Folding The Laundry in Silence

I have been told repeatedly that I only hurt the ones I love and, while that is true, I am looking to slowly expand into aquaintances in the near future.

You have a smile that lights up the room, and as much as you enjoy the attention and small bit of fame that comes with this unique skill, you are thinking of implementing a small fee for all of the electricity you are providing.

I am now cooking with heat as we have exhausted the cold soup and entree options and salads, although healthy, are making us crazy.

You are attempting to literally drive yourself nuts, but even if you were to figure out how, you aren't quite sure if it will be as amazing as it's been advertised to be.

I am all butterfingers but for not for the reasons people always assume that I am due to my close affiliations with the butter community.

You hit the books with a force and passion that is equal parts commendable and disconcerting.

I am letting myself go and the results are squishy and enthralling and reminiscent of a very small bouncy castle.

You are demonstrating your new and improved flexibility by repeatedly kicking yourself in the butt to the amusement and amazement of all and resulting in free advertising for your yoga studio.

I am going to wash that man right out of my hair immediately after I finish cooking dinner and answering some emails. He can wait.

You slide aggressively headfirst into home plate both scoring the winning run and securing yourself a huge raise in your next contract with the only downside being the amazing amount of cleanup you've created for the underpaid staff of the supermarket.

I reduce all simple tasks to finding a needle in a haystack out of boredom and because my great uncle left me his antique needle collection that was expansive as it was ouchy.

You don't have to be asked twice - you brought home all of the bacon. Now what?

I don't only cry over spilled milk as it is but one of many many many things that reduce me to tears.

You are enjoying your new birthday present by attempting to brand everyone you "own".

I only look as if I just appeared out of midair. In fact I just walked through the front door when your focus was diverted which proves that my art of distraction has greatly improved and you may need your eyes checked on a more regular basis.

You look so quick as you race through the path in the woods and are running so fast as if you are being chased by wolves. Upon closer inspection they only seem to be once-domesticated, now-rabid dogs. 

I am not only going out of my way to be cliched but I'm also trying to pay my way through college.

You are attempting to label everything.

I whisper sweet words of romance and allow the warm breeze to blow them towards you as we enjoy the sunset. And then I start coughing and coughing and coughing.

You are defusing a bomb as we speak, or, as you continue to remind me, just folding the laundry in silence.

The Writing Process: Part 2

So, I am back to continue to enlighten all of you who are still tuning in (is there more of an echo now then last time or is that just the result of all of my vocal training?) about how I write. Note: if any of you are actually attempting to tune in, please stop as it is greatly disrupting my cable and most likely not at all possible unless you have tons of money and then almost anything is possible. For those who missed the first piece about the writing process, these blog posts are my chance to share where my ideas come from and how much it costs for me to purchase them and bring them here from their native Namibia. I am attempting to flesh out how I do what I do without using any actual flesh in the process. I did try to brainstorm how I would use flesh if I wanted to and just couldn't think of a plan that would be overly messy and attractive to ants. There are times when I want to be attractive to ants, but those are some of my dark moments that I don't want to get into right now. No, right now I am thinking of a family in the hills of Germany...and I'm back. That happens to me from time to time - without any announcement, I am mentally whisked away to another part of the world where I will often stay, get acculturated and even be adopted by a family or clan if all things go well. Sometimes the trip is long and heart-warming and other times the people there just want to eat my warmed heart as a tasty pate with a slice of fresh baguette. This time the trip was short, mostly because the German family was at a bratwurst festival (not for eating, but more for the out-of-body experiences that come from eating one too many sausages) for the weekend and also because I feel the need to write.

I also feel the need to decorate my room with various mirrors and colourful drapes for reasons that I have been told by my lawyers I do not need to go into detail about right now no matter how many times I pretend that I am asked. Yesterday it was 5 times. For the record, I don't have any lawyers or even one single lawyer and I have also been told by them to say that as well. Is me writing about me writing sort of like talking to myself while I eat the food I made and telling myself about what a good job I did and patting myself on the back at the same time? Don't worry - I'm not doing that as it is way too challenging to eat, talk and pat myself all at the same time. I plan to do them one-by-one-by-one and that is how I will spend this Sunday! This piece of writing is not meant to sound too self-congratulatory - self-congratulatory too an extent, just not so much so that I make anyone sick or more sick in case they happened to be reading this while sick in the hopes it would either make them better or just distract them from how badly they feel. Either way - I'm good - I take great pride in distracting people from how bad they feel or just how they feel in general. Spend some time around me and you won't have any idea how you feel at all! Not that is a slogan I can live with! It is a gradual process - you will start feeling a lot and then little by little you will grow emotionally numb, some checkers will be played, the wind will howl, the birds will fly south for the winter and a pie will be consumed. All of this for the low cost of having to hear me moan about things - I'm sorry, I wish I could sing better too.

Contrary to popular opinion, writing is not all fun and games. Fun and games is all fun and games - writing is not fun and games at all and I'm not sure why we are spending so much time trying to explain this as it seems pretty easy to understand. Oh, one more thing - fun and games is not entirely all  fun and games, that is just what the powerful fun and games lobby wants us to believe. Occasionally there are tears. Too many tears and the word fun starts to see wrong and quite insensitive and sort of like why don't the rest of you stop playing and laughing and see what is the matter already? I hope we understand each other and I can't proceed until we do or else I will have a nagging feeling sort of like a mother bird when she leaves her nest full of cute little helpless baby birds who are anxious for her to return (is that true - are little birds actually anxious? do they have the ability to feel such a complex emotion at such a young age? and maybe they are happy to have the nest to themselves for a while before boring old mom comes back who only cares about spitting chewed up food in our mouths even when we have had more than enough?)

I know I just said "we" and lumped you into all this when you may have been just passing through and you are most likely thinking "wait a minute! Like woah - slow down, big fellow. Don't get me all mixed up in all of your issues." To which I reply (a) I am willing to take your minute and raise you an infinite number of minutes - That's right! I can wait as long as this is going to take or as long as you will let me stand here on your porch before calling the authorities (ask for Bob down at the precinct, we are on a first-name basis and I know he loves two creams and a sugar in his coffee), (b) I will not slow down (c) "Big fellow?" - have you taken a close look at me recently? That is wrong on at least two accounts and I know I can find at least four or five more if given the time and some chocolate and (d) issues?!?!? What do you know of my issues? Have you talked to Sarah? Did she say that if you read this you could get mixed up in them? For the record I was just bidding time until my "mom" came back to "the nest", if by "mom" I meant "star ship" and by "the nest" I meant "home base" and when I told her that I wished I was a herring who was about to be caught in the net of a muscular, but kind fisherman and his son, I WAS JOKING! Did she honestly think I thought I was a herring??!?! Okay, that actually could make sense - I do get occasionally slimy and have a large collection of all different kinds of scales.

For those that didn't know, I have been caught in nets on two separate occasions - once was my fault entirely as I decided to drape a series of nets in my bedroom the same week I decided that any form of lighting was completely passe and the other time was at a costume party when my best friend, dressed as a net, bumped into me (dressed coincidentally also as a net, only a much smaller one) and we became entangled and lay in a pile all evening long (we believed in not only dressing as nets but acting as net-like as possible to complete the effect) - it was the closest the two of us ever had been and we swore never to talk about that evening again which I am violating right now and feeling actually not so bad for doing. The part about being caught or rescued by a hunky, should-be-in-underwear-ads, fisherman and his equally-dropdead-gorgeous-yet-overly-fish-smelling sons...yeah...anyways...

Easily the toughest things about writing for me are not what you would think of (not that I am pretending to always know what you think, or to ever be knowing what you or any of your kind think. Quite the opposite in fact, I know nothing that you are thinking about as evidenced by my inability to buy you a present or even  a piece of fruit that you don't instantly return. And when I say your kind, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, unless of course it is my turn to be derogatory - for those that don't know, a few friends and I take turns each Thursday from 9am till noon being derogatory to each other - sort of like a snack-bringing rotation except that it usually makes me angry and upset and there is no sugar involved except on particularly creative Thursdays). I can easily find my way to the computer and I get how to turn it on etc etc etc - I am mildly offended that many of you thought that the whole finding my computer and actually getting to my blog would be the challenging part for me. Not totally offended, just mildly, as I said, sort of akin to going walking in the woods and only stumbling upon chanterelles and no wild morels or having two out of five random passersby thumb their noses at me for no apparent reason aside from my decision to wear gumboots to the opera which only shows both my complete inability to anticipate proper attire for many formal events and to read through the lines in my friends texts that were evidently supposed to be sarcastic (I just figured she was quoting some unknown author or authors repeatedly. I did wonder why these quotes were particularly memorable, but I just kept quiet as the last time I admitted to not knowing the source of some seemingly random quotes I ended up having to make egg salad sandwiches for the whole accounting department aside from Fred who preferred tuna.)

No, the toughest problems with writing for me are finding cool and unique names for characters that I am using in my stories. Not that there aren't an amazing amount of awesome names, but I know a lot of people and if I use a name of someone I know they probably think one of the following thoughts (a) should I be flattered or concerned?, (b) let's take a wait and see approach and if he makes money I'll attempt to sue/bribe/threaten him for lots of money over using my name without asking, (c) isn't it weird that of all the millions of names in the world that he chose mine and does that mean that he thinks we are friends? Well, let me put your mind at rest (only literalily of course) - I am attempting to choose names that have zero connection to anyone who may actually read my writing and if I happen to choose your name then it was merely a coincidental slip-up which you should not read anything into. Or if you are in the mood, I suggest you spend hours and hours reading into it and if you find anything interesting, please let me know. Maybe there is some hidden connection that I am unaware of at this point - like maybe I unknowingly used your name because your grandfather once pulled a thorn out of my grandfather's hand when they were playing around that good ol' thorny bush that they spent many an hour playing around as young kids and my grandfather was ever-so-grateful that he just wouldn't let up with the appreciation which usually took the form of cream cheese and jam sandwiches aside from the occasional parfait when his mom just happened to make two of just in case there was someone, anyone, he wanted to thank for some small, seemingly innocuous thing - I'm sure if this happened, my grandfather would have tucked me into bed and told me this story of how your grandfather was such a hero in his eyes and that his eyes had been conditioned to be blind to heros except when thorns were involved and then they were wide open, just not wide open enough to miss the thorn in the first place and usually by this time in the story I was fast asleep, but his story would blend into my dreams and then years later when I decided to launch into some creative writing the name was somewhere in the recesses of my brain mostly because I elected against having that elective and quite-risky-sounding surgery of having the recesses "smoothed" over mostly for cosmetic reasons.

As an aside, I try to do as much as I can for cosmetic reasons outside of buying any actual cosmetic items as I'm working my way up to that, sort of how I worked my way up to hang gliding after just jumping off my couch for years until I both broke the couch and was ordered by both my doctor and downstairs neighbour to get out of the house more often. Note: I've never actually hang glided - I've just worked my way up to it which is akin to saying that I am standing in a line waiting my turn with my prized pineapple to commision a fruit sculptor (someone who carves humourous celebrity faces into fruit) who is currently on "vacation" which means he is in prison for life for mistakenly and repeatedly attempting to carve an actual celebrities face. The names I choose just come to me. Almost like I am still and they are moving at the speed of light or maybe it is the other way around and the names are stationary in space and I am screaming up to them at speeds I am unaware mostly because it will be a cold day in hell before I recognize relativity.

So, to avoid using names of those I know, I am tempted to swing the other way and only use extremely uncommon names, but then people may start to wonder what is up with these names I am choosing and why they all sound African or Korean. That reminds me - I am planning to write a piece about two ex-lovers who decide to move (one to Africa and one to Korea), change their names to fit in with the people in their respective countries and also as a voluntary and totally unnecessary witness-protection program only in this case it was only to protect themselves from each other as the love just hurt too much (all of their friends suggested clipping their nails on a more regular basis and just practicing compassion and stop being so aggressive all the time). After a few years, when they both have become accustomed to their new surroundings, they unveil their plan - to each open up a hair salon that would specialize in straightening afros and perming bangs. These salons would be doomed to fail, which was part of the plan all along, and they would both fly home to the small town in Texas they were from (to be honest, they were from a slightly larger city in Texas originally but I decided against that as I wanted them to have a more small town feel to them, which for me only involved deleting a few key strokes and doing a little extra typing, but for them it involved packing, moving and renting a storage locker to put their huge collection of antique wig stands in just before they were about to purchase their first wig) and meet on the tarmac at the airport only to remember why they left in the first place. They really don't like each other at all and only forget that from time to time because of the fact that they are actually figments of the imagination of a third person who is always mixing up who is who in his head. All in all it is an incredibly bad and intentionally convoluted idea for a story which means that if I eventually write it, it will mostly be out of spite unless I feel that I have already done too much out of spite at the time and then I will do it out of revenge or the need to exercise my fingers in as socially acceptable a fashion as possible.

Along the way, when either preparing to write or writing, I have learned some important things. One thing that stands out is I've learned how important breathing is and also that it is very very important not to touch the burning log in the fire place and also to say please and thank you. It never ceases to amaze me how others are nicer to you when you treat them well and this mostly speaks to how long I've been able to condition myself to maintaining the feeling of amazement. I can go literally for days in this state of awe where I am totally overjoyed and inspired by everything I come into contact with or directly contact head on and I'm also very fortunate when these days ends and I'm not in traction. The word traction almost sounds a bit exciting because as my imaginary friend Joe always says, you can't spell attraction without traction which always makes me smile wistfully and makes me long for some actual flesh and blood friends or at least ones with one of those two criteria, but preferably both as I'm not totally interested in a friend who is solely or mostly flesh and I'm definitely not too crazy about blood.

Another thing I've learned that is worthwhile sharing with you at this time is the importance of looking at someone when speaking to them. The main reasons seem to be that it greatly lessens the confusion of who I am talking to especially when in a busy place like a train station and because in this day and age if you can't look someone in the eyes in makes the other person feel very self-conscious and wonder "what is so wrong with me that he can't even look me in the eyes or even at my nose, which would like some visual attention too from time to time when the eyes have either had enough or decide to get off their high horse and share once and a while". I don't want to make anyone else more self-conscious than me - it is a competition I've been playing in every day since last year went I met that odd lady on the corner downtown with the large collection of stuffed birds for sale. I liked the black and white one the best, and she seemed to be enamored with my shirt collar which I agree was my best feature that day, but just couldn't take it when she offered as my hands were metaphorically full and it was just too confusing to attempt to explain this to the lady who seemed like she would be quite metaphorically-challenged. I do not want to unnecessarily challenge anyone in life, especially since the infamous Balloon Incident.

Now You Has Food: Post #1 - An Intro

Hi there!

Welcome to my new food blog.

I love food (probably obvious) and I love writing - so this should be fun.

I thought I'd start by telling you a little bit about myself and food, focussing on the key moments that have led me to where I am today.

I was raised by parents who loved cooking. We had home-cooked, healthy food featuring fresh ingredients on a nightly basis. While we never purely vegetarian, by the time I was 16, I had settled into the diet I maintain to this day - I'm a vegetarian who enjoys fish and dairy (octo-lacto-pesce-tarian...I think). Growing up at home, I experienced sauces made from scratch, freshly baked goods and a seemingly endless number of dishes made with excellent fruits and veggies.

As my interest in food was germinating, I got a job at a local restaurant. I worked as a busboy, dishwasher and cashier for many years of my adolescence and I always showed a lot of interest in cooking. I was fortunate that the head chef at the time took me under his wing and trained me on the job. Eventually, despite having no formal training, I was able to land a position as a line and prep cook and I held this position for a number of years while in university. I learned quite a lot about organization and time management in the kitchen that I took with me to my career as an educator. Those years in the kitchen also kept the cooking fire burning. I am quite a creative person and the combination of that plus my ever-expanding kitchen skills led to an explosion of ideas in the kitchen at home.

When I eventually left the restaurant at the age of 24, I had tired of generating 30-40 omelettes in a morning and flipping 100s of burgers and making dozens of pasta dishes. The love for food was sapped out of me and I longed to make one really great breakfast, or plan an exciting lunch or have a bunch of friends over and cook an incredible dinner. I learned a lot of techniques at the restaurant, but I was now ready to move on not only career-wise but also to cook solely for myself, my friends and my family.

Throughout my adult life I have bought cookbooks, watched every food show on television (sometimes only once), read books about food and more recently researched recipes and ingredients online.

My very first cookbook, and one that I still use frequently to this day, is the vegetarian "Bible" The Moosewood Cookbook, by Mollie Katzen. I have cooked every recipe in that book multiple times and have personalized many of them over time. I have subsequently gone on to purchase a number of her other books (The Enchanted Broccoli Forest and The Heart of the Plate, to name two) as well as a number of books by the Moosewood Collective, including Sundays At The Moosewood Restaurant and Moosewood Restaurant Favourites. I don't want to mislead you in thinking that I only draw from vegetarian sources - I consult The Joy of Cooking from time to time, I flip through a Betty Crocker book that I have, I use my wife's Best of The Best here and there and I love both the Good Housekeeping cookbook and baking book that I own.

I love food TV! I remember watching Walk With Yan as a child and I used to watch food shows whenever I could find them. The birth of Food Television was exciting for me and I remember the chefs that dominated their station when it was first unveiled in Canada: Bobby Flay, Emeril, Sara Moulton, and Ming Tsai. I watched every single original Iron Chef multiple times and actually just threw out a stack of old VHS tapes full of recordings on those shows (my wife made me). I currently religiously (and somewhat shamefully) watch all of the varieties of Top Chef, Chopped, MasterChef, Guy's Grocery Games, Beat Bobby Flay, Sabotage Kitchen, Iron Chef America and The Next Food Network Star (can't get enough of Bob Tuschman and Susie Fogelson- give them their own show! I am kidding! I am kidding!). We don't get Cooking Channel in Canada, so I miss the purely instructional shows, but I do pick up hints and recipes from the reality shows (i.e. when given something sweet for a savory dish, make a gastrique).

I frequent Epicurious, All Recipes, Food.com, Yummly and other food websites and I have a large three-holed binder full of all of the recipes I've tried from those sites. I love the recipes online as the reviews and alterations that others have made are very helpful. My favourite newer site that I have found and have loved is 101 Cookbooks - I fully recommend it - great recipes and a fun read.

I have also read a number of great books about food - Jeffery Steingarten's are all awesome, I love Anthony Bourdain, I have read all of Mark Ruhlmann's books, Ruth Reichel's books make me hungry and envious of her way with words and I highly recommend Heat by Bill Buford among many others. These books all make me laugh and get excited about food. Jeffery Steingarten's The Man Who Ate Everything and It Must Have Been Something I Ate are two of my favourite reads of all time and I would say are among the major factors in my experimenting in the kitchen. If you haven't read those books, and you love food, you must.

So, here we are. I am a 43 year-old husband and father of two young girls. I plan, shop and cook all of the food for the family. I love finding new and different recipes that are healthy, light, ethnically-diverse and full of colour. I try to research and plan menus for the week that mix things up while also creating leftovers and sometimes lunches too. I am also trying to find meals that the whole family will enjoy (including a picky 6-year old is tough) that don't use every pot and pan in the kitchen. We are an active and busy family trying to squeeze in activities for the kids, sports, tutoring, playing games, my creative writing blog and relaxing into a busy schedule. I used to shop, cook and clean up for hours and hours and hours. In the past few years, I have shifted towards quicker meals that free up more time for everything else in life without sacrificing flavour, health and variety, because as good as a meal is that takes hours to prepare and hours to clean up, it isn't much better than one that takes a quarter of the time. We eat as few prepared items as possible and cook most meals from scratch (gotta have pizza or sushi once a week if the budget allows) all the while balancing the budget (can't have wild salmon every night).

I am going to try to put up recipes that I love, recipes that are horrible and should never be talked about again (let alone cooked) but should make for an enjoyable read, trials and experiments and my thoughts on food and diet. I am a creative writing blogger and love to laugh, so things may get occasionally funny around here, but I will try to keep the focus on food.

I hope you come back often.

Honeymoon

After years of courtship and a whirlwind of planning, Rachel and I have finally tied the knot. The wedding, her dream wedding, was the culmination of an exhausted and exciting week filled with friends and family and fun. And we jumped on the first plane out of there and headed straight for Bermuda. I can't believe we are here right now on this incredibly beautiful beach and we are married! I look around at the spectacular view and then back at my stunning bride and I just can't believe we are actually here.

We are lying on our huge beach towels, covered in sun screen, drinking tropical drinks and enjoying some real relaxation. Lost in my thoughts and drifting in and out of sleep, I am remembering how we first met and fell in love and I know that I am such a lucky man. I roll over and look at her and nudge her. She rolls over as well and our eyes meet. We kiss and then we laugh. It is true love.

"Oh Rachel, I can't believe he are actually here and we are married!"

"I know my sweet. This is really amazing. What a journey we have been on together."

"We made such a great choice coming to this little, remote island. This is so relaxing, so romantic."

"Craig, I am so happy. It was an incredible wedding and this honeymoon is the perfect ending to a year of planning."

"I agree sweetie and as I lie here next to you, I am thinking back not only on the last year leading up to our wedding, but on all of the experiences we've shared."

"We have had so many great times together, but there have been some bumps in the road - I think they have made us stronger."

"I've never been more in love with you then I am right now, at this moment, although I have to be honest, how I felt two days ago was close. Honestly, it is fairly hard to compare quantities of love."

"You are so funny! Well, just so you know regardless of any potential health concerns, I plan to do what I can to attempt to increase the love we feel for each other incrementally or exponentially each day for the remainder of our years together."

"I admire your dedication to our union and, while I'm not sure I have the imaginative capacity to envision our lives if I was to love you 200% more than I already do, I am your willing guinea pig."

"And I am your guinea pig-utilizing scientist. I can't believe this week has gone so quickly and we only have a few days left. I just wish we could freeze this moment in time. I mean not actually freeze it. I don't have the capability and even if I did, I don't think we would really want that, it would just be so cold."

"I remember the first day we met. I was sitting in the library contemplating reading books that I was actually interested in or reading books that may give others the illusion of my intelligence. I had made pile after pile of books some organized by size, some by colour and others completely randomly in the hopes that some magical combination would help me select some to take home. I remember being quite visibly and audibly frustrated by these books and their words and their perfect grammar. I so badly wanted to "join the club" and "not look out of place" and make a book pyramid if time allowed. And just when I was about to storm out of that cesspool, I saw you out of the corner of my eye."

"That's right! I was there checking out magazines on quilting. My mother, as you know now, is a quilting fanatic and required me to not only quilt with her every Tuesday evening, but to read quilting manuals, magazines, and online forums. And this was before online forums for quilting had even been created. She just had a feeling that one day a group of quilters from around the world would be able to tap into the world wide web and use it as a way to communicate, share ideas for quilts and find some like minded souls who understood them. I'm not sure how she knew, but she knew. She also knew how to guilt me into quilting with her rain or shine as it didn't matter at all since we always quilted inside anyways. The rain just didn't matter at all she always told me. So, I was there finding some new magazines, hoping to slide in a woman's magazine or at least a magazine on crocheting just for variety's sake knowing the shunning and sheer amount of evil-eyeing that would occur if I got caught."

"There were so many quilts and my first impression of your parent's house was that it was like a quilt emporium until they actually decided to open their own ma and pa quilt emporium making their house pale in comparison. My second impression of your parent's house was similar to the first just minus the quilts as they were in transit due to the emporium opening that weekend. We sat there in your mother's old sewing room amidst the discarded ill-thought-through-due-to-being unintentionally-Satanic patterns; the potentially inappropriate, oddly-shaped, scraps of material; the fallen, bent, collection of needles and all of the memories. I fell in love with you in that empty room despite being pricked with a minimum of five needles and having a laughing fit at a particularly funny piece of cloth during a brief lapse into juvenile humour. I wanted to take you away from there, to make you my own, to buy you something, maybe a new shirt or a blouse - I could never figure out if blouses fell under the category of shirts in the first place - I have always been slightly confused about this. Anyways, I knew then, that I wanted to make you mine and no number of bent, old, yet, surprisingly sharp needles could draw blood and change my mind. I mean, at some point, if there were enough needles and resulting blood, I'd probably need some sort of medical attention delaying or possibly rescheduling the courting, but I it wouldn't have changed the way I felt."

"That is beautiful and confusing, but mostly beautiful my sweet and I was your ready and willing participant in the courting. I had never been courted before - asked out? Yes. (other examples of being asked out) While courting did seem quite old-fashioned, it did give us a chance to return to the library and research the steps together. I was pretty open to being courted mostly due to the fact that I knew my way around courts in general. I mean I was average at best at sports that took place on courts, just saying I knew where the courts were and how walk around them. Not like I'm bragging or anything, I get that this is fairly basic skill and that many women are most likely equally adept at it. You just had such a way about you, it was hard to describe. I once tried to describe your way to my girlfriends and after hours of trying and trying and trying to capture you to them, I just gave up - after we ordered in pizza, drank a few bottles of wine, did our nails, sobered up and then re-did our nails - I just invited you over for them to meet in person and then they got it. It was just a much more efficient use of time for you to talk about yourself, then for me to do it, and they grilled you. The three of them launched into you like grizzled, courtroom lawyers asking every question imaginable - including some that weren't - they were that good - demanding the whole truth, threatening that anything less than the whole truth would result in pleading and pleading that you reconsider and just tell the truth unless the truth was too unbelieveable that less-than-the-whole-truth seemed more truthful than the actual truth and then some leeway would be allowed. In the end, they loved you and we shared a big group hug and then instantaneously agreed never to do that again due to greasy, pizza fingers, not-yet-dried nail polish and all of the sweat as it was like an interrogation and someone, mistakenly turned the heat up hoping to "sweat you out" not totally understanding that that was mostly an expression that didn't totally work in this scenario anyways. I would like, as an aside, to get better at describing things as you just never know when that skill may come in handy. Like maybe we will be in a burning building someday and I'll have to use my words to save the day. I don't think it will come up, but I always carry matches and a lighter with me just in case."

"That's right, you do! I became aware of this after a few weeks of dating. Initially, I thought "oh no, he's so cool, but he always has the lighter and matches so he is either a smoker, which is totally yuck, or a piro, which is not yucky in and of itself, but quite dangerous and against the law, and going to jail is yucky. I remember you were flicking your lighter on that beautiful night we walked down by the river when we encountered that old woman with the halting voice on the corner who told us about intimate details from our past that I'm sure we've told no one about including the reoccurring embarrassing doctor's appointments, first kisses and the embarrassing doctor's appointments that were a result of our inexperience with kissing, as well as your habit of standing alone in the dark and my love of watching you do so even though I honestly couldn't see a whole lot. She knew so much and it was totally impressive and completely unsettling as she laughed the entire time which she excused as saying she was recalling a funny joke from earlier that day at breakfast, which I took as a strong suggestion to serve funnier breakfasts."

"Which you have! I remember I used to sit there at breakfast, just wanting to laugh but always feeling so serious around the toast and the oatmeal, but you changed that. I still remember that day when we imagined that you were the granola and I was the milk and we spent hours having the time of our lives, first sprinkling you into a bowl and then pouring me on top and then experimenting with putting me in first and then adding you in afterwards, and even putting us both on the table and allowing the diner to choose how to combine us. We had quite the long argument about the size of the bowl to use and about how I was "playing" the milk as you wanted it to be very believable to the point where our cat might start actually licking me. That was the start of our breakfast revolution. I owe it all to you."

"Thanks. That means so much to hear that you appreciate the levity I have tried to add to our first meal of the day. I so want to see you spread your butter with glee, drink your juice with the joy of 100 hundred especially, and somewhat concerning, joyous ninjas, and devour your scrambled eggs as if the eggs were providing you with a small amount of electricity  -not enough to singe your eyebrows, or have your hair stand on end - no, just enough to give you a small shock - almost as if it was an alarm clock. In case you are worried about this, I no longer have any desire to attach electrodes to all different areas of your body and run series of tests."

"That is a relief. The sheer cost of the electrodes and the fact that we had to repeatedly shave my back which led to so many questions in the locker room especially because you insisted on shaving patterns and shapes into my back and not just any patterns and shapes - you had to choose ones that were both controversial and insulting which led to a lot of interesting looks and conversations. The locker room guys used to crowd around my back and have the most interesting discussions that were usually accompanied by ham and cheese sandwiches because one guy always had extras seeing as his wife won the lottery and purchased only ingredients for ham and cheese sandwiches which was proof that she should have slept on it first before acting so impulsively. Thankfully, the previous time she had won money she had impulsively bought a number of refrigerators and freezers, so at least they had the means to store the food. I'd be standing there half-dressed with a whole lot of guys trying to interpret my back which always made me feel a little self-conscious mostly because.....

"That makes so much sense now - I always wondered why you came home from the gym shaking and needing to hide in the corner for a few hours. I never thought much of it as I too longed to hide in the corner shaking and I figured it was one more sign that we were meant to be together."

"And we are, my sweet, we are. I can't stop thinking about that old woman. Do you recall, that she went on to tell us all about our amazing futures together raising a family, designing life-sized robots to complete a variety of tasks spanning the array from routine household tasks to totally bizarre random jobs that would be illegal in some South American countries, and spending a number of years trying hard to combine the two and either developing child-robots or robotic children or a series of poignant graphic novels that would be a hit with children and adults alike that we would base loosely on our own lives only from the perspective of everyone else as if they were trying to escape from us. I'll never forget that what she said about the love she could see in our eyes although it could have been love in one set of eyes reflected into the other. She also shared, at no extra cost, an initially uncomfortable amount of insider information about European stocks and bonds that, as time went on, seemed quite valuable."

"And I also remember when we met your friends and they couldn't stop smiling and nodding their heads to an imaginary beat. I was a little worried about them - they just wouldn't stop smiling and nodding their heads and while I wanted to ask them about it, I also didn't want to be rude and making a good first impression with your close friends was important to me. Finally, I started smiling and nodding my head as well - it was just so hard not to - I mean after a while, I just found myself joining in. I wasn't trying to mock them - not that time - any many other times through out the years I have mocked them, mostly as part of a game they enjoy playing that involves mocking each other. No, I just found, and it is obviously an area I need to work on, that it was easier to look them straight in the eyes if I was nodding at the same rate as they were and I was thinking of smiling almost like a secret handshake or a valuable currency or the handshake one would make after or right before exchange goods for valuable currency. They felt like a team and I wanted to either play on their team or be the team masseuse. And it was all for you, because I knew how important they were to you." 

"They were and are and I've never been able to figure out why. And believe me, I've spent hours researching, receiving professional and semi-professional help trying to uncover the reasons. I was going to consider non-professional help but that guy was away serving time for attempting to impersonate someone who was both taller and more attractive, which the judge felt was both misleading to potential clients and also fairly seductive."

"Friends are friends, my uncle always said. I mean he literally was always saying that. He would never shut up! Until the day they took him away to be fixed. It was only when I was much older that I was told by my mom that the person I thought was my uncle was actually just a pile of old clothes that needed ironing on top of an old cassette player."

'I recall when I met your parents for the first time and your dad just loved me and he kept on saying he wished I was his daughter and you were his son-in-law and that he didn't care if that sort of thing was illegal in our country, that is how strongly he felt."

"It's strange -  he'd been telling me this since I was a kid, that one day I'd meet a man whom he would wish was his daughter. And I wish I could say that was one of the strange things he said to me growing up, but I can't as I have been ordered by the courts not to comment any further. All I can say is that I tried my best to be his daughter and I thought that I nailed it. Not that I was deserving of the "Best Daughter" Award that my family gave out every Christmas, but I could have at least received it once, especially considering that I have no sisters and the award was never handed out due to having no eligible candidates."

"You have always been such a great daughter, as far as I can tell. I remember you not only cooked an incredible Christmas dinner but did the whole thing from scratch including building a chicken coop and raising chickens for a few years and growing very close to them, a little unhealthily close, so much so that it was so hard for you to kill one for dinner. You grew the veggies and milked the cows for cream and to make cheese. You also decided to build an entire kitchen table and hand-craft the utensils and knit the napkins and while you were at it, you tore down our pre-existing dining room and rebuilt it from the ground up using all of our trees in our backyard (including one you "borrowed" from our neighbour). It was a performance worthy of a standing ovation, except that you had mismeasured and did not make the ceiling high enough for anyone to stand. It made for a severely uncomfortable eating experience - we all needed neck appointments at the local chiropractor, but also it was such a touching and lovely holiday meal that was evidence that you love your family and that no one should joke with you about doing anything from scratch unless they were fully prepared for you to take them up on that."

"And I have learned not to joke with you about certain things too that I am tempted to, but won't bring up as we are on vacation and I did spend that entire day with you at our lawyers reading and rereading, and eventually signing under duress, that contract regarding both my physical and oral behaviour while on vacation with you. I do love to joke, but I also believe strongly in the sanctimony of contracts so much so, that one Halloween I dressed up as a contract and got visibly and viscerally angry if anyone even tried to tear or break a piece of my costume off. I did make the tactical mistake of making the contract costume completely out of chocolate. That contract costume was slightly too highbrow for my intended audience and the fact that I was 25, I realized later on, also made people fairly uncomfortable -at the time I just thought the all of the adults were put off by my cologne."

"You used to make your own cologne and for a while it almost was a deal-breaker for me, as were many many other things. In fact, there were very few non-deal-breakers back in the beginning and I had to go out of my way to search for those things keeping us together and in the end it was that search that sealed things. It also helped that I found that abandoned baby seal which we took home and literally nursed back to health. I took care of her by day, while you went back to school to study how to care for marine life and at night we, figuratively hand-in-hand, saved that seal's life. I'll still remember the day when we could see she would be okay and you had that far off look in your eye that I need to stop looking at as it was driving me crazy - but I knew we'd always be together and that if there were bumps in the road, we'd only need to miraculously find another baby seal who was also abandoned and unwell, but not too far gone, that we could also save."

"We will always be together, my love."

"I know, my sweet. Just the other day I was comparing us to a pencil - with you being the lead part of it and me being the eraser. You always need both and their lives and roles are so intertwined that life, nae, society would crumble if they were apart. You are like a pencil - tall, thin, parts of you could snap off if you were pressed to hard to a writing surface, little kids would stick you in various holes of their bodies if their parents left them unattended for long periods of time and you are perfect vertical when standing and adorably horizontal when laying down."

"And you are just like an eraser, my dear, in that you follow me around eliminating my errors unless I happened to use pen or permanent marker or I have just posted some of my more controversial views all over the internet creating such a war of words that even the best eraser is rendered powerless. Do you remember that night when we dropped everything we were doing - you were in the midst of crossing out all of the 'm's in all of the books you owned to see if it made them more readable and I was busy sculpting assorted-sized noses out of modelling clay - and went hunting for a really large, pink eraser that could either be covered with thick woolen blankets and used as a bed for a dog that we may or may not buy in near future or carefully cut the large eraser into many many smaller erasers much in the same way a large brick of cheese can be cut into smaller cubes of cheese except that cheese is edible and once we had a ridiculously large collection of erasers we would run the risk of alienating our friends who may be quite eraser poor with the only upside being that we could have drawn little faces on each of them and acted out a predominantly eraser-featured version of HMS Pinafore."

"I love shopping for office supplies with you and I can't imagine that will ever change. In fact, as you know, I would shop for office supplies and then convert every room in our house into an office if it made you happy, which I know it would as I just happened to read some entries in your blog that stated as such. You were so bold in your vision that each room would thrive as an office and that the inhabitants who could be able to see past centuries of "needing" kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms would not only be so happy but would be lauded worldwide as revolutionaries in household design. Logistically it lacks some finesse, but I am just so taken with your spirit and your drive (as well as your choice of striped shirts) that I would decorate as you see fit. I'm sure we would struggle initially what with no running water or refrigerator or toilet, but we are such a resourceful team that I know we would not only survive, but we would thrive once we got over our dependance on conveniences such as those."

"I used to need things to be convenient in my life until the time I was travelled through Europe by train in my twenties and accidentally got off at the wrong stop and instead of visiting the amazing sites of Paris, I ended up living with a band of nomads who subsisted on a diet of fine wine, aged cheese and the most amazing homemade breads and tarts. It was with these amazing souls that I quite abruptly had to learn how to live quite differently than I was used to and when I also came to the realization that I had led such a pampered life. I felt quite silly, at the time, that it hadn't occurred to me earlier that I had been pampered while growing up, especially considering the sheer number of hours that my mom and dad spent doing it. They even had a detailed schedule for the pampering and went as far as making a set of hilarious t-shirts that they wore proudly around town that said "We Love Pampering Our Son And We Are Quite Confused That He Doesn't Even Seem To Be Aware That We Are Doing It Despite The Multiple Copies Of Printed Pampering Schedules And What With These Garish T-Shirts And All But It Isn't A Huge Surprise As He Seems To Have A Blind Spot For Sensing When Things Like Pampering And Coddling And Over-Indulging Are Going On Right In Front Of His Eyes And Maybe We Should Be Educating Him And Helping Him Become More Aware Rather Than Continuing The Pampering That Seems To Be Doing At Least As Much Harm As Good". It was quite a lot of words to put on a shirt, so the printing had to be really small and they appeared more like dresses and less like shirts, but since my dad wore the occasional dress no one who knew them even blinked an eye outside of all of the regular eye blinking that they didn't have any control over whatsoever."

"I remember that week we decided to be silent and we could only communicate through a series of eye blinking. If I remember correctly, I think it all started as me giving you the silent treatment as I was fairly displeased with how messy you left our room before you went out to hang out with your buddies down by the wharf - I never understood why they were always by the wharf and it just seemed shady to me. I mean they didn't fish, they didn't sail and they were always complaining that the smell of the ocean really bothered them. It just didn't make any sense, and yet, because of that, I admired their resolve to continue to go down there all the time and for you to hang out with them even when it meant you leaving our room a mess which often led towards silent treatments that neither of us liked. I understood that you had to leave abruptly as they were painstakingly punctual and expected everyone to arrive at the precise minute that was announced and if they didn't then they too gave the offender the silent treatment until they cleaned up the meeting room as they just hated messy rooms. So, I was giving you the silent treatment and you decided to join in as you thought it was some sort of game I was playing - in retrospect I couldn't blame you for this misreading of the situation as that was how we started all games at home - one person just started playing silently and the other person was supposed to sense that a game was beginning and join in. This only worked occasionally and was usually only successful when the two of us just happened to both be in our rec room at the same time which was very infrequent due to our strong dislike of bean bag chairs and our strange desire to buy large amounts of them and house them in our previously well-utilised rec room. So, we were both being silent and then it just went on and on and on almost like we were both daring the other to fold and to talk and the pressure was mounting for the words that finally broke the silence to be extremely profound and meaningful which was challenging at the time as we were also in the midst of a larger game we just coincidentally happened to start playing the day before that involved acting like toddlers. We silently invented a whole language consisting of only blinks of eyes and just when we were communicating better than we ever had before the phone rang and it was your banker and we just had to talk as he was a man of little patience for games especially when played with him over the phone."

"I tolerated my banker for years, but I never liked him. He was a humourless fellow who placed my money on an actual pedestal that required a step ladder to reach and he knew my fear of step ladders. I begged and pleaded for him to put the money in the actual bank and he laughed at my naivete and said "you know nothing of banks and you are only embarrassing yourself as well as potentially angering both the maker of the pedestal and the step ladder as well as their families and their infant children. Are you so much of an egotistical animal that you are placing your piece-of-mind over the shaming of the innocent children of the builders of pieces of furniture that I am using?!?!" I just didn't know how to respond to this - it still remains a perplexing dilemma - and he took my silence as a request to invest all of my money in Swiss cheese as he figured that someday in the near future the holes would be very valuable. I wanted to respectfully disagree, but we kept waving a piece of Swiss cheese in my face everytime I attempted to speak. But sweetie, I don't want to dwell on that right now as being with you here on this beach is just so amazing!

"I agree, my love. I mean, the beach itself is pretty unblemished and spectacular. I could imagine coming here on my own, as I have been known to do with beaches in the past, and having a wonderful time. But, there is just something about being on a beach with the one that I love that is just so special."

"For me it is like feeling complete for the first time in a long time almost as if I were a 3000-piece colourful jigsaw puzzle that had been missing one single piece, The puzzle had been done many times and always there was that slightly empty feeling as the one sole piece was just no where to be found. The couch cushions were dug under, the heating registers were checked on hand and knee and the vacuum bags were inspected, and still, no piece. Finally, the family contacted the puzzle manufactures and for a small fee received a replacement piece in the mail and the puzzle was finally completed and the family of pieces were together as one again. That is how I feel with you - you were the missing piece and, I feel quite fortunate, that I didn't have to receive you in the mail."

"I would have allowed myself to be mailed to you if that is what it would have taken to be with you. I would have also been open to flying, driving or being sent via pogo stick or a really large, sturdy kite. You may not know but my older brother was quite the kite builder and enthusiast growing up and actually fell in with a gang and dropped out of school. It is not what you think - they weren't a traditional criminal gang as many would assume and I know my ominous tone that I use when I tell this story doesn't help in that matter - no they were a renegade kite-flying group that experimented with avant-garde designs, shapes and patterns that the older generations found quite scary. My brother soon rose through the ranks to become the de facto leader of the most black-cloth-wearing, motorcycle-riding, brass-knuckle-packing gang of tough kite manufacturers any one had ever seen. When I see a kite being flown I am taken back to his youth and I miss him so much - back when he was a little, innocent boy who believed in a world of peace and chocolate cake and kites. As time went on, he only cared about kites, it's like I don't even know him any longer."

"I'm sorry my dear, I didn't know - I wouldn't have brought up the subject of kites if I'd known. But you know me so well and I can be insensitive from time to time especially when discussing things that fly or are attached to strings. It's just who I am and my therapist told me, as he dangled a variety of objects by strings while I opened up to her as some sort of desensitisation activity, that it was okay for me to be insensitive as long as I attempted to make good eye contact and smile every 5-7 minutes towards the person I was being insensitive towards."

"I was wondering why you often did smile at me, in an almost robotic fashion every 5-7 minutes. It all makes sense now. I should have just asked instead of keeping binder after binder of detailed notes and observations. I studied you as if you were a mouse in a maze, but also quite unlike that as no matter how much cajoling I did I just couldn't make you enter the maze I spent hours upon hours constructing. I thought I had made the most exciting labyrinth and I just wanted you to enter and play for a while - possibly getting lost and eating some of the cheese I left lying around, but you were too busy counting the seconds until your next smile. I did admire your sense of timing though and, though frustrated that I couldn't complete my quantitative research study, it made me love you even more."

"I remember excitedly telling my work colleagues about you and saying that I had just met the most fabulous person who made me so happy and I went on and on and on as I was so in love until I realized that I was speaking to them with my eyes closed so I could picture your face and when I open my eyes they had all switched seats and shirts as if to confuse me. I admitted to them that I was confused, but that I thought now was not the time or the place for such a state of confusion as our boss had expressly said that we limit all states of confusion to every second Friday as it would both increase our productivity and also give us something to look forward to and plan around. I just loved those Fridays. I had no idea what was going on and what anything meant, but I loved them just the same."

"I wasn't sure I was ever going to meet someone and then you came along."

"And I wasn't sure I wasn't going to just spend my life alone until I found you."

"I am so happy you found me. I was trying to position myself in such a way that someone could find me, but I also didn't want to make it too easy or obvious because I didn't want to be found by just anyone or to have everyone access me all at once. It required a lot of planning, but it was obviously all worth it. I always dreamed of meeting someone like you although I did think you'd either be shorter or wearing shiny red boots or have hairier ears. I'm not totally aware of why I always thought that, but it could have had to do with my covering my room with paintings that I made that featured
short, boot-wearing, hairy eared men as that was a phase I went through in my art work. I spent hours painting these realistic portraits and then many hours more sitting and staring at them and having amusing conversations and philosophical debates with the army of men in my work. I almost got as far as putting on an improvised show with these men, until my family staged an intervention and got me to see that they were only two-dimensional and how hard that would be to act on stage with. I was very thankful for my family stepping in and having me see that there was more to life then painting, talking and trying to make other laugh with these men, but the sheer amount of time I spent looking at them tricked my brain into thinking that Mr. Right would look just like that and when you didn't I pushed you away at first."

"I know - dates 1-4 were spent with you solely pushing me away. On date #1 I entered your house, you'd push me away. I'd wait a moment and enter again and you'd have gathered your strength and push me away again. This continued on for a few hours before I went home. On dates 2 and 3 it was very similar but you both seemed to be tiring of all of the pushing and also building up some new muscles in your arms. Finally, by date #4 you seemed to be warming up to me and my looks and my sense of humour that draws from ancient Greek sensibilities and customs. Finally on date #5 the pushing away stopped and we spent the entire 5 hour experience kissing which both excited me to no end while also yielding an expensive hospital bill. I love you, but kissing for such a long period of time is just not a good idea especially when I have medication that I need to take on the hour every hour."

"I was just so taken with you and so happy."

"I understand and so am I."

"Promise me that we will always be happy."

"Sweetie, I can't promise that. Not because I don't think we won't be happy for always, but because I promised you that I wouldn't state things in the form of a promise as you had had a bad experience with promises in the past."

"That's right, I forgot. You are so good for me."

"And you for me."

"We will always remember this beach."

"The sand, the sun, your polka dot socks that you just won't take off for some reason that I want to ask you about but I also don't want to ruin the mood, and the aroma of amazing island cuisine."

"I am wearing the socks, if you must know, to cover up a huge surprise that I have for you later. Ready for a swim?"

"For you, I am ready for anything."