We All Scream

My fifteenth divine creation is churning away at this very moment. (French vanilla, in case you're wondering.) The ice cream machine has proven very popular with the whole fam, and likely Canadian dairy farmers as well. We've really come together around it - critiquing different recipes, flavours and textures. Ranking and reranking our favourites with every new batch. Complaining that Mom got to pick yet another flavour. Lecturing about being the person who does all the work so you bet your sassy ass I'm picking the flavours.

And there's still more: We've explored the botany of ingredients (tamarind, vanilla, tonka beans), the ethics of dairy, the chemistry of custard. I allow Small Fry to lick the churning paddle, which I feel is akin to a habitat enrichment activity in these self-isolating times. I've even grown attuned to the sounds of the ice cream machine, like a mother with a baby - I can differentiate between its contented liquidy whirrs and its distress cries when the ice cream is ready, from two floors away.

I think it's fair to say we've all bonded with the new baby ice cream machine. (Even DH, who you'll recall was not keen on the idea.) Gotta say, I think we're totally coming out on top of the suckers who only got Covid cats or dogs, and miles ahead of the poor saps who are due to welcome their new Covid humans in the next few months. Just really celebrating my wise life choices right now.

In fact, I'm so pleased with my recent decisions that I went ahead with another one: I purchased a mini in-home hydroponics cabinet. I figure it'll pay for itself in cilantro and arugula in about six months, however, it should be noted that I did this figuring (and purchasing) while DH is away camping and thus unable to object to my study methods. Surprise, dear! Still cheaper than a Covid baby! I think!

I yell, you yell, we all yell for... ba-sel? (Still working on the slogan.) I'll provide an update on my grow op in a few weeks when the herbaceous output projections are more refined. Fingers crossed that this turns out to be my next greatest mistake! 

Life, the Universe and Everything

I've made loads of exciting mistakes in my life - no need for me to cross-link them here, I'm sure several good examples have already sprung to your mind - but to my recollection none have garnered quite the reaction my latest one has:

"Oh my gawd, dear. What have you done." - DH

"I'm... actually speechless." - Uncle Matt

*enthusiastic screaming* - my kids

That's right, I bought myself an ice cream machine for my birthday, and I think my family's respective reactions really bring home what a fun mistake this is going to be. The new house is just so darn spacious that the "bulky items that formerly lived in the basement" cupboard had room for all those chonky basement-dwellers, plus space for just one... more... thing...

Don't think I made this decision lightly, because I gave it a lot of thought: I thought about living minimally. I thought about my lanky college classmate who got a deep fryer for Christmas and by the end of the next semester resembled a pregnant snake. I thought about how my kitchen may have extra room, but my pants do not. And in the end, I also placed an order for a bunch of premium spices and extracts to make my homemade ice creams extra-special. But I'm 42 now, which has imparted upon me all the wisdoms of life, the universe and everything (that's how it works, right?), so it seemed like a fortuitous time to make some bold choices. YOLO and stuff.

I ordered wallpaper on my birthday as well, which now that I think on it may have elicited the exact same response from DH as the arrival of my ice cream machine... probably just a coincidence. Strangely, I had great confidence in my ability to wallpaper right up until the product actually arrived, at which point I searched my newly-imparted wisdoms and found the wallpapering section rather lacking. An unfortunate omission on someone's part, to be sure, but not mine, 'cause of the 42 thing.

But let's focus on the positives! So far I have churned up seven divine creations: cinnamon, PB & chocolate, minted red fruits sorbet, chai spice, cantaloupe sorbet, mint chocolate, chocolate chai, and haskap berry swirl. (Oh shit, that is eight creations! I should probably slow down - even God took a break after six.)

At this rate, my next big mistake may have to be acquiring a dairy cow - if it comes to that, I'll be sure to post DH's reaction for its certain entertainment value. 

P.S. If anyone knows how to hang wallpaper, I can pay for your help with ice cream and sourdough. Please PM me.

P.P.S. OMG there have actually been NINE divine creations - I forgot about the coconut one! Eek!

Mnemorize

DH found a new plant in our garden this week, and although he figured it seemed weedy, he left it in to see if I knew what it was. As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly... that I had walked through a huge, prickly field of it with my field partner and friend - let's call her Long Tall Sally - on an overcast day in July 2015.

Could I remember something useful about the plant, like, say, its name? Nope, I spent five minutes dredging the depths to retrieve that, and even then I could only remember the scientific name and had to Google the English term to tell DH. But the colourful autobiographical memory - no trouble retrieving that! I have this problem all the time: 'Oooh, I remember keying this plant in a wetland in 2007! I was with so-and-so, and we found a duck nest with seven eggs!' But can I just pretty please remember the damn word for the plant? Buy a vowel, hum a bar, anything?

No.

It's as if my brain makes mnemonics even when I am not trying to make mnemonics, but regularly forgets what it was I was trying to remember in the first place. I'm going to name this mnemorizing, and it makes me mnental. It probably takes up ten times the brain space that a direct line to the information would, and lawd knows I could use that extra room on the ol' meat drive. If you've ever felt that I talk too damn much to say anything, then please understand it's honestly just how I'm wired: the train has to pop by all the stations, there is no least-cost routing, and we may make some unplanned side trips along the way. Whee!

Now that I've had this experience with the plant in the garden with DH in 2020 as well as in a field with LTSally in 2015, the next time I need to recall this species I guarantee it will have double the useless memories associated with it - maybe triple, since I'm writing about it here as well. Heaven forbid some poor soul accidentally asks me what it is in future, 'cause they are going to get an absolute earful of unrelated nonsense.

I've heard that brain fluidity decreases with age so maybe I'll get my routes all straightened out eventually. But in the meantime, just for the record:

Hello, future me. It's Galeopsis tetrahit, you high-functioning Hufflepuff. I cannot (but also 100% can) believe it was easier for you to look this up on your blog than it was to just fricking remember those words. So disappointed in you me us.

In Like a (Hel)Lion

I have an irrational fear of getting caught in a bear trap. I suppose the fear of bear traps is fairly rational, but the low likelihood of my getting stuck in one is what makes it a bit silly. Regardless, whenever I'm wandering through the forest I always task a spare neuron or two with watching out for traps.

Now just imagine the ruckus a person would make if they caught a leg in a bear trap, and you will have come to understand the amount of fuss Small Fry makes about any given injury: a stubbed toe, for instance, or a neck twinge. He is a massive drama queen. Which you expect to an extent with a toddler, but this kid is twelve years old so at this point I've had approximately ten years too many of his theatrics. Yesterday afternoon he bumped his funny bone and started carrying on in a manner that I feel should be strictly reserved for life-threatening injuries, e.g., getting one's leg caught in a bear trap. Which I told him, and had told him for the previous night's neck twinge drama, and the previous day's whatever drama, and so on and so forth back through the ages. Naturally, he is Officially Butthurt by my largely unsympathetic responses to all the bumped elbows/twinged necks/bad haircuts/etc. that life so often serves up, much as any drama queen worth her/his salt would be expected to be. (I ignore that, too.)

Compare this to Medium Fry, who in retrospect was an incredibly stoic child. She quite peacefully suffered migraines her entire life, damn near cut her Achilles tendon in a bike accident and tried to fix it herself with a band-aid, and suffered menstrual cramps for years without a peep - to the point that I didn't know she experienced them at all. (Needless to say, she was pleased to learn that ibuprofen helps.) Also in retrospect, she was a champion sleeper as a baby, an utter camel when it came to potty training, and a natural-born quiet self-entertainer as a toddler and youngster. Whatever the opposite is of drama queen (Job comes to mind), she is that.

I know, I know - you're not supposed to compare your children. But the respective levels of drama I've gotten out of the two of them honestly begs comparison. I didn't even notice how easy Medium Fry was until Small Fry came along like a... I don't even know what, a very whiny and sleepless hurricane maybe? I say hurricane to be kind - I'm pretty sure he was actually possessed by demons as an infant, and still there are days I'm not convinced we managed to evict them all.

In all likelihood I chalked Medium Fry's myriad successes up to my ah-mazing parenting, when in reality it was just her own peaceable nature shining through. But that, as I now warn all new parents who have "easy" babies, is how they trick you into providing them with younger siblings. Small Fry was crystal clear right from the start that he wanted to be the centre of the universe, forever, and after only six weeks of his demonic existence ex utero, DH obliged by silently walking out the door one day... and coming home with a vasectomy. Under the circumstances I'm glad he came back at all, but Small Fry's er, exit, was also pretty demonic and I wasn't quite ready to relinquish my bag of frozen peas just yet, y'know?

We left Medium Fry to hold down the fort for seven months while the rest of us travelled around Europe this past winter. It wasn't quite "Mom clean" when we got back, but the plants were still alive and things were mostly in order so I'd call the whole adulting experiment a success. Compare this to the other day when DH and I attended an afternoon barbeque, and after only a couple of hours I started getting texts from neighbourhood parents, plural, about the sleepover party Small Fry was apparently planning in our absence. Why yes, what a grand idea - just bring your sleeping bag and your coronavirus when you come! Again: practically begs comparison, don't you think? So there went any foolish notions DH and I ever harboured of leaving Small Fry to take care of the house some day - he's already planning parties the moment we walk out the door, and he's only twelve!

I think I've been secretly clinging to that old saying about March coming in like a lion but going out like a lamb - perhaps my little early-March lion would grow up a bit more lamb-ish himself? Seems time to disabuse myself of that notion as well. After twelve years of very consistent messaging on Small Fry's part, it's high time I realised I'll probably always have to have at least a couple of spare neurons assigned to the task of watching out for his antics.

Pizza and Gratitude

I hate moving.

Like, I really, really hate moving. I used to move around quite a bit, in the way a young person without a ton of possessions does. Nothing a few McDonald's french fry boxes and a pal with a light truck couldn't handle. Get my phone switched over and tell my booty call(s) my new address - easy peasy! Done in a day! But now... now, moving is ugly. Now it's four people and thirteen years' worth of accumulated shtuff, and I have very seriously considered whether just lighting everything on fire would be simpler than putting it all in boxes to cart to the next place.

Oh, right - we bought a new house. Forgot to mention that. Why would I go and buy a new house if I hate moving so much? Let me start by saying that I love - LOVE - my current house. I truly believed I would live here forever. It's so darn cute and cozy! So why would I buy a new house if I love my current house and hate moving? Truthfully, it's all yet another unanticipated side effect of the Covid: about two weeks ago, it struck me that there is a very real, very terrifying possibility that all four of us could still be working from home come September. I thought of how the people didn't listen to the Amityville Horror House when it told them to GET OUT NOW, and just look what happened to those idiots, and if the prospect of all four of us trying to work from our 1,000 square foot home for the forseeable future is not at least the close relative of GET OUT NOW then I do not know what is.

Two weeks later, we have a new house. (I am a woman of action! ... sometimes.) Now we just gotta move into it.

So do I hate moving more than I hate living in the Amityville Horror House's second cousin (or so)? It's early days yet, so it's tough to say. I've resigned myself to not-arsoning everything, but I do have a new fantasy where someone comes in and loves everything so much they ask if they can keep my furniture and then I just waltz away from it all, no movers required. I think of this as the Pretty Woman scenario: dreamy, but highly implausible. My couch is no Julia Roberts, if you know what I mean.

Speaking of Pretty Woman, we are doing this moving thing way classier than I used to - not a french fry box in sight! I bought boxes this time around, which is actually really stupid if you think about it so let's not, and I'm going to pay people actual money - not just pizza and gratitude - to move my things around for me. I don't even have a booty call(s) anymore, which I think is pretty classy of me as well, given the circumstances; you're welcome, DH! I'll bet younger me would be super impressed with all this high classery. Very aspirational for a young pup with naught but some french fry boxes and a dream of tidy roommates!

Alright, time to stop with the productive procrastination and get back to packing. Wish us luck!

P.S. You're all invited to our housewarming party, if parties are ever allowed again.

Love in the Time of Corona

Captain's bLog, Quarantine Edition: Week 2.

Remember that riddle about all the kits and cats in sacks that were (not) travelling to St. Ives? First time I heard it I was like, Why are all the cats in sacks?! Which was Not the Point, as things often are when you're a kid with lots of questions, so I never did learn how someone could be so cruel to 2,744 felines - not to mention this whole curious notion of multiple wives.

(And here I find myself again at Not the Point, but I usually make it to St. Ives eventually so just sit tight a while longer.)

I keep seeing family groups out my kitchen window, out doing their daily social distancing walks. It seems like people are huddling together more these days, as if the opposite of staying six feet away from others is never straying more than six feet from your isolation cohort. These tight jumbles of families out for walks - often with multiple kids, dogs, bicycles, wagons, strollers, and the occasional grandparent or two - keep reminding me of that old riddle. Rarely cats, never sacks, and modern society generally seems to frown upon keeping multiple wives, but still something about the little roving huddles of people and wheeled kid-transporters just has a 'kits, cats, sacks and wives' sort of energy to me.

I've been feeling a bit envious of these family huddle-walks I keep seeing. In all likelihood it's just that I haven't left my house for two weeks, but in my mind I've attributed it to wanting a slightly frenetic ball of family of my own to wander the neighbourhood with. It looks like fun, like they're a mild-mannered suburban posse of some sort. I can't wait until we're done quarantining so I can wrangle my family into daily walks. We have no pets, at least not in the typical sense, so to flesh out my own little walking gang I was thinking of bringing my sourdough starter along, and of course my hair, which is even wilder than usual since haircuts are no longer in the realm of the possible, plus washing and styling are, like, so two months ago. Bright side, should be easy enough to keep these pets on a socially-distant leash!

We're a bit of a socially-distant culture in the first place, but I've been thinking about just how weird it is to actively keep so far away from others - even adding physical barriers (masks, gloves, plexiglass dividers at tills, the occasional person sporting a full hazmat suit on the plane) to really drive the point home. I've decided to make a point of eye contact and friendly greetings as I navigate the new world order, just in case anyone is feeling lonely or shunned: It's not you, it's the Covid! (It's also really quite delightful to be able to interact confidently in the local language. How did I not appreciate this before?) Which in turn-in turn got me thinking: how long do you wager it'll be before there's a huge uptick in orgies?

(Don't worry - St. Ives is just up ahead!) What I mean by this is: humans fetishize the forbidden, and right now about the naughtiest thing you can do is be physically proximal to a bunch of other people. I had a prof who said that the first thing people did with photography was invent porn, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you the filthy things people have done with the internet, so I think it's well established that whatever humans think up, there is some immediate lizard brain instinct to try it naked. "Hey, y'know what would be really cool...?" Which I guess makes sense, since lizards are pretty naked.

Yup, I'd bet a shiny nickel that the next big thing is orgies, the pinnacle of naked multi-human close proximity. And because the next-most immediate lizard brain instinct humans have after trying something naked is to try and make money off of it, the only thing left for me to do with my genius insight is sort out how to invest in orgies - my RRSPs have taken a bit of a hit lately, and I want to get on this orgy train while the getting's good.

(Er, without necessarily getting on the orgy train, that is...)

Lean On

Captain's bLog, Quarantine Edition:Week 1.

Soooo... have days always had this many hours in them?

Not complaining or anything, it just seems they've gone a bit leggy since we started quarantine. The closets are organized, the house is spotless, and I've been cooking up an absolute storm, but if the days keep on being this goddamn long I'm going to have to start facing down the scary household projects that I've been shirking for... well, forever. So far I've been able to fend off the looming guilt-projects by never stopping moving, but as the days stretch out ahead of me it seems I may not be able to keep up my marathon hand-waving busy-dance indefinitely. At some point I'm going to have to put down my spatula and delve into the dark side of things: Updating my will. Facing the fact that I have not had time for art or crafts for years, yet have still somehow been accumulating supplies that are now beckoning me from their Rubbermaid purgatory. Gawd forbid, organizing the basement.

And so much more.

How many times in my life have I wished for more hours in the day? Well, now here they are, all in a big-ass row and staring me down expectantly. You called? Uh, yeah, sortof, but where were you needy bastards when I was attending university with a toddler? When I was working 60+ hours a week with two kids at home? Heck, even during the good times when I would have loved to linger over a conversation or a sunset or a much-needed vacation, but couldn't? It's not fair for you all to show up now that I have my shit (more or less) together and expect to be attended to in a meaningful way!

So, fuck it: I am officially leaning in - to leaning out. Eat that, Sheryl Sandberg. (Or at least eat some of this mountain of goodies I've baked? Please?) I'm going with the flow of board games and backlogged magazine subscriptions that have been defining my days lately. Maybe I'll get dressed, maybe I'll wear pyjamas, but I am damn well not going to work out either way.

If I get around to the basement, that's cool; if not, meh. After all, if the epidemiologists have it right, I'll get another stab at forced free time again sometime in my life.

And the basement will always be there, but this new cake recipe is not gonna bake itself.