Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

Contest Winners; Quince-A-Rama

First, I’m happy to say that several many of you guessed that the thing missing from my tiny room was indeed a clock! Well done, and now you will all be murdered in nefarious ways in my new comedy book Murder Most Novel about a young woman/aspiring author who becomes embroiled in an Agatha Christie style murder scenario. If you have a particular preference for your murder (poison, machete, bashed with a clock), let me know, and I’ll try to accommodate. You were all very clever, but I have to say that Anonymole’s poem/riddle/guess really took the day:

Dueling portraits invite conversation,
while the bird tweets its irritation.

Below, the blood bright Persian,
offsets the walls’ psilocybin excursions.

A Tiffany, a punch bowl, a violin,
speak of parties, a present left to atone for prior sins.

Yet the room exists in silence,
it enjoys no ticks, no tocks,

For nowhere amongst its fine refinements,
do we see a cherry clock.

So thank you, my friends. You all rose to the challenge and proved that you really do know me so well!

In other news, I’ve been very busy because it’s one of my favourite times of year—the quince is finally ripe. Many years ago, we had a pear tree on our property which started to die. But as it did, another plant sprouted from its base, and that plant was a quince bush. Apparently, quince have hardier roots than some pear species so they’re often grafted onto quince. And while I missed the pear, I soon realized the (labour-intensive) joy that is the quince fruit. They are rock hard and can’t be eaten as is, but if you cook them first, they turn a delightful pink colour and taste amazing. Every year, I become super-home-maker-y and produce several batches of jam as well as some wonderful quince crumble. Of course, I always have more quince than I need so I can sell off the rest to quince lovers in the area and make some money to fund my miniature obsession.

In other other news, I also completed a miniature outdoor courtyard. I think it’s very cute but I’m at the point where I don’t quite know what to do with all these miniatures—maybe I can throw them in with the quince, like “Buy some quince, get a miniature room for free”. It’s a vicious/delicious circle.

Positively Negative…For Now

Well, we’re back from our trip. The second last day was my favourite, I think, mostly because we toured around Halifax in an ‘amphibious vehicle’, which is to say that our tour bus turned into a boat at a certain point and we literally drove down a ramp into the water and then we were floating and it was supercool. I’ve done that once before, many years ago, but it wasn’t made clear to me that the bus BECAME a boat—I thought we were changing vehicles halfway through, so imagine my terror as we headed straight off the pier into the water. But this time I was ready, and I really enjoyed it. Overall, the cruise was pretty good—at least the food, wine, and destinations were great. It was just the crew that was chaotic, like tiny animated characters in an old-time video game just zipping around without any seeming purpose and bumping into walls and getting stuck and whatnot. The last day was pretty exhausting, having to get up at 7 am, eat a quick breakfast, and then wait to get called for our airport transfer. Once we were off the boat, Norwegian basically washed their hands of us and we had to find the bus to the airport on our own. We eventually did, and then had to battle all the other passengers who were equally desperate to get away from the ship and had NO F*CKING IDEA HOW TO LINE UP, CAUSING INCREDIBLE PANIC AND DISORDER WHEN THE BUSES FINALLY ARRIVED.

At any rate, we arrived home later that day, and Atlas was very pleased to see us; in fact, he stood up, put his paws on my shoulder and then licked my neck and face, something he has never done before, and it was very sweet. And sloppy. We unpacked, I did a little prep for the presentation I was doing the next night at the local library on writing, and then we went to bed. The next morning, I woke up and Ken was already downstairs. When he came up, he looked terrible.

Me: What’s wrong?
Ken: I was up all night with a fever.
Me: Oh f*ck.

So I gave him a covid test and guess what? IT WAS POSITIVE. Which meant I had to cancel my presentation, cancel work on Saturday, and pretty much spent the next few days taking care of him. Fortunately, we’ve both had all our boosters so he’s not as sick as he could have been. I tested negative, and so far, I still am, fingers crossed.

So you were right, ‘Mole, my friend—cruise ships really are a hotbed of bacteria. But the upside to all this (aside from having a readymade blog topic) is that it’s quince season and the quince on the bushes in my backyard are ready to go. It was a bumper crop this year, so I’ve spent the last couple of days making quince jam, quince crumble, quince juice (which is what you get after you poach the quince to get it ready for cooking). Quince is labour-intensive, more so than any other fruit in existence I think, but it’s worth it in the end. I have so much quince that I posted it for sale on Facebook Marketplace which obviously meant fielding stupid questions from people who don’t read ads and want to know where I live (it’s in the ad) and how much the quince is (it’s in the ad) and do I deliver? (no, I am NOT bringing quince to your house—I picked it for you so if you want it, get your ass over here).

So wish me luck—I’m usually a positive person but right now, I really need to stay negative.

My Week 228: Dishing It Out

It’s been a hectic couple of weeks and I know I have a lot of catching up to do, mainly because I got tagged for a couple of things by some blogger pals. I try hard to keep track but I only post once a week, so sometimes I have to go a ways back to remember what I’m supposed to be doing, and I only respond to these things if a) the questions are interesting or b) I can just make sh*t up. I don’t have an “award-free blog” which I recently learned is a thing, and frankly it befuddles me. It’s like celebrating Christmas but telling people “don’t buy me any damn presents” or being the Jehovah’s Witness of blogging (and in a strange twist of fate, they actually just came to my door right now to battle for my immortal soul, as they do fairly regularly. I won, as I also regularly do, but they took a moment to remind me that Jehovah loves me anyway, which is an award in and of itself, am I right?). Anyway, I guess some people have their own agenda or whatnot, and blog awards interfere with that, but me, I’m always looking for a topic that I can turn into something mydangblogggy, and just have a good time with it. Now, I’m not fishing for any more nominations—I’ve been tagged in a few awards already and it’s just the nicest thing imaginable to me that someone cared enough about my writing to do that, especially since I know that I’ll never get a Pulitzer or even a White Pine Award (that’s an Ontario thing) but goddammit, I’ve been nommed for the “Made My Dish Award” and I’m super-pumped. This award was totally invented by my friend Cecelia at Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks because I made dinner using one of her recipes, and it was delicious (I used gluten-free pasta but don’t tell her because I don’t want to give this award back). So now I have to answer a couple of questions, and they’re very good ones:

Unwrapped? Hard pass.

1) When you leave a restaurant, do you look for a bowl or mints or candies?

I might look for them, but I would NEVER touch them. Have you never seen those exposés where they take a blacklight and shine it on the candy bowl? There’s enough feces on those fruit drops to give you a nice healthy dose of dysentery. It’s a sad fact that a lot of people don’t wash their hands after they use the bathroom on the grounds that “I never actually touched anything” but YOU DID, BOB. And then Bob touches the candies with his poopy hands and it becomes a dish of norovirus-covered nougat. I have a strict policy to never deliberately ingest anything that is offered to me in an unwrapped state (see below for details). I also sanitize the handles of shopping carts, as well as the headrest and tray of my airplane seat. I recently watched a documentary about airline cleanliness, and it was a shock that not only are airplanes hotbeds of bacteria, but that the headrest is the dirtiest part of the plane. Who knew?

2) What is a candy that should be invented/sold?

If there was a candy that tasted like a good New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc, I would be happy, although I know you can get ice wine chocolate, so maybe it’s already been invented. I used to really like salted chocolate but right now, that’s giving me terrible flashbacks.

And as you know, if you answer any or all of these three questions in the comments, you can also claim a “Made My Dish Award”, the dish in question being a blog.

Also, I was tagged by my pal and fellow Canuck (with an abiding love of Denmark), Cyranny of Cyranny’s Cove for the Solidarity Blogger award, so thank you for that. There’s only one thing I have to do for this, and that is to talk about what solidarity in blogging means to me. So I’ll get serious for a moment and say that if it wasn’t for this wonderful blogging community, I would never visit other countries, try great recipes, learn about art and graffiti, read incredible poetry, listen to great music, laugh (especially at the adventures of Alistair and Alexis), cry, commiserate, rejoice, grieve, think deeply about important topics, and mostly try to bring a little levity to YOUR world.

Synergy:

Ken and I have been married so long that sometimes we don’t have actual conversations. We just KNOW.

Me: That.
Ken: Yes.
Me: I know, right?
Ken: Uh huh.

The other night, we were driving home, and we passed a sh*tload of pylons:

Me: What?
Ken: Couldn’t get a building permit.
Me: Parking lot then.
Ken: Mmm.
Me: That fire.
Ken: Yeah.

The one thing we DON’T have synergy with, though, is music. Especially when we’re driving and Ken has control of the radio.

Me: What IS that? Is that a documentary? Like, on the radio? NO.
Ken: She’s an author. It’s interesting.
Me: She’s crying because she got divorced and her mom won’t forgive her. Her mom needs to be more supportive and you need to find something else to listen to…OK, I’m not 60—try again…this sounds like elevator music…Disco is DEAD, Ken…not COUNTRY!…put on Virgin Radio…you just switched the channel from one commercial to another…go back—that was Nirvana…yes, I know you hate that Calvin Harris song, but I like it—don’t be so judge-y.

We usually just end up compromising on the Comedy Channel:

Ken: Is that?
Me: Yeah. I love him.
Ken: That one joke.
Me: I know, right?

And just this morning:

Ken: The doorbell rang?
Me: Yup.
Ken: Jehovah loves you.
Me: Obvs.

Synergy.