Requesting Blue Planet Waves

Well, it's Nov. 5th, and shit's beginning to look mighty red as of 8 P.M.

Here's hoping against hope.

ROCK OF THE WESTIES

I have excellent news but I'm gonna make you wait for it. HA!

_______________________

We have had the most gorgeous, gradual Autumn here, warm and full of color.  We get windstorms and  rain, of course, this being Washington; but it isn't as utterly out of control as it was back in Sumas.  I am not seeing peoples' roofs go cartwheeling past my house every Fall and Winter, in other words. Nor have I lost all my belongings to high floodwaters recently. *ahem*

Last week, though, was that one wild, stormy week that always comes at the end of Fall.  We live on a bluff overlooking Puget Sound, in what is essentially a forest full of tall cottonwoods, the leaves of which turn a pure, saturated Canary yellow in Autumn. I wish you could have seen it!  The rain was hitting the windows in slashes and raising a fog as it hit the ground. The high winds  came ashore in enormous waves. All the yellow leaves went flying off the trees like billowing clouds of smoke, and then suddenly they went fountaining straight up into the black sky at the edge of the cliff!  This was huge weather.  Man I love a good storm! I sat here with my coffee and my Pat Metheny and was cozy and snug and watched it. 

I had soup too. It was seafood chowder.

_________________________________

OK OK OK OK I AM SO STOKED!

Honestly I can't remember being this stoked in years! Decades! Several decades, even!

Here's why:

   IT'S OFFICIAL!!  

WE ARE NOT MOVING TO THE SOUTH!!!!

         

People, you have no idea how hard I've been sweating this.   

  

I'm going to indulge in a little whining here. It isn't punitive whining; I've blocked everyone in my family from this space. It's only "Wah wah poor me" whining. 

To continue. 

My Biker has always had a (big ol' inbred) bee in his bonnet about the South. It comes from a song that was popular back when he was growing up in Alaska. 

That song is

GREEN RIVER 

        grr rend tear argh        

Now I like Creedence. I do!  I like this song! I like their music! I do not, however, like what this song has done to my marriage. 

I get it. The Biker grew up in Alaska, so far North that he lived a good third of the year buried under 15 feet of snow, not seeing sunlight for three months at a time, in sub-zero cold, in a region so remote it could only be accessed by plane, with his entire dysfunctional family all crammed into one Quonset Hut. That is ROUGH. I get it. I do.  You'd need to have a dream limned in gold to look forward to, and for him, it was this 'Born on the bayou, barefoot girls dancin' in the moonlight, dootin' doo-doo' stuff. Images of warm weather all year 'round, sunny and lazy.  No walruses.   

I mean shit, I had my happy fantasy future too, all hippies and sitar music, backpacking through Europe and smoking pot braless and hobnobbing with Ram Dass and so forth. 

Ah, but then, you see, I was no longer 13.  I grew out of it.

NOT SO SOME PEOPLE.

Anyway, as soon as retirement began to loom on the horizon, suddenly We Were Moving To The South. 

Gonna happen, done deal, no argument brooked.   

And Lord, the fights we have had since then. 

Since we have lived here, though, all that changed.

I gave up and gave in. Fine, the man had a dream. I'd make myself like it.

Meanwhile, he was slowly coming to the realization that yes, it's hard to move to an area when it's being obliterated by hailstones the size of grapefruit, generational inbreeding, tornado clusters, an utter lack of giving a fuck, record hurricanes, or has completely washed off the side of a mountain...

 

...which is what happened to the town that was first on his list. I mean, all of the above issues plagued the place, but that last thing kinda...yeah. 

And this has held true over the past three years. Every single area he's been looking at (which, Lord love him, have been all the depopulated backwood slums where the median age is 72) have been flamboyantly destroyed by natural catastrophes, social catastrophes, or both.

A few days ago he sat me down and told me gently "We have to start looking at places on this side of the Rocky Mountains," which I took well.*  

I also marked the day down on the calendar: October 22.

________________________________________________

**I may have said "If you think that's a good idea," in a doubtful tone. 

Nothing hardens this man's resolve like anything that can possibly, possibly be construed as questioning his judgement. Was that manipulative on my part?  

Yes it was.        

Debunking the Fly Rotato

 I just saw a black squirrel go past my window carrying a bloody squirrel head in its mouth. 

like this only a squirrel head

I thought you should know. 

Prongfrites Wayward Phlossbottomus

 

Welcome to psychedelic Thursday!  Same sound, different letter! 

I know what I mean!

When your mind goes a-wheelin' and a-walkin'

     

I broke a tooth last week. Out of nowhere. No reason. So I go to the dentist and find out that I broke two teeth. 

Of course, going to the dentist is not my favorite thing to do. This time was particularly extra crappy, though. Why? Because midway through the exam I was suddenly subjected to a hard, hard sales press about a 'special' cosmetic process that takes four sessions. It was, in fact, strongly hinted at by Hard Sell Nurse that I could not proceed with my exam until I had scheduled this procedure, so up up up, let's scoot along to the receptionist and do that little thing!  

Now I was born at night, but it was not last night. 

   

When you search 'elderly babies getting high' there are no actual images of elderly babies getting high, for which I am grateful but by which I am also perplexed, the Internet being as it is

   

I remained civil. I said 'No.' The jacking continued, though. I got interrupted twice more with repetitions of the 'hurry hurry let's go schedule eight hours of unnecessary dentistry' fandango until I finally brought up INSURANCE PRE-AUTHORIZATION. 

   WHOOSH    

Ms. Hard Sell disappeared and did not return, to which I said 'Huzzah' only silently because imagine how that would go over in a dental clinic ffs, some random old broad exclaiming 'Huzzah' aloud while you're in the middle of getting your teeth filed, or whatever bullshit, unnecessary thing Hard Sell nurse has talked you into. 

The good news is that I get two new crowns which our insurance will fund, and also that my bone structure is that of a firm and healthy young goddess, and I will not need false teeth or bridgework in the future, unless I get kung fu'd in the face. Watch this space.

_________________________________

My ex-sister-in-law was a nice little dumpling girl who grew up into a dumpling woman, and during those years in-between she found time to go live in Minneapolis and PARTY WITH PRINCE.  

Here I am the worlds coolest person and no. I did not get to party with PRINCE.  She did. 

From the way she told it, the scene was all very casual. He'd throw potlucks. He'd be outside grilling on the Weber. Kids would run in and out and folks would holler into their phones. You'd think Prince would always be doing flips and twirls and jamming on his guitar, looking fly, wearing eyeliner and maybe a bolero jacket, but no. Apparently he was like real folks and wore t-shirts and whatever, and partied with my ex-sister-in-law, and ate potato salad off a paper plate. 

It was only this year that I bothered to check the timeline on that.

...yup.

__________________________________

Fall has fallen or whatever it does, and everything looks very Autumnal. 

Why what's this?  It's one fine day in Autumn. Do continue.

This guy is so very, very Bellingham that he might as well be called Mr. Bellinghamasaurus Rex. I mean LOOK AT THIS DUDE.

Welcome to Goods, our local, excellent in all respects

Of course it's in an old gas station. Where did you think you were, Utah??

The stores here have been set up for Halloween since September, and the shelves abound with Squishy Brains and skeletal armadillos and giant honkin' bags of candy.  The woods are filled with color. It is Bushmills and a cigar weather.

It is also Chicken Livers on Toast For Breakfast weather.

You will not find a simpler, better, more sustaining breakfast for a chilly morning that Chicken Livers on Toast. You should have some quickly. Here's how:

Two large slices of toast (white bread)

About 1 1/2 to 2 cups (volume) of raw chicken livers, rinsed

1/4 to 1/3 cup of unsalted butter

Lawry's Garlic salt

Method:  

-Melt the butter in a small, warm frying pan. Do not allow to sizzle. When it is too hot to touch, place the chicken livers in the pan.

-Sprinkle a goodly amount of Lawry's Garlic Salt over all.

-Partially cover the pan with a lid.  You are poaching the livers, not frying them. Poaching in butter prevents the livers from developing a metallic flavor, and makes them smooth and rich.

-When livers are set and no longer bleed when pressed (oh ew ick GET OVER IT) lift and place aside. 

-Reduce pan drippings if necessary. 

-Chop livers - not too fine! - and add back into butter drippings, toss to combine, and cool in pan until temperate enough to put on toast.

You will bless my name and the rails I run on. You will. This is really good.

_______________________________

I'm going to go put in some laundry.

                                                You need to go put on your scary underpants.

Where Are The Gentle Gar Avast, This Goomy Preakness Keen?

WOO HOO OLD COOKBOOKS!!!!

Man, I lucked onto a doozy:  The One Pot Dinner by Hannah G. Scheel! 

Ze front cover, mon sewer

WHOOSH FLASHBACK It is 1970, and I am A Kid. I actually remember seeing this book shrink-wrapped with three bars of Dove soap, sitting there on the grocery store shelf.  I lived in an Ivory Soap household, though, so we passed on this incredible one-dollar value at the time. 

OK WHOOSH FLASH FOREWARD WE'RE BACK IN 2024 whew. 

Ze detail du la back cover, el monsieur von dude

Why am I using the sophisticated Fronsh Ag Scent? you ask. Well I will tell you. Shit calm down. See, this cookbook is all class, just like Dove soap, which was and is the classiest of all the soaps.

See? I told you.

 Only the classiest of the cookbook writers could write this special Dove Soap edition, in fact, and so they found a classy broad for the job. 

How do we know that Ms. Scheel was a classy broad? 

She gives us an intro that begins with a quote from Samuel Johnson and goes on to include Shakespeare, Samuel Pepys, Alexander Woollcott, Byron, Alexander Dumas, the Apostle Paul, Thomas Moore, Aristophanes, Chesterson, Cervantes, George Meredith, and back to Byron again.  

This ^^^ kind of adorable horseshittery continues all through the book.

Our first section, SOUPS, begins with a quote (surprise!) from H. L. Mencken, and another from Napoleon, and another from Thackeray.

  No I was not fucking with you.   

And what's up first?  This:

Come on Hannah. That's 'We Need To Defrost The Freezer' soup. Quote Mencken all you want. 

This aside, Ms. Scheels recipes are surprisingly solid. The book is divided into 'Soups' and 'Meats', and, you know...everything fits into one pot, and you cook it. Written before the day of the Crockpot, thank God, hence no 'dump and go' ten-hour atrocities (I'm looking at you, Julie Pachenko),  you are ensured a tasty, if Americanized, meal. 

-no really I mean it. You can take a good, even inspired, meal out of here!  Is it fine food?  Well geeze no it's not, this is a soap premium ffs. But you might like it, you won't die, and nobody will hate you.

_____________

Deep breath.

Whole new ballgame, if baseball were played in the kitchen and the umpire was Richard Nixon, risen from the dead, with stuff all falling off him.

Here we have The Quick and Easy Cookbook.

The Quick and Easy Cookbook is one of those check stand 'impulse buy' publications, Much like The Weekly World News with which it shared space on the rack, it features the strange, the bizarre, and the outright disgusting, although without any of the attention to accuracy, editorial pride or professional standards of The Weekly World News. 

Whatsoever. At all. None.

So listen. As I go through my latest haul of cookbooks, I put little bookmarks in all the places I'd like to highlight, as per figure a. and b.

fig. a

El figuro B      

And see, this^^^ is an aerial shot, and we're looking down at all the wacky bookmarks I have stuck in. Note also the dogeared pages.  Mere slips of paper did not suffice to aid this tiptoe through the culinary tulips, which were all dead.   

Let's just rip off the bandaid and get this over with:

If you didn't know already, the difference between 'Russian' and 'Persian' is the color of the caviar.

Feeling OK?  Got your water wings? That was a first quick dunking. M. Arcati, avert your eyes. Here we go.

This is their idea of a fucking meat loaf, people.

Oh, the substitutions. Oh Lordy. 

If suicidal ideation were edible

Just...

What did the teenagers do to deserve this?  Why is it specifically for teenagers?

...and then come runnin' up to bustin' we got BEEF MOTHERFUCKING WELLINGTON because why not dammit. Why not bend Beef Wellington over a chair too?  

........and because I'm feeling sadistic:  

   Not lying - this recipe made me speechless with rage. I had to get up and roam around for a bit, pretending to harangue an audience on why this^^^ is an affront to the whole idea of food (they hung on every word btw.) I mean, to take one of Gods' most innocent and blessed creatures from the ocean and subject it to...?

    

  GAAAAAAAAH  

I need to go drink now.

 

You better go check on your dog. 

  

An Occult Apperatus

 I live in an apartment, and I don't have a yard.  What we do have is a tiny little back patio, and what I've been doing is growing a few nasturtiums in pots out there every Summer.    

This is where we hang out and talk shit.

I never get tired of nasturtiums. You just cannot beat this intricate flower form - and the hummingbirds adore them!

Look how nicely this little bush form is draping!

This year The Biker presented me with a drilled-out plastic bucket he'd made and told me "Grow a vegetable dammit. You can do it." 

  So I took a white fingerling potato and set the eyes out. Lo and behold they grew.  If the tree rats don't rob me I might actually have enough in there to make a potato salad. We shall see at the end of the month.

Yeah, that's a rogue nasturtium growing in there with them. Yeah, they look ratty. It's late in the season and I've been culling the leaves as they turn yellow.  These were big, fluffy, tall plants there for awhile, though. 

WARNING: HONESTY

The loss of my garden was a huge blow. I feel it still. I couldn't even drive around the neighborhood that first summer, going past everyone's wonderful gardens in bloom, without crying. Lord how I wept. It was dumb.  I also felt cursed too. Like I was the kiss of death or something. No it doesn't make any sense. But I did.

Cursed or not, by the end of our first month in the apartment the windowsills were full of carrot tops, celery hearts and other things all rooted and growing in water glasses. I longed for a real houseplant, though; I mean, celery isn't ideal for that purpose, so I forced myself that first January to go to a good nursery and buy a ficus, figuring that I'd have to actively set a ficus on fire to kill it.

Anyway, I began to lavish a ridiculous amount of care on the ficus, and it has thanked me by continuing to be aggressively alive.

(BTW that is a picture of my husband's great grandfather in a hot rod that he built.)

Shortly thereafter I was at a garage sale and found a little spider plant that I made myself buy. Same rationale - I'd have to run over a spider plant to kill it, was my thought.  Well...it didn't go quite that way. The thing immediately began trying to climb out of its pot and nothing I could do made it happy. This was a big dramatic thing to me at the time.  After months of this, I finally took the last little crown, just  a little button of green, and set it in an egg cup full of water.  And look at this thing three years later!  

Variegated spider plant showing off it's pretty, silvery roots. This vase is sixteen inches high and made of lead crystal. Yes.  I bought my spider plant a mansion. 

And there we go. 

Nobody Talks About The Oort Cloud

  We have had strange weather lately. Suddenly, Nature decided it was November. The temperature plunged overnight to 65f. The sky was overcast. Trees began to color up and drop leaves.  Then an about face! No warning! Two days later and BOOM it was 93f, dead still; there was heavy fog in the mornings and it was so humid it was difficult to breathe. Oh, and still overcast. Yeah. Nobody was having any fun.  

Then blammo! we had three solid days of torrential rain, because why the fuck not. 

The rain dropped straight from the sky in huge bucket-sized raindrops, and it was warm, disgusting, soupy rain, too.  Well, I thought, screw this. I'm gonna go spend money on things I don't need.  So I drove down to the old Bellingham Antique Mall and figured I'd look around for old records.   

I have had better ideas. Driving there was no fun; the whole inside of my car was damp and hot and stinky, and the windows kept fogging up. My destination was a giant warehouse that sits right on Puget Sound, an old, old wooden building that's been marinating in the aroma of Low Tide since before statehood - and I was headed for the basement of that building, which is where they keep the used record store, and hippies. Lotta hippies. Hippies all over the place down in there. 

It was FUNKY in that basement, people. It was STANK. And I had to go down a lot of stairs! By the time I got to the bottom of those stairs, I was pretty stank too.   All that old paper, the old rugs, the building timbers, the sheer gross, rank, dank smell that came up off all that stuff was so thick that it was enough to choke aFINEFINE OK.  

Fine.  I was in a stinky hot basement during low tide on Puget Sound. I didn't die.

In fact, I saw cool things there! I saw this:

This sign hung at the end of a fence up on Mt. Baker for years, and I kept threatening to steal it every time I drove past.  "No no no," said my family. And they got all weird about it. So I did not.

You see this shit?  $145. Will they get it?  Every dime.

I tell you, I have AN EYE for these things. 

I am kicking myself for not having gone out one dark night with a pair of side cutters.

                                         

                                                OO AND LOOKIT AT WHAT I BOUGHT!!!!!

OMGWTFBBQEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!    

Publicity shots!!!! 

TOS PUBLICITY SHOTS!!!!!

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!! 

SPOCK AND KIRK ACTION PHOTO!!!!  

OO and this too, still in the cellophane:

Now these are six for a nickel, practically. They're all over the Internet. But it's the kind of obscure Star Trek stuff I like, and I didn't' have to pay twenty-three dollars for shipping. And the stories are by Allan Dean Foster!       

Was I stoked? Was I over the moon?  YES.

Did I risk my life by walking down a super icky low-tide alley full of meth heads several minutes later as I rushed to my car, feet not touching the ground, to secure my prizes? Yes. 

I was protected by the power of Star Trek. I had that maniac glint in my eye. Nobody wants to fuck with an elderly Trekkie who's high on bargain acquisition, y'all.

__________________________________________

Presenting Food Dehydrator Theatre!  Today we bring you our interpretation of Twelfth Night:

Hi I'm Viola and I'm shipwrecked here in this land. So is my twin brother who is probably dead. I'm going to go dress up like a boy so see ya.

Hey I'm her twin brother Sebastian and I'm not dead, but I'll just settle into the background for awhile.

Hey check me out I'm Duke Orsino!  I own dinosaurs! 

 

YEAH!! I'm Duke Orsino and I'm going to eat this crusty dog with my stomach! WOOOOO I'M CRAZY!!

I am the Holy Infant of Prague. I don't really come into the story but I thought I'd say hi. So yeah.

AAAA! WOOOO! Cray-zee wackiness ensues!  Everybody pretends to be other people! WOO!

AAA I'm Sebastian, remember me?  A dugong ate my face and now I'm dead!  The End!! TA DA!

______________________________________________________________

Some months back I thought to myself 'Self, you need to flow with the times. You should go out into the world and scout for visual content! No more racking your brain for big chunks of text!  People are all about the images these days!'

And this was a lot of thinking, so I rested. I had a beer. I pre-treated my laundry.

So then. I went out, I got pictures, I did posts.

I have done my 'Super average, on-the-ground' posts about places nearby.

Check 'Grocery Shopping in Large Bleak Warehouse-Type Spaces'.

Done 'Old Cookbooks'. Ditto 'Weird Cookbooks and Recipes.'

Done did 'Old Weird Things I See In Resale Stores'.

I think what I'm going to do is to continue in this vein. I might even do a 'Me Cooking A Thing' post.

You? Should go fill your air with tires.  Yup.