Whoa — where has the time gone? Life, as I believe I’ve whined before, has resembled an avalanche lately. And since my little blog carries the smallest return-on-investment of my many projects, it has been relegated to the back burner, of the neighbor’s stove, across the street, diagonally. And it’s a tiny old 2-burner stove that takes forever to heat anything, if it works at all. Which I’m not sure it does. Sorry.
It isn’t you, it’s me. I swear.
I’ve missed you though. And I think about you often. And I’ve been stockpiling some things I wanted to share with you. So hold onto your hats, friends — this is your lucky day! It’s an Upside Up Clearing House! Randomness galore. With pictures!
First things first:
I’m especially pleased with the BACON VIEWING WINDOW because it means you can get a really good look at Uncle Elmer’s STRAWBERRY FLAVOR! Gummy Bacon. FOUR SLICES!
Three blocks from our house, there’s a great little market called The Common Market. It’s like a cross between the newsstand where we bought Mad Magazine when we were kids (remember the huge candy selection and novelty toys?) and a mini grocery store. From April to November, there’s a small farmers market outside called the Tailgate Market — an appropriate name because many of the vendors of beautiful organic, local produce actually sell their stuff off the back of their trucks. Inside the store there are fine wines, a huge beer selection, a wine bar, a deli, snacks, coffee, and funny novelties and toys. And lots of bacon stuff.
In addition to the Gummy Bacon, I also found these:
They smell exactly like bacon, and taste smoky. Yummy in the morning for picking eggs out of your teeth.
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When we lived in Durham, there was a small old grocery store called the Red & White. Walking in there was like walking into 1962 — little shopping carts, little aisles, a real butcher, local produce, cashiers who called you “hon.” It was right up the street from our house and I shopped there whenever I could. One day I found this hanging out in the refrigerated section:
It leaves me a little speechless, but processed meat is, in general, a confounding issue for me, so that’s not surprising. I’ll let you form your own conclusions.
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Moving away from the pork products and on to the little dumplings in my life, there’s this:
At Costco one day, I had Zoe and Lucy with me and they were both, miraculously, sitting in the cart for pretty much the whole journey. Sometimes at Costco, rather than navigate the doublewide cart around every corner (especially in the food area, where it often looks like one big cocktail party with people milling around the hors d’oeuvres tables), it’s easier for me to park the cart in a spot and run over to grab something quickly. When I do this, the girls and I have a little joke where I say, “I’m going to run over there for a sec. DON’T DRIVE AWAY!” And while I dash off, they work their hardest to get the cart to move. When they succeed, hilarity ensues.
One of these times I glanced down at their feet while I was walking back to the cart and the two feet in the middle — one zoe foot and one lucy foot — were intertwined and swinging back and forth, as though the two feet belonged to one pair of legs on a coy girl sitting on a porch swing in a poodle skirt. See how the two middle feet in the picture are blurry? And how the two outer feet aren’t moving?
The incidental twin-ness of this took my breath away. These two people have spent so much of their life together that their bodies don’t even know they’re separate. One brain goes “My dangling legs need something to do. Hey! Let’s swing!” And the other one is all “Yes. Let’s.” And two of the legs start to swing, but they don’t happen to belong to the same body.
If two 5-yr-old friends were doing this, it would be the activity. Like, “Hey, let’s hook our ankles and swing our legs together.” And they would giggle all the while. But Zoe and Lucy weren’t even conscious of doing it. Their attention was completely focussed on moving the cart as far and as fast as they could. I love this.
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Also, I tried to write a whole post about my sk*rt trip to Houston in December, but it never got finished. So I’m just going to show you the awesome picture taken by the stunningly talented and beautiful Karen Walrond of the sk*rt chicks, together in Houston.
Big things in the works for sk*rt in 2008, so stay tuned. This picture was taken at the end of a hard-workin day. Our brains are actually larger here than they were that morning.
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Last but not least, a shot of the prep for our big New Year’s Day party (where 118 people tromped through our house on a beautiful 60° day and ate collard greens and black eyed peas con queso. For the second year in a row our good friends the Whetstones spent NYE with us, en route from Chattanooga to Durham. This means not only do we have people to drink champan-ya with, but we also get help with the NYD party prep. It takes a lot of collard greens to make 118 people lucky and wealthy for a whole year. Here’s the evidence:
De-stemming collards on the living room floor.
That’s it for the clearing house. I think I have shown you all the photos I’ve been wanting to show you over the past few months but never got around to. Thanks for watching. More life-y stuff coming soon.
xo
Holy cow that’s a lot of collards.
Chris was horrified by the gummy bacon, but seemed to be soothed by the toothpicks.
Darling Laurie, I hardly know where to begin. Every word you wrote, every picture you sent, the content was fab and so YOU!
Thanks for the pic and some info about you party I was so sad to miss.
Keep up the great work. Mt best love to, Bob and the girls.
Aunt Ruth
Darling Laurie, I hardly know where to begin. Every word you wrote, every picture you sent, the content was fab and so YOU!
Thanks for the pic and some info about you party I was so sad to miss.
Keep up the great work. Mt best love to, Bob and the girls.
Aunt Ruth
Darling Laurie, I hardly know where to begin. Every word you wrote, every picture you sent, the content was fab and so YOU!
Thanks for the pic and some info about you party I was so sad to miss.
Keep up the great work. Mt best love to, Bob and the girls.
Aunt Ruth
Darling Laurie, I hardly know where to begin. Every word you wrote, every picture you sent, the content was fab and so YOU!
Thanks for the pic and some info about you party I was so sad to miss.
Keep up the great work. Mt best love to, Bob and the girls.
Aunt Ruth
Darling Laurie, I hardly know where to begin. Every word you wrote, every picture you sent, the content was fab and so YOU!
Thanks for the pic and some info about you party I was so sad to miss.
Keep up the great work. Mt best love to, Bob and the girls.
Aunt Ruth