Le Monde de Fromage de Kate

Every year without fail, from somewhere – I don’t know exactly, I get a birthday reminder for Syd – a week before, another a few days before. I know I subscribed to some service eons ago that sends me this message, but I don’t get the reminders for anyone else. No one. And I won’t cancel it.

Her’s is one of the handful of phone numbers in my mobile directory that I cannot erase. I just can’t. Her obituary and some of the newspaper articles written at the time are still on the kitchen bulletin board. They’ll stay; I don’t know how long.

Happy Birthday, Syd.
You will be missed forever and always.

I stole this picture from Hobie. I hope she doesn’t mind. My thoughts are with you, my dear, and your family!

I don’t know what play is pictured, I don’t when it was painted, but it feels like it’s every show, every time.

Here are a few of the things about which I’ve been meaning to write and some I had no intention of covering. They are in no particular order.

Come to think of it, that’s a really inept expression. I may not list these things in chronological order, order of priority or order of preference, but they are in a particular order: The first I list is the FIRST in order, the second is SECOND and so forth.

• Sarah turned nineteen on November Fourth. (Happy Birthday! Woo Woo!) I believe this gives her the privilege of BUYING cigarettes in Utah though she could have legally SMOKED them last year (at least that was the law at some point, I believe). She doesn’t smoke, so I cannot really say she partied hard over this entitlement.
  She has developed a penchant for wearing lots of black, which I find really amusing (and not just because she used to dress like “Rainbow Brite”), as I started the same preference around her age. Too bad I kept it up for the next…too many years. Then again, the musicians’ and the actors’ world doesn’t help you embrace vibrant colours.
• I joined a gym (again). I have found, from past experience, that the act of belonging to the gym in and of itself does not make one fit. Go figure. I have concluded, therefore, that I must visit the gym other than to tour the facility and to come back and pay to join. Admittedly, I don’t FEEL more fit from these first two visits, so getting on a treadmill or in the lap pool might be a good idea.
• Lovely Ms. Emma turned twelve on November twenty-second. She is ENTIRELY too grown up for my comfort. When did she become a “young lady?” It’s just untoward. I remember speaking and singing to her while she was in her mother’s womb (which, as far as I can tell, did not do any long-lasting damage).
• I payed a visit to Emma, Zoe, Paige and Abby (and Maxwell, though he was really into his iPod while I was there – I did get to hear a recording of a band comprised of his friends – very impressive) the other evening. I have wrangled (successfully) groups of grade-school kids, hundreds of junior high school students as well as small intense groups doing Shakespeare, a bunch of peppy first-graders and Kindergarteners, large groups of even younger children, and I cannot keep the decibel level of any interaction with these wacky punsters much below slightly deafening. But I don’t have my own wacky, delightful brood, so I must borrow Jenny’s and Grettir’s sometimes despite the festival atmosphere I seem to unwittingly incite. I did try to leave a while before their actual bedtime so they could have time to chill, meditate and be Zen.
• If you get your mammogram during Breast Cancer Awareness month, you get presents. As far as the actual process, I didn’t think it was nearly as bad as people make it out to be. To be frank (as we should be about these issues), I am not…well – I am not “perky” or “small.” I can see how that might make the process more painful. The most uncomfortable part of the mammogram, as I see it, is the fact that they try to get as much as possible of your CHEST WALL in each shot. I’m coming back to this topic, I assure you, so stop covering your ears, William. This is a MEDICAL procedure.
• I think I should end with a confession. I thought that Grettir invented TinyUrl. Yup. It did say “Tiny” and I hadn’t seen them before he used them…

Ever-discerning Terry sent me the PERFECT greetings for this day:

Thank you, Terry, and thanks to I Can Has Cheez Burger. I think it’s SUCH a lovely chapeau, perfect for any and every occasion.

Oh – and I’m sure all y’all thought I was going to talk about breasts today. Yup, I said it: BREASTS, BREASTS, BREASTS! (Go Google, GO!) I decided to wait until tomorrow. I wanted to make the point that we needn’t limit discussion of breast cancer awareness and breast health JUST to Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The day my Holiday catalog from The Wisconsin Cheeseman® arrives is a festive one, indeed. Unfortunately, when I was perusing this inspiring tome last night I had an immediate and unquenchable desire for cheese. I HAD TO HAVE CHEESE RIGHT THEN AND THERE. We only have “lite” Jarlsberg (not so bad as it sounds) and a mild cheddar in the house. But a little bit of each seemed to assuage my desperate need.

Then, back to the brightly coloured pages of the catalog. I must be very honest with you. The Wisconsin Cheeseman® Holiday catalog has a myriad of “corporate” style gift packs – overwhelming displays of cheeses, sausages, crackers and spreads in cheerfully decorated boxes. They often contain, to the chagrin of the true turophile, quite a few cheese “spreads” in lovely foil with misleadingly foreign names that are actually comprised of “pasteurized process cheese food.” Cheese food? That’s just wrong.

One must ignore the “mega-gift-pack” route and take a look at the natural cheese that they make or buy. This is the tantalizing part. Aged cheddar, Longhorn Colby, Country white cheddar, award-winning Provolone, aged cheddar, an aged bleu cheddar (I lust after this one),baby Swiss, ball Gouda, an aged Parrano, artisan rosemary-flavoured white cheddar, REAL brick cheese (made by the ONLY company that still makes authentic brick cheese – they use third generation bricks for pressing), cranberry white cheddar – I could go on and on. They do make some of their own spreads, which I’m guessing are lovely. They also peddle some scrumptious-looking baked goods, including petits fours (I LOVE petits fours). They even carry St. Dalfour’s Conserves (fruit preserves sweetened only with fruit juice – DELICIOUS and JUST FRUIT – P.S. you can buy them locally at a lower price).

There was, however, an artisan cheese that initially gave me pause:

This is Manteche Artisan Cheese. Here’s an excerpt of the catalog description:

Artisans hand-shape warm whole-milk Provolone around a half pound block of unsalted butter. The mild cheese and butter share their flavors as this delicacy ripens.

Cheese filled with BUTTER? Is this excessive decadence? Is this dairy ostentatiousness?

Then I thought about it for a bit. A thin slice of this cheese on an excellent bread? Now that sounds decadently DELICIOUS.

Always a day late (or at least a few hours) and a dollar short.

Nevertheless, I’d like to wish all my beloved Canucks a (slightly belated ) Happy Thanksgiving! I hope Canada had a bountiful harvest. That, I will add, is the nice thing about Canadian Thanksgiving; you give thanks and have pie without any of the contradictory feelings of American Thanksgiving (celebration versus GUILT and such).

It was also Columbus Day (in the United States, I should clarify). Talk about your paradoxical holiday.

I will only say this about Columbus Day: “In fourteen hundred and ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue,” has got to be one of the greatest mnemonic sayings ever.

And if you think I picked this particular cornucopia just because it had a tiny pineapple in it, you are spot on.

It’s sick and wrong, I know, but the children keep GROWING UP! Even my niephews suffer from this horrible condition.

Paisley – poor child (ACK! She’s a CHILD now) – turned TWO last Monday (October 1). I’m sure she’s very upset and will tell people that she’s “turning one for the second time.”

Paisley likes to wear her “asses” – her sun-“asses.” Hey – that’s what she calls them. I love that she’s an aspiring fashion maven; note that her “asses” are upside-down. Now that’s COOL.

I think it’s a shame that Paisley will be teased so horribly when she reaches school because of her hideous visage. Yes, the ugly stick really hit her hard. **Sigh.**

And there’s no connection to David Letterman’s production company here. This is a GLOBAL title.

Trust the Guru, naturally. And why? Because you tell him that you cannot get comments – an earth-shattering crisis, of course, especially when you consider Grettir’s leisurely and undemanding existence.

It’s all about ME, remember. When you are making your priority lists please bear that in mind. That fact that Grettir is a single parent of two “tween” girls, the steward and conservator of their school’s whole problematic computer network, a full-time computer spy-busting megastar (you’ve not heard of him? Well, he’s very popular in Bangalore), a part-time University student, a sometimes UN-retired actor, an active part of his church community, the savior of endless computers and systems belonging to friends and relatives, studied archivist of the Tiny Pineapple Nurse Book Collection®, the King and Emperor of the Tiny Pineapple System and All Misadventures Entailed Therein™, and the finest damn ironer I know (sorry Mom, you’re good, but he could iron in the Olympics – when they add ironing as a medal-earning event, that is – of course his Mother taught the World Everything Worth Knowing About Laundry™…), PALES in comparison to the fact that I couldn’t get comments for like THREE DAYS. And sometimes I get FIVE COMMENTS for a SINGLE ENTRY!

Yes, I’m a pretty sorry excuse for a…something.

I welcome your comments and suggestions herein and therefore and ALL about it.

Oy, yes ’tis! I was notified by email (thanks to me Matey, Amy), Craig Ferguson just mentioned it, it’s on many a website – “My guess is that a large percentage of Pastafarians will observe this holiday” – and there’s even an OFFICIAL website that, due to “the extremely high load,” they had to take down.

The Official Talk Like a Pirate Site, in turn, refers us to “The Official Talk Like a Pirate” website (?), though they maintain that “their Pirate Translator is a bit crap.” Let’s take a look. Wait – let’s take a look, AVAST ME HEARTIES!

How nice! You can subscribe to The Poopdeck and see what the “Pirate Guys” are up to all year. Ahoy! A page of pirate speaking basics. And, also, fer all ye Landratten, there’s “Talk like a German Pirate.” Bei meinem Haken, it’s GUT!!! If you DON’T, Zu den Haien schicken!, bilge rats! Ahoy und immer eine steife Brise, beim Klabautermann !!!

They’re GONE.  The stripes, that is.  This is guaranteed to make Terry happy.  Countless others may also find themselves less woozy and lightheaded if as they attempt to read my blog.

Anyhoo (some things never change), I would like to thank Master Guru, Grettir, for conducting a live reboot and backing up and then backing OUT and then doing magic and all and associated hocus-pocus that has gone with the Tiny Pineapple® server upgrade as well as an update to Movable Type 4.01™. I cannot imagine how much work this entailed. I do not WANT to envisage it, in point of fact, because it makes me tired just thinking of all the exhausting shamanism no doubt involved.

AND, yes, it was time for a design change. Grettir very generously set me up with a lovely default template – “Hills Green” – I believe it was called. However, being the vampire I am, I promptly changed it to “Hills Dusk” and then just went for broke with “Hills Midnight.” It’s fitting.

Don’t feel too lulled into peace and complacency, though. If I figure out how to actually you use Movable Type 4.01™ you never know – I MAY end up with another motif worthy of calliope playing. I will restore my five-mile-long sidebar with all the links (if I can – knowing the Guru, I’m SURE I can).

So, HUZZAH!!! And many, many thanks.

Here’s a little incentive to stay married for what Smash aptly described as “a crazy amount of time”: Next year my parents (43rd Anniversary) should gift each other travel.

But that’s not the incentive of which I speak. This is the gift that REALLY impressed me: For year forty-four the recommended present is GROCERIES. Yes, GROCERIES.

Everything between the forty-fifth and the hundredth wedding anniversary is a jewel of some variety. Not groceries (super-cool GROCERIES), but I suppose it’s seemly enough.

And if you make it to your 100th wedding anniversary (??????) you get a ten-carat diamond. This renders me (almost) speechless (typeless?).

Let’s put aside all the other seemingly impossible aspects of making it to one’s ONE HUNDREDTH WEDDING ANNIVERSARY and think only about the logistical aspects of receiving or giving a TEN-KARAT DIAMOND when one is OVER one hundred years of age (other than affording said gem when one has outlived one’s fixed income several times over). A TEN-KARAT DIAMOND is larger than most individuals well over one hundred years of age. Wearing it would be out of the question (brittle bones + ginormous jewel = lil’ old person turned into a pile of dusty shards).

I apologize for these possibly repellent images, but I think I’ve uncovered a real problem here. This gift suggestion is cruel; this is elder abuse.

I am considering starting a petition with which we solicit a change by which the “proper” present for one’s 100th Wedding Anniversary is a balloon. Just ONE, not mylar. A balloon “bouquet” might carry a frail, unbelievably aged person right up into the atmosphere on an unintended journey into space.

Your support would be appreciated.