and the homes that are about 25 feet away from these critters. It'd be a better picture if the raft and toitles were wet, but que sera sera.



Jogging wasn't working for me, but joggers look good lonely on trails. By the way, the black specks you see? Bald eagles. There were several on my ride, for some reason or another. You can go a long while between seeing bald eagles in these parts, and then when you do, you see several. (Just north of town is where all the eagles gather in the winter -- there's some 20,000 "American" Bald Eagles in BC.)

Recent Photos

Hey, good people. I'm tired. It's been a long friggin' week and I have crap I need to do tomorrow, too, so Sunday's my only day of rest. I'll at least sleep in some. I'm making my bread tonight instead of in the morning, which means my brother gets a charity loaf off me tomorrow as he's still broke off his ass for the coming weeks. Whatever.

I've cycled home two nights in a row, which I'm proud of as I've had cramps both mornings, since the gods deigned it nice to bless me with my time of the month on nice sunny days. But I met my goal this week, to bus'n'bike twice. 20k days each, but that's still good. Tonight I cycled along the dykes and I'm surprised to see how much additional energy cycling on gravel sapped right out of me. Oh, I hurtsish.

But it's all good. I'm too lazy to unload tonight's photos, which means the floating raft full of turtles, so you people will have to wait. I was bitchy as all hell until I saw the family of 10 turtles hanging out basking in the sun. How can one be bitchy when staring down a dozen turtles, I ask you. Like I say, you'll have to wait. These are some from this past week, though.

None are very original. Just pretty things being pretty whilst being snapped by some amateur photog named Steff. Still, pretty's somethin'.

I Don't Like Mondays, Either

...but I don't have any automatic weapons, so you're all safe.

It's kind of hard to absorb the magnitude of this being the largest school shooting in American history. I don't know how it stacks up internationally, but it's still pretty fucking attrocious.

I've got that Boomtown Rats song tripping on repeat in my internal jukebox tonight. "School's out early and soon we'll be learning, and the lesson today is how to die." And that one line keeps looping back on me: "I wanna shoot the whole day down -- down."

I remember reading Bob Geldof's interesting autobiography (Is That It?) when I was about 15. It was actually one of my favourite books for a few years, despite the passage about the Thai hooker who could do tricks with ping-pong balls at high velocity. But I remember reading his passage on how he came to write his "I Don't Like Mondays" classic, and he was talking about doing just another boring full-of-bullshit press conference on their upcoming tour, yada yada, and in the background he heard a television playing a live report about the shooting spree undertaken in 1979 in California by Brenda Ann Spencer, in which she killed two and wounded nine. Asked why she'd done it, she replied "I don't like Mondays. This livens up the day."

Geldof heard the statement, it blew his mind, and then his only ever really huge single was born. Naturally her family tried suing the shit out of him, but when you raise a sociopath, who's gonna be sending much sympathy your way, eh? (But I cannot find any results of the lawsuit in my first few minutes searching, and I don't give enough of a shit to keep the trek alive. If you know, inform me, please! Curiouser and curiouser, said the cat.)

(I made the mistake of looking at the reviews of the song on the lyrics page, and the fucking morons who review it just leave me baffled. I forget how smart the people I associate with are, and how exceptional they must really be. Oh, how fucking moronic the common denominator seems to be at times. Man, it's like I live in a parallel society with a one-way mirror where I get to laugh and point and laugh and point and laugh and... Scary, man. Sure explains some elections, I guess.)

But I digress. 30+ people have died today because some fucker couldn't cope with life for one reason or another. It's days like these when you have to wonder if it might not be a better idea to pitch suicide as a viable solution for some people.

"No, really! God will greet you happily when you take a warm bath and slit your wrists. A sin? Fuck no! Who said that silly thing? Go. Go with God! Really! Just leave your gun at home, son."

Oh, and let's hear it for the brilliant officials who thought the event was "isolated". Mm, yeah. Because that would have been so much the peachier. When someone opens up fire anywhere on a campus, you'd think the smart choice might be to get the word out sooner rather than later. What, gunmen are agoraphobic by nature? Sure as shit explains the bang-bang thing, but methinks they tend to be the travelling "of no fixed address" types, so why stop when unleashing a couple clips in a semi-automatic, huh? But, hey, it's too soon to weigh in on all that bullshit. Let the dust settle and we'll see whose jobs get lost. In the meantime, a whole lot of people have a whole lot of healing to do.

And I still don't like Mondays.

A Picture

Taken on skytrain stairs last week.

"War -- What is it good for?"

The Canucks got waxed tonight. The boys can't show up flat-footed against the Stars or they'll get served heads on platters, man.

And I saw this powerful image in Stumble Upon. Photojournalism (2nd Place) Picture of the Year, for The Rocky Mountain News. Really makes Bruce Springsteen's classic "War" hit home.

For context, you must read this caption first:

Todd Heisler The Rocky Mountain News
The night before the burial of her husband's body, Katherine Cathey refused to leave the casket, asking to sleep next to his body for the last time. The Marines made a bed for her, tucking in the sheets below the flag. Before she fell asleep, she opened her laptop computer and played songs that reminded her of 'Cat,' and one of the Marines asked if she wanted them to continue standing watch as she slept. "I think it would be kind of nice if you kept doing it," she said. "I think that's what he would have wanted."

Where's the Beef?

So, I did this marketing focus group today. Subject? Canadian Beef.

Seems the beef producers of this great northern land are looking for an angle to better their perception amongst the consumers of the kingdom. Naturally, I signed up because I think cows deserve to die, and the $65 payment certainly didn't hurt.

Actually, I like cows. Alive. And dead. And on my barbecue. I'm open to cows of all states. Except maybe in dessert or milkshake form. Everything else works for me.

But the one consistent thing all of us kept raising was that we were, to an extent, confused about how much beef was enough beef, and what a "serving" of beef would yield in regards to our daily nutrition requirements.

My brilliant suggestion? Instead of waiting for the government to deem it necessary to stick a sticker on packaging stating the daily food values in a slab of cow, take the initiative and do it in a way that lauds beef's benefits. Educate the consumer. Put comparisons between whatcha get from chicken versus beef, and see what that does to facilitate a new awakening in consumer awareness of why red meat isn't entirely bad for you, but does in fact provide 14 essential daily nutrients.

Ah, we'll see what happens, but if you start seeing labels on beef, then you know who to thank. My PayPal account is open for business. ;)

(peripheries(at)shaw(dot)ca. Heh heh.)

Oh, and I ran out and bought a ribeye and oven fries and a cheap bottle of wine for dinner. Boy, did that hit the spot. Mmm. Beeeeef. Apparently it does a growing body good and is good for mental acuity. Who knew? I feel smarter already.

Bye, Kurt

Kurt Vonnegut is dead. I wouldn't call him a writing idol of mine, but he certainly opened my eyes to the idea of saying something differently, and using humour in even the most serious of situations. And what a prolific guy. The literary world's a little emptier today.

There's Hockey, and Then There's HOCKEY

The Canucks got outplayed until overtime, and then they started pouring on the heat. Boy oh BOY.

There's them that think the first game in a series doesn't amount to much in the long run, but they ain't been talking about the sixth longest game in hockey history!

HILARIOUS. Wikipedia's already been updated and the game ended 11 minutes ago! Look here.

Someone evidently didn't like the game's outcome and in the entry on the Wiki page for longest NHL OT games in playoff history wrote "FLUKE CANUCKS SUCK BALLS" for the Canucks' historic game in the table down below. But obviously that's some ill-bred uninformed loser of a fan who fails to realize most of these "game-winning" mega-OT goals tend to be pretty damned ugly and flukeish.

They're a Stars fan, though, so maybe I should type slower? C a n y o u f o l l o w m e n o w , D a l l a s ? Snicker.

The Stars came back from a 4-2 drubbing just to get smote by the mighty Canucks after nearly four extra periods. Bet they wish they had that fourth goal back NOW, huh? That'll teach them to aspire to greatness! Silly wabbits. They can go cry in their puddles of sweat, then write 100 lines of: "I will not score game-tying goals I cannot back up."

I've not been into hockey at all this year. I was holding off until I saw whether they got into the playoffs, and even then I didn't want to get into it... I thought it would be too hard to follow them and then see them ousted in the first series or something like they have been for the last god-knows-how-many years.

I was actually AT the game where the Canucks got waxed by the Minnesota Twins in game 7 and some burly meathead motherfucker tossed a beer at the ice after the game, only his throw was as lame-assed stupid as he clearly was, and the beer hit me instead. After that, the strike happened. Then last year the Canucks sucked ass anyhow. So, I've been away from the game for a while. Go figger. Just another fickle wench, it seems. (In my defense, until these past two years, I have followed the Canucks religiously since my 16th year.)

But it's nice to be back. There's nothing like these epic bloodbath overtimes that only happen in the playoffs. I'm not sure, but I think NHL hockey is the only sport that goes on and on in the event of a tie in the playoffs. Beats the shit out of the shootout when you're the fan soaking in the heated contest, I tell ya! Even if it is 12:56 on a school night... Fuck shootouts. Long live the Canadian way of duking it out till the second-best guy drops. Our true north strong and free, indeed!

(Okay, so the photo is of Daniel Sedin, not the game-winning scorer Henrik Sedin, but they're TWINS, so deal with it! Pretend, wouldja?)

As I thought might happen, the Wiki post has been edited by someone a little less boneheaded now and the "FLUKE" line has been removed. Yay.

AHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! MY LIFE ROCKS!

Someone turned my motherfucking camera IN! YAY!

I'm gonna pick it up this weekend! My charmed life roooooooooooooooooooooocks! My luck has totally turned around. :)

Teehee. Funny thing is, I was depressed Monday and yesterday I was just dandy, not sweating it at all. Wonderful. :) :) :)

Now to make a quick breakfast and get the hell out and pick it up.

Giggle-snit!

And two weeks ago I forgot my wallet in a theatre and an usher found it and returned it with the $45 intact. Teehee.

Hmm. Controversies Abound!

(I'm in a somewhat Blah mood after finding that my camera is gone today -- presumably stolen from me on the bus last night, as I remember having it at the bus station and not since, so... Bleh. I ain't got fuck all to say about that to you people. I'm waiting to see what happens with insurance and lost and found and such. Just a quick thought: )

There's a new health facility opened here in BC after having tried once before to open but then being closed down by the government. They offer private care for cash, something that sticks a mighty thorn in the side of most Canadians who believe in the universal health care that our country revolutionized some decades ago.

I'm torn. One, I think the government needs to cough up much more money much sooner for medical care than it has been, and it's something that needs to happen urgently as the level of care available has been steadily declining for the last decade.

Two, I lost my mother to cancer because clinics and doctors kept shutting down to have protest days against the NDP government in '98. Had she been in to the doctor a couple months earlier, been booked into surgery sooner, she might well still be alive. Am I angry? You're fucking right I am. I still blame the NDP government for my mother's death, and the countless crass doctors who thought the only way to protest was to deny the people that pay their salaries the care they need and deserve.

So, here's my thinking -- if there are people who can afford to pay for their medical care and they want to get the fuck out of the queue and leave the provincial care system for those who have no such options, then why the hell not let them? If we do not fund those private clinics, give them none of our government money, and they do their business according to our laws, then sure. Let's do that. Let's get the rich folk out of the line-ups so the poor folk can get served that much faster.

Isn't it possible to have our cake and eat it too in this one instance? I can't help but believe it is possible. What can I say?

Bitching, Weather, A Movie, And More Bitching

There are a number of "good" weather sites one can check for local weather. All of them, presumably, are pretty accurate in the 24-48 hour window of things. This is because weather, they will tell you, is an increasingly predictable science. One measures things like barometric pressure, fronts, ridges, moisture, wind, and so forth, and by using an astute combination of data, judgment, odds, and reason, one tends to come up with what is then the meteorological forecast. Am I right or am I right?

Yet none of the major weather sites for weather in Vancouver comes even close to agreeing on what's to transpire over the next 48 hours here on the Left / West / Wet Coast. Perfectly sunny/zero precip, rainy, mixed bag -- whatever, it's all over the place.

And this, THIS is why I have asthma like a fucking Yo-yo. Up down, all around. Geez.

Unstable weather mass? Fuck, man. I liked "unstable" better when it was the modifier for certain people I know. Whatever.

Here's hoping one of the three is right and sunshine's to be had by the afternoon tomorrow. I'd like to get cracking on another bike ride. Maybe one will be had any which way. We'll see how I'm feeling. Hopefully it'll no longer be aptly put if I were to describe myself as "exasperated".

***

On a friend's recommendation, I saw the Brit gangster flick Layer Cake tonight. That thing's got more twists and turns than Highway 101, man. Beauty! Smart. I may have to watch it again over the next 10 days or so and see how it all pieces together. There's no one able to do caper flicks as well as the Brits, man. I suspect Tarantino's secretly a Limey Wop gone Yank, but hey, I've been known to be wrong periodically.

Nonetheless, Layer CakeI highly recommend to anyone not getting enough iron or blood'n'guts in their diets. Crack open a beer, grab some wood, and soak it all in. Fun to be had by all.

***

I really, really fucking hate the rain. Can I say that? I know there's this new Oprah-inspired "stop complaining" kick and all, but she should move here for the winter months and then tell us complaining about the weather is passe. This winter we've tried to break a number of records -- most storms, worst storm, most daily rainfall, most rain in a month (nearly went for two -- Nov & Mar), most snow, most destruction, most flood watches, yada fucking yada.

Me, I'm a human barometer. A front looms, my head can tell you. Heat wave coming on? I'll retain water like a sponge under a leaky pipe. I'm fed right up. I want FIVE DAYS of CONSISTENT WEATHER, PREFERABLY THE ARID WARM SORT. Thanks. A week will have me on the verge of going back to the church again, I swear.

It's winters like these when you wonder if Nietzsche had it right and God really is dead, or at least on one hell of a sabbatical.

Well, now I lay me down to sleep with dreams of weather sorting itself out by dawn. I mean, geez, the weather dudes should at least reach a concensus when there's less than 12 hours before the forecast matures, shouldn't they? Or am I crossing into that muddy field of optimists being fools? Surely the Rand quote was it's idealists are fools, but nonetheless. The shoe fits, ergo it's getting worn.

With that, tah, my good readers. I've a 10 hour date with some ZzZzZzs.

Some pictures on the Fraser

My ass is in for a world of hurt. I went for about a 35km bike ride today for the first time since last summer, but this is the first time in a long, long time I've been able to do a ride like that without really stopping -- except for taking a few photographs. I might try the same ride in the morning. Strong like bull, y'know.

(Honestly, I thought I was only in shape for a 10 - 15km bike ride. I was dying near the end, though, but I'm pretty damned pleased with myself. Great start to my active season! Yay me!)

Here are a few of the pictures from today.

Breathin' Easy

This fuckin' coast is gonna be the death of me, I swear.

An aunt of mine ditched the coast for a move inland last fall. Seems she was always in discomfort of one kind or another on the coast, but any time she visited the interior, she'd be feeling in her prime. So, they sold their waterfront property and moved to the interior, and her body's been thanking her ever since.

I saw a clip on the news last week about weather and how it invariably can drastically affect how some 20-40% of the population feels. I'm one. A human barometer, I always quip. This week has been hellish for my sorry-assed body. From Tuesday to now we've moved through snow, rain, and now temps in the high-teens (60s for the Yanks). It's pretty much shorts'n'tees weather now. A bike ride looms.

But I tell you... I've had migraines and asthma attacks for the last few days. Talk about fucking with one's head. Yesterday I coulda sworn I was congested from the toes on up -- barely breathing, no energy, a chesty cough. Sometime during the night I began breathing somewhat normally again and at some point in the last couple of hours it finally feels as though the elephant who's been sitting on my chest these past two days got up for a nature break out in the yard.

I love my city and my place within it, but I great real tired of these intermittent weeks of hell with breathing and aches and pains. I suspect it'll only get worse as I get older, and one of these days I'll finally have to cut loose and move inland too.

Not today though. Today I'm feeling a little more human, and now it's time to get out and enjoy my big fat world on my big fat knobby tires. I'll tote along the camera in case something photogenic should present itself to me. It's quiet out there in the world, being the first of a four-day weekend for some of us. Cars stream up and down the nearby causeway and the occasional bird has a song for us, but that's about all transpiring out there this afternoon. Lazy days and lazy ways, you know what I'm saying?

And I need the lazy days. I've been working too hard too long. I wonder if it's all supposed to work out this way. I had wanted to work overtime for some extra money to take care of my scooter woes, but no overtime was made available to me. I was crushed and started to panic a bit. Dad and the stepmom have ridden in on their big white horses and thrown a few dollars my way for the first time in a long time, and suddenly I'm in the midst of a whole lot of breathing room, and grateful for it, too.

And yesterday I found out I've got the opportunity to sell advertising space for the school's year-end gala's programme. Commission, to boot. I know I'm good at sales but it's been a long time since I've had the chance to prove it. Should I make this work, I could make up to a grand in commission over the next two months. I could sure use that.

We'll see how it all unfolds. For now, I'm finally able to take my first deep breath in days, so now I'm gonna go put that to work for me and enjoy the world around me. It's somewhat ironic it's Easter as I sort of feel like I'm rising up from the dead after a few days in hell myself. Hmm. Praise be.

And two pics from last weekend before my weekend nosedived:

Granville Island from above on Burrard Bridge.



Cherry blossoms abound.

Baked in the Midnight Hour

I'm baking midnight bread again. It'll be awesome for my lazy Wednesday breakfast, as I always work at 11 on Wednesdays. I'll eat big in the morning and have my hearty Thai green curry for lunch, then I'll go to the gym again tomorrow.

Last week's exercise nearly killed me -- my back's been seizing up for four days now and I'm trying to work it out at the gym. I've been stretching most of the night and I plan to ice in a few minutes while the bread bakes.

I'm a bit tripped out... I was checking my Gmail and noticed a recipe at the top of the page -- "pudding chomeur", which apparently is a Quebecois recipe that translates loosely to "poor man's pudding". Well... except for lacking raisins, it looks an awful lot like a recipe my mother routinely made Sundays for dinner after a roast, but that I hadn't had in 15 years before she died, which means about a little over two decades.

(Wow. I just sneezed 9 times. Oy.)

But, geez... it's funny, but some of the only regrets I have about her death stem around recipes I never got. You never thinking, when someone's dying, "Boy, I need to get that fudge recipe."

Know what? DO it. Ask for the fucking recipe. There's something really cool about sitting around with a tea or wine or whatever, enjoying a dish you know they made and they loved, and thinking quiet thoughts about who they were and what they meant to you. Fact is, you don't have 'em anymore -- in no way, shape, or form. But you can tap into a physical, real memory with something like food, something that emits a scent that trips you down your memory lane and lands you face-first on the threshold of your past. You can't buy that shit. Ain't no little memento in a box going to take you to THAT place. Food can, and does, reconnect us with who and what we are -- and who and what we've lost, but mostly who and what we once were lucky enough to had.

So this recipe looks very spot on. And I'm making it Easter Monday, whether people are coming over or not. Maybe I'll even make a small pot roast. Fitting. Easter was big at the homestead.

Now if only I can find her fudge recipe. Brown sugar pralines.

Baking the bread, by the way, is kind of something I do because it reminds me of her, too. She got onto this kick of making this food processor baguette knockoff. My bread kicks her's ass, but that's to be expected. I'm better at cooking than her (and others) but it doesn't matter. It's the nostalgia that counts. She'd be in her glory with the baked bread. Some butter, some jam. And she always cut the first still-steaming slice, buttered it, and sprinkled some salt on it. I still grin at that. Weird but okay.

So. Pudding chomeur. I'll throw in some raisins and we'll see if it matches.