the scariest thing I've ever seen

It was terrifying. I've been dealing with a cold or flu or something; generally feeling cruddy. I woke up in the middle of the night last night, shuffled down the hall to the bathroom and turned on the light. Then I saw it... the most horrifying face. Swollen and puffy, splotchy and squinty... it was, of course, my own reflection in the mirror. Did I mention that I'm getting close to forty?
Mental note; do not turn on the light in the middle of the night any more, especially not while ill.

message in a bottle

As I was getting the recycling ready to put out (By the way, is it wrong that I miss the old days when garbage was garbage and we didn't have wash, separate or generally think about it? We just put it out and it went away.) I noticed this bottle:

Let's take a closer look at that:

"New easy grip bottle"?! Seriously?! Is that really necessary? Were people really having so much trouble with the old design? If folks were dropping their bottles all the time, perhaps it should have been seen as an indicator that the rum to coke ratio was a bit off. This seems like an overreaction to me.

If I could save time in a bottle...

This makes me feel really stupid, but I don't understand the concept of "spare time". What is it? How does one come by it? Is it found in the couch cushions and kept in a jar beside the "spare change"? Last time I checked, everyone had the same 24 hours in a day. What am I doing wrong that I don't seem to have extra pieces of it kicking around? By the time I take care of all the basics the day is pretty much used up. I do spend time doing things just for fun, but I don't do them during any "spare" time, I steal time for that kind of stuff! It gets stolen from time I should be spending doing other stuff, like cleaning a toilet or returning a phone call.
Actually, it's funny how many word that we apply to time can also be applied to money; we spend it, save it, waste it and most of all, run out of it.

Parental Power!

I recently remembered a conversation that hubby and I had years ago, before we had kids. We were talking about parenting and how parents really create a culture for their children. Then we thought how funny it would be to have kids and raise them as an experiment. We could make up strange holidays and weird traditions that would feel normal to the kids, but no one else would understand, like Spatula Day. We could teach them that this annual event commemorated the invention of the frying pan, and that it was celebrated by wearing a spatula on your belt and greeting each other with flailing arms, saying "Hail Teflon!".

(And our kids would look like some cross between the Walmart happy face and Ralph Wiggum.)

When we decided to have kids, though, we forgot all about our experiment idea.
 The reason I'd been thinking about this again is that I think we ended up doing it anyway by accident. We seem to have raised kids who (like their parents) just don't fit in anywhere. They behave in strange, counter-cultural ways. No, no, we don't celebrate Spatula Day, but we seem to have done some equally weird things to our kids. For example, they think that "shut up" and "stupid" are swear words. Also, they think that it's normal to want to spend time with their parents, to think independently of their friends and to spend free time outside. Oh, and they're vegetarians. Poor kids, how will they ever be productive members of society now?!

Cake!

Yesterday was my son's twelfth birthday, and so I, of course, made him a cake. He wanted a duck pond on it, with ducks. White ducks, like his pets. Why do I do this to myself? Why do I ask them what they want on their cake, and then feel obligated to create what they request? Who do I think I am, anyway?
Well, I gave it my best shot. I bought some gum paste and played around with it, and I don't think I did too bad a job for my first time with the stuff.
Here is the finished product:

Actually, I like some of the shots I took before I wrote on it better. Like these:

This picture makes me feel like I'm sneaking up on the ducks. Hee hee hee!

I see all the flaws, (messy buttercream, bad piping, crumbs in the icing, insane duck eyes...) but my son was delighted with it. He wanted me to send it to Cakewrecks as a Sunday Sweet. I don't think I'll be doing that (Have you seen how beautiful those cakes are?!?!) but it was sweet of him to think it was that good! Ah, to be twelve again.

* One last thing *
 I found out that eating mocha mud cake with thick, gooey buttercream for dinner (Yes, that's right, for dinner.) will provide excellent fuel for a morning jog the next day!

My Wasabi Experience

There is a new restaurant in town; a sushi restaurant! We finally ate there last week and it was so good, I wanted more. So, today we got some take out. It came with such a cute little container of wasabi; how could I resist something so cute? I know it's hot, even though I've never tried it before (in fact that is why I've never tried it before) so I just had a little bit.
Yechky! Nasty stuff! I couldn't get rid of the taste! How does anyone enjoy that?! Okay, lesson learned; I do not like wasabi.
And then, it happened. The stabbing pain behind my right eye, the general feeling of unwell that means not only do I not like wasabi, it will also give me a migraine. Now I extra don't like it!
And then, well, it took me a while to understand this, partly because I was stupified by pain, and partly because I have never personally experienced hives before, but I also discovered that I am allergic to wasabi.

That is a terrible picture, but I'm sure that is what wasabi is thinking.

I really, really, really don't like wasabi.

In case you were worried, I'm fine now. Thanks for your concern.

I got to see it this time! I've barely slept the past few nights because I kept getting up to check on the chrysalis, but it is finally over and I didn't miss it! Check it out:

It was so amazing to watch. Seeing that butterfly flit around my garden and realizing that just hours before it had been packed up tight in that chrysalis was kind of boggling. It set me thinking. I think there is a great lesson in the butterfly, but I'll get to that another day. For now, just be amazed.

"Ordinary white light has within it all the colours of the rainbow when viewed the right way. Likewise, an ordinary day contains a full spectrum of beauty, if only we know how to see it. My mission: just be dazzled."