Wax is as Flammable as Gas

Christmas Eve was spent in solemn prayer at Mass when we weren't battling a squirming and impatient four year old, then back to the house for a drink and dessert with family.

A peaceful late evening with a fire in the fireplace, and Christmas presents all laid out beneath the tree. An idyllic vision of perfect Christmas harmony. A candle was burning down to the end of its wick and I asked my husband, "should I throw the rest of the wax in the fire?" and he replied, "sure."

Now we are both reasonably intelligent people and yet we sometimes make incredibly stupid decisions. You would think one of the advantages of being married is that when one person decides to do something stupid, the second person is the voice of reason. You would think.

But in this case, it didn't happen. What did happen was: I threw the wax in and an immediate whoosh nearly knocked me over. And we had a conflagration to rival any industrial incinerator.
We dashed out to the front yard and were horrified to discover the chimney cap glowing orange and sparks were flying out.

I wanted to call the fire department, and yet was mortified at the thought. My husband said, wait, it will burn down. It took about twenty minutes for the orange to disappear from the chimney, and slowly the fire in the fireplace died back to a comforting blaze, instead of the blast furnace it had been. I stayed awake till 3 am, worrying about creosote, and cracks and smoldering embers.

We have had four near fires in our family's history and all of them have been my fault. First an advent wreath's candles that burned too far down and caught pine cones on fire (threw it in the sink-no damage), then placing a Pop-Tart in a toaster whose automatic pop-up feature had worn out (flames coming out of toaster-pulled the plug and it went out. Who knew the sugar would burn?-scorched underside of cupboard), then putting chicken breasts on to boil and going outside to read (smoke detector went off-roiling clouds of black smoke came out--took me several dashes inside to open windows. Called the fire department and told them not to come even if neighbors were worried about the black smoke-there was no fire. Who knew that three chicken breasts could generate that much black smoke?)

So, I've come to the conclusion that I cannot be trusted around any source of heat. Consider yourself forewarned.

Road to Nowhere

Sunday we set out to go somewhere new. Having gotten a late start we decided to visit a nearby town, and see if there was something interesting there to see. And discovered there honestly, really wasn't.

It is a small, economically depressed town with few businesses, and we didn't feel inspired to stop. So we did an about face and started down a country road toward another small town, and hoped for better luck in this direction.

We drove for about twenty minutes with no sign of a town, or much sign of human presence. We passed several managed forests, and were amazed at how large some of these trees planted fifteen to twenty years ago had grown. And then we came around a curve in the road and a surreal vision of white, floating fog appeared on the right. It took a minute to realize that it was a lake. We quickly made plans to return with our kayak in the summer and explore.

And that's what happens sometimes when you take a road to nowhere. You stumble upon something unexpected.

In the Christmas Mood

I have to admit I'm a sucker for cheesy Christmas movies. The sappier the better. And my husband and I were joking only the other day how all of them seem to be set in small towns. And these small towns have one thing in common. They all have Christmas pageants.

Well, today I went to one of these cheesy sappy Christmas pageants that my four year old grandson was going to sing and do corresponding sign language in. And guess what. It was not cheesy or sappy. It was, in fact, very moving and special. These children (the older ones) put on an amazing musical concert with bells and chimes. But what took this performance over the top was an astounding display where the children wore white gloves and performed under black lights. Their hands spelled out words like Jesus and Merry Christmas and images of the cross. The whole thing was set to music and was the most moving and spiritual thing I have yet to experience this season.

So maybe I'm living a cheesy Christmas movie. One filled with family and love and special memories being made. And one where you get your Christmas tree down the block from a neighbor who cuts a few every year.

Learning to Adapt

One thing to remember when setting yourself any task, is that life sometimes gets in the way of the best of plans. Dishes, laundry, shopping still need to be done. Dinners need to be cooked and all the other time-consuming things that make up daily life put plans on the back burner. But I'm a stubborn person and continue to plug away, although I have found I sometimes need to adapt.

Last Saturday I had a Christmas party to go to. I was assigned a vegetable dish, and also wanted to make a gluten free dessert so I could be guaranteed something sweet to eat.

So there I was all ready to pour my cheesecake batter into cupcake liners when I discovered that I didn't have any cupcake liners. So I did what wives all over do-sent my husband out to fetch some. After awhile he returned with some. Decorated with soccer balls and footballs and baseball bats. For an adult Christmas party. But I was a sport and put the cheesecakes into the oven and set to work on the vegetables.

I downloaded a vegetable recipe and was busy cooking it when I opened an unexpired (honestly, I checked) and unopened jar of pickled jalapenos and found them coated with a strange looking black oily substance-not like the fuzzy green stuff I usually associate with bacteria laden food, but not wanting to poison a whole group of friends, I couldn't use it. There was no time to send the husband out again, so I sprinkled some red pepper flakes for the missing heat and continued cooking.

And you know what, both dishes turned out wonderfully and we had a great time at the party.

However, there's still the question of what to do with the jar of jalapenos in my fridge. Dare I serve it to family?

Playing Catch Up

I have a confession. I am not an organized person. Never have been-and am coming to realize-never will be. If you're a follower of this blog you will see the lists have been updated-no I didn't read 6 books overnight, I just sometimes let things pile up before I deal with them.

A quick review: Household Guide to Dying-sad. Work in Progress-hopeful, spiritual. Hard Christmas-murder on a tree farm. Italian Summer-descriptive, full of golf. Cruel Intent-prefer JP Beaumont. Copy Kat-tangled family murder. As you can see, none of these fulfill the classic literature category, but I needed to have a few that were a quick read. Fifty books in a year is a lot of reading.

Actually, though I'm finding the categories of learning something new and contests and food to be the hardest categories. These will take some effort. Fifty of anything in a year is a challenge.

On the other hand, going places I've never been before is fun. One Saturday, my husband and I wandered around downtown Olympia, and went in a bunch of small stores I had never been to before. We stumbled on a Gingerbread House display, and had a nice lunch. An entirely local, entirely new day.

On the food front, I need to start combing through my cookbooks and making a creative dish because opening a can of no salt sardines was no fun at all. Honestly, husband of mine, no salt??

The Weird Thing About Time

Tomorrow will mark two months into my year of doing and blogging. Odd how a year seems like such a long time and yet time feels like it goes by so quickly. The one thing I'm learning about this 50 thing challenge is how much impact real life has on the best of your intentions.

I know I'm going to have some serious catching up to do-but I'm not as far behind as it appears on the challenge, just on updating the lists. I know, I know.

On the positive side, I completed a nearly 1500 word short story and beat the contest deadline by a day! And this was while hosting Thanksgiving dinner for eleven people, cooking, cleaning, shopping.

They have about 6 weeks to judge the contest, which is a long time to wait. See what I mean about time? It works both for and against you. It goes by at the same speed, sixty seconds in a minute, sixty minutes in an hour, etc. It is just our perception that varies. I have an hour before I have to leave for work, and I guarantee you it will go by too fast.

Out of the Comfort Zone

So in search of new foods to eat--okay I admit, weird foods to eat--I ended up at an Asian market with my good-sport husband, searching the aisles. And I learned something. There is a reason we eat the same foods, and go to the same places and do the same things. Because it is comfortable!! I kept finding myself drawn to the things I knew. Mushrooms, coconut milk, rice noodles. I had to push myself to grab something different. I ended up with red curry paste, lotus flower stem thingies, and jasmine rice.

And I made an impromptu, perfectly wonderful dinner. Celery and onion browned, then about a tablespoon of the red paste as it was VERY hot, then threw in chopped lotus stems (which when cut create a weird sort of spider web-like thread) and shrimp. Finished with the coconut milk and served over jasmine rice, it was divine. And it cleared your sinuses.

Lesson learned. Go ahead and push yourself out of the comfort zone; it will probably work out, but just in case, buy a can of mushrooms anyway.

It's the Characters, Baby

I have finally conquered Jane Eyre and am ready to review a couple of the books from my list.

First off, let me say that the wordsmith in me loved the melody of the language, although the 21st century ADD me became impatient with the incredibly convoluted way the story was told. Although it was fun for me and my husband to attempt with furrowed brow upon our countenance to poorly imitate the language one evening. I noticed that we used very few verbs, and most of our sentences were at least two minutes long.

That said, I really enjoyed the story of Jane Eyre-mainly because I liked the spunky main character and was able to fall a little in love with Mr. Rochester. And I truly disliked Wuthering Heights for about the same reason. There was no character I could love. identify with or root for. And that is hugely important for me.

Wuthering Heights also suffered by being told in a very strange narrative fashion where the main narrator was being told the story of the main characters in a past tense way. This served to take all immediacy away from the story, jerking me back away from the story of Heathcliff, whom I desperately wanted to find a redeeeming quality in, yet never did.

I also read To Kill A Mockingbird and there again I loved it for the characters. Atticus Finch was a strong principled man immersed in a dangerous situation, yet he didn't falter and that value system was trickled down to the children. My one complaint is how worldly the viewpoints of the children seemed.

So I'm learning something about me as a reader which will also stand me in good stead as a writer. The characters have to be compelling and not irredeemably flawed. After all, I have to want to cuddle up with them for several hours of reading, and maybe fall in love every now and again.

At a Snail's Pace

Bit of a time lapse since my last post and some of you are aware of why. I continue to creep forward and that is good enough for me at this point.

I'm in the middle of reading Jane Eyre, and when I'm finished I'll give a summary on the first five books I've read. So far what I can say is I much prefer this to Wuthering Heights. I can only imagine the sibling rivalry in the Bronte family.

I would also like to send out a genuine thank you to P.F. Chang's. I went there with my three sisters recently in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and it was an oasis of peace in a period of turbulence. The icing on the cake was the gluten free menu. This is a restaurant that takes providing a delicious and safe dining experience for their patrons seriously.

So I've got ten and a half months left, and some catching up to do. Keep you posted.

In Search of Light

It was an unpromising start to the day. I was in a bit of a depressed state (my mind on family in New Mexico) and not much up for exploring, but my husband talked me into it, so off we went. I waited in the car while he started the gas pump then went into the store for coffee. The pump clicked off and while I really wanted to just let him do the whole job, guilt won out and I got out to disconnect us.

Then I did something totally out of character. I decided to top off the gas tank which I have not done since it became impossible to stop the pump at something nice and even like $15.00. Unbeknownst to me, the nozzle had popped out a little and there I was pumping gas all over when my husband came out. We both dabbed at the ground with paper towels for awhile, then beat a hasty retreat.

We didn't get very far before the fumes from our hands (despite a liberal dose of Purell) overcame us and we pulled over on a little country road to wipe our hands in the wet vegetation. Which in my case turned out to be some sort of sticker bush.

Eventually the day improved. Could it be because our first stop was a winery? We enjoyed ourselves at the tasting room and giftshop of Westport Winery and left six bottles heavier than when we arrived.

We continued west to the little ocean side city of Westport where our first stop was the Maritime museum where the star of the show was the first order Fresnel lens from the Destruction Island lighthouse. This lens is set up and lit and rotating inside a building. It is truly a magnificent work of art and engineering.

We then went and climbed up the Grays Harbor Lighthouse. It also has a much smaller third order Fresnel lens, although that is not the light source used today. What's surprising is how far inland this lighthouse is. Our guide said it was due to a jetty that was built that changed the coastline. It is hard to believe that this lighthouse is actually visible and helpful to ships at sea.

A visit to the ocean would not be complete without a walk on the beach. I had not stepped five feet onto the sand when I saw something round and picked it up. Because the wind was whipping my hair so fiercely and obstructing my vision, I handed the object to my husband to wipe clean. It was a New Mexico quarter.

I think about the odds. The odds that a quarter, no longer silver colored, would be found in the miles of sand. The odds that I would find one. And most of all, the odds that it would be from New Mexico. I popped it into my pocket, this little reminder from God that even if I can't be with my family, I carry them in my heart and can find them wherever I go.

How to Chop Wood With All Your Body Parts Intact

This weekend I set out to split round logs into some other shape-preferably one that will not cause them to roll out onto the carpet on some not-too-distant winter evening. I have made the attempt once in the past and came to the conclusion that our ax was just not sharp enough, because it seemed to land with a thunk on the log, and either bounced off or became slightly embedded.

This time I was determined to show the ax (which had been sharpened, so that was no longer an excuse) and the logs who was boss.

Now I had heard that you need to read the log, look for its fault line or the sweet spot or some other such nonsense. Oh, I'm convinced the logs have them, just not convinced I could hit them. In fact, there were some swings where I missed the log entirely, having to jump out of the way of the ax as it came dangerously close to burying itself in my shin. But little by little, I turned big logs into littler logs, and I did it without injury.

My swing, which started out looking like I was trying to hammer a nail, improved, and while it never approached that of a thirty year old lumberjack, the ax did make it above my shoulder and that seemed to make all the difference. Momentum and gravity and a tiny bit of aim, resulted in a satisfying heap of split logs, that along with the lots and lots of kindling I created at first will last us at least till Halloween.

Does Anyone Ever Win a Contest?

One week into this and I will give a quick update. I decided not to blog about the category of assisting someone as I feared it would look a little like patting myself on my back, so I will continue to strive for this and keep track of it, but that will be kept private. Unless I change my mind later. After all, I made all the little rules and I can break them.

As far as the other categories, refer to the lists on the right. As these get longer I might have to adjust the layout of the page, but for right now, I'll try to keep an updated log.

Today I found a funky one-of-kind thrift store where I stood out like a sore thumb, (no facial piercings or tri-colored hair) but the other patrons were nice enough not to comment on my short comings. I was able to find a cool, slightly tattered jacket that will be the foundation for my husband's Halloween costume.

I also hammered out three contest entries. This category has me a little worried, as some of them will require quite a bit of time. I anticipate entering some writing contests and some recipe contests, but for today one had me take a fairly lengthy survey and the other two just my name and address. I've always wondered if anyone really wins these things. Maybe with 50 entries I'll find out.

Oysterfest 2009

Today we went to Mason County Fairgrounds for the annual Oysterfest. It is a short distance from my house set next to a little airport. We arrived just as a group of paragliders were coming in for a landing against a bright blue October sky and a mountainous backdrop. It was lovely.

Prior to the oyster tasting, we visited the winetasting tent where we sampled some of our area's fine wines, and left with a bottle of Horizon's Edge Wishful Thinking Port, a delicious chocolatey libation that will be lucky if it makes it to Thanksgiving, and a bottle that we won't even try to save for Thanksgiving from Olympic Cellars Winery called Go Girl Red-because it just felt like a good idea to have a wine cheering for me. And then it was on to the main event.

Now I have to admit upfront that I have had encounters with oysters exactly two times before. Once when I was a teenager in Biloxi, Mississippi, and I was given a raw oyster on the half shell. Being the kind of girl who alway chewed her food, unless it was something like, oh, say ice cream, I proceeded to chew that slithery bit of shellfish until it had morphed into something roughly the size and consistency of a rubber dog bone. One intended for a very large dog. Then I compounded my mistake by attempting to swallow it anyway, where it got lodged halfway down my throat. I don't remember clearly which direction the bugger ended up, but I know there was more than a little panic involved.

The other time involved a recipe for oyster stew that I thought sounded good. (I must have been reading something Christmasy and Olde Englishy at the time) Anyway, suffice it to say, even the neighborhood stray cat wouldn't touch it.

Which brings us to today, where I discovered that grilled oysters on the half shell in garlic butter was a treat. A hint of the sea and so tender, I wish I had ordered more. I also decided to give the raw guys another try. I was not so naive this time; I knew to just tip, let it slide and swallow. But my throat had been imprinted with its earlier encounter and seized up. A second try established for good that this was a no-go. Ah, well, there's always next year.

Forty nine is not usually seen as a milestone birthday. It doesn't end in a zero, and it doesn't bestow upon one any new rights or responsibilities. Yet, for me, this one is a milestone of sorts. You see, I've decided to embark upon a challenge for the next twelve months, in anticipation of the big five-o. It is nothing huge, something that anyone can do.

First off, let me explain why I'm doing this. I asked myself, what did I fear most about aging? And the answer was, drum roll please, having my life become narrower. You know how it is, you get so comfortable in your routines, that you don't even realize that you go to the same restaurants, spend your evenings in the same chair, watching the same television shows. The very sameness that is comforting also terrifies me. Because I know it will only intensify as the years go by. So this little challenge is my way to broaden my life as I journey toward my fifties.

So here it is. I've come up with six categories that I will work on in the next year.
1. Read 50 books, at least half classic literature, at least one the New Testament
2. Learn 50 new things, big or small-time consuming or not
3. Go to 50 places I've never been, a bookstore, a park-it doesn't matter
4. Eat 50 new things, a recipe or a food I've never before sampled
5. Enter 50 contests of any sort
6. Provide some type of kindness, or assistance, or service to others 50 times

This is not a typical life list with big expensive things like visit all the continents, climb Mt Everest or jump from an airplane, but I look forward to it just the same.

For those of you wondering about the title. A few years ago, actually quite a few years ago, my father told me I should start working out and training for the senior games, and I laughed and said, "Dad! I'm only forty something." And he said, "that's just a short pirouette to fifty," and he was right. Time passes so quickly.

I hope you stick around, check back from time to time and see how I'm doing on my self-imposed challenge. I don't know what the next year holds, but I'll let you know. As for right now, it's time to begin My Short Pirouette To Fifty.