wild card: fifty days and counting

i am so ready for october.  i appreciate the summer with its green trees and blue skies and pretty little hummingbird that likes to hang out outside my office window, but i am just not a summer person.  i am an autumn person.  specifically, i am an october person.  i love the chill in the air in the evenings, i love the spicy, clean smell of the leaves and the beginning hints of woodsmoke from crackling fireplaces.  i love that awkward in-between time where it's not quite cold enough for the winter coat, not quite warm enough without it, so i end up going out in a sweatshirt and scarf.  i love the rusty-gold splotches of trees on the mountains.

if you know me or you've been reading this blog, this is probably pretty obvious, but i'm going to say it anyway: halloween is my favorite holiday. everyone else in my family seems to hate it or be ambivalent toward it, but i love halloween. i don't care about the candy, and i'm not super-interested in the costumes (though i will be dressing up this year and it will be a resurrection of an obscure character i dressed up as two years ago and literally no one knew who i was, so get excited about that). my favorite part of halloween is just the atmosphere. through the month of october, i read horrible books by r.l. stein and christopher pike mixed in with genuinely good ghost stories by other authors. last year it was world war z, the works of edgar allen poe, and twentieth century ghosts by joe hill.  i only watch spooky, witchy, or ghost-related movies from october first through november first.  i go to haunted houses and haunted forests and eat molasses cookies and drink warm apple cider.

a few years ago, i was a storyteller at a "haunted village" event in salt lake.  my friend chelsey was in a production of sleepy hollow that was held in the same village and my friend callie and i told ghost stories. i had a great costume-- a ruffled shirt, long skirt, and a red velvet cloak with a hood to cover my anachronistically-short hair.  we were stationed in buildings throughout the village.  some nights i was at the mill, other nights i was at a little cottage down the road.  groups of visitors traveled through the village and would come into the buildings. sometimes there were long gaps between the groups, so i'd just sit there by myself and poke around a bit.  the mill was a little boring (except for that time the mill wheel that reportedly hadn't moved in at least five years decided to start turning and i basically had a heart attack and refused to be there by myself anymore), but the cottage had all sorts of interesting historical bits and knicknacks.  because we were trying to create a historically spooky atmosphere, there were no lights turned on in the buildings-- only candles and lanterns.  there was one night, right before halloween, that it started snowing.  i went to the back of the cottage and opened the back door that faced away from the main road.  there weren't any people walking past-- just a field and more buildings lit by lanterns.  i was holding a candle in one hand and holding my cloak closed with the other, watching the snow flurries fall like little downy feathers.  i got chills.  not because it was cold or because i was really frightened-- just because it was so deliciously... haunting.

i have nothing against summer.  really.  and i really like the spring, except for all the pollen.  winter has its moments, even.  but all of those seasons are just preludes to the main event for me-- that time of year i crave for the other eleven months.

fifty days.  but who's counting?

wild card: tilapia is the devil's fish

i hate tilapia.  i realize hate is a strong word, but i'm fairly certain it's not strong enough for the emotion i feel toward this fish.  i know what you're probably thinking.  "what?  i love tilapia!  it doesn't even taste like anything!"

this is a lie.

a few years ago, i made tilapia for the first time.  i baked it with an orangey basily sauce, and my sister loved it.  as she was singing the praises of this delectable piece of nomness, i was staring at my fish trying to figure out what happened between the plate and my tongue that turned every bite into a mouthful of potting soil.

i have avoided tilapia like the plague since then, even though it is the sweetheart of every seafood section on every menu everywhere, it seems.  and i am a huge seafood fan.  in fact, i am such a seafood fan that this past week i developed a very serious craving for fish tacos.  so i found a recipe and went to the local market where i buy my meat.  (yes, i have a local market where i specifically buy meat and cheese.  i have a separate one where i buy produce and a third where i buy shelf-stable things. because i'm a weirdo. this is why grocery shopping takes me so long.)  i went up to the fish counter and the only fish i saw was salmon and... you guessed it.  tilapia.  i asked the man behind the counter if he had any halibut hidden somewhere, but he didn't.  i asked him if i could make fish tacos out of salmon, and he said i could but a firm-fleshed fish like tilapia would be much better.  i stared at the tilapia.  it stared back.  somehow, i convinced myself to give it another chance.

oh, what a fool i was.

let's talk about the texture of this fish for a moment, shall we?  it's... wrong.  it's just wrong.  it feels like fake krab that they have to spell with a k.  i love fake krab, but it fully acknowledges that it's not natural.  tilapia, however, flaunts its weird texture like it's totally normal.  but it's not.  it's not.  still, i bit the bullet and cut up the tilapia into pieces while i was waiting for my oil to heat, trying to touch the fish as little as possible.  i dredged it and dropped it in the oil, at which point the tilapia released its full-force fishy funk.  i'm sure that would have happened with any fish, though.  cooked fish smells like fish.  that's just how it goes.  i assembled the rest of my taco and begrudgingly added the chunks of fish, telling myself that it was going to be alright.  the fish was going to be fine and the taco was going to be awesome.

i actually succeeded in chewing and swallowing the first bite, then threw everything in the garbage.

i read descriptions of tilapia as being "mild and slightly sweet," and i want to ask the people who taste anything pleasant in that fish if they are aliens.  tilapia is not mild, nor is it slightly sweet.  it tastes like a mouthful of basement.  and i think i gave it a fair shot, too-- two chances to prove itself tasty to me.  never again, devil fish.  never again.

wild card: zombie apocalypse

yesterday morning, my alarm went off as usual. i got up and staggered across the room to turn it off, then flopped back down on my bed and curled up. i had every intention of getting up, but it didn't quite happen.  i woke up an hour and a half later feeling rather disoriented and out of sorts.  i looked at the clock and grumbled, then curled back up again.  as i slowly started to come to my senses, i noticed something.  i could hear screaming outside-- shrill, distant screams mixed with lower ones.  it sounded like muted, muffled bedlam.  i opened my eyes and stared at the glass doors that lead out onto my balcony.  and for a moment i was absolutely positively certain that there was a zombie apocalypse going on outside.  i expected at any moment to hear a bang on my door or hear the front windows break.

it was the wind, of course.  just the wind, doing something strange as it whipped between the buildings in my apartment complex.  but for a moment, just a second or two, i had this genuine sinking feeling of "oh... crap.*"

clearly i have watched too many movies and read too many books.  (incidentally, if you are interested in zombie apocalypses and the like, allow me to suggest the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by max brooks. it's a history of a fictional zombie apocalypse and goes from the first signs of the outbreak through the main conflict and into the aftermath and world recovery, and it is wonderfully, alarmingly believable.)














*Note: the "oh crap" feeling was quickly followed by a series of thoughts that included "i bet it started at the school" (meaning the university on the hill above my neighborhood) and "i'm on the third floor, so it will take them a while to get up here."  at least i keep my head in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

wild card: Dr. Brenda and Miss Angryface McHungry

i don't like to use medical diagnoses as excuses for things.  this wasn't always the case; i have leaned a bit too heavily on the crutch of diagnoses in the past, either consciously or subconsciously. however, a little over a year ago i made the conscious decision to not let said diagnoses rule my life.  i am in control.  i am the big boss in brendaland.  the key to not letting things get the better of me is keeping them under control and bringing them to a point where i'm not consciously dealing with them every day.  but there is one condition that i really do have to deal with every day, no matter how much i want to pretend i don't.  it reared its ugly head yesterday (twice actually) and i fear that some innocent bystanders were injured during the outbreak.

i'm hypoglycemic.  and this means that if i get too hungry, i will unhinge my snake jaw and bite your face off.  (only metaphorically so far, thank goodness.) one friend who i used to work with picked up on this and would ask me if i forgot to eat lunch whenever he'd find me hunched at my desk like a fire-eyed gargoyle, hissing at anything that passed by me.




(yeah, kind of like that. only instead of the prom, it's somebody breathing too loudly.  and instead of teenage hormones, it's because i'm eating lunch five seconds after i should have.)

i'm finding that hypoglycemia is my absolute enemy in my current quest to have a healthy relationship with food.  if i go too long before eating, bad things happen.  bad food happens.  let me illustrate with a brief piece from the off-broadway play "Miss Angryface McHungry." (the role of the stomach was originally played by mark wahlburg.)

stomach: i'm hungry.

me: just a second, we're almost home.  traffic is just a little heavier than usual.

stomach: no, seriously, i'm hungry.

me: wait.  you're fine.  you're not going to starve to death in the next two minutes.

stomach: hungryhungryhungryhungryHUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRYHUNGRY!!

me: SHUT UP YOU'RE FINE OH MY GOSH WHY IS THIS PERSON IN FRONT OF US TAKING SO LONG I HATE HIM I HATE HIS CAR I HATE HIS MOTHER I HATE EVERYONE IN THE WHOLE WORLD I HATE BREATHING OH MY GOSH AIR WHY ARE YOU SO STUPID.

stomach: (holding a shaking gun to my head like a desperate junkie) GIVE ME A TACO SERIOUSLY PULL THE CAR OVER RIGHT THIS SECOND AND BUY A TACO AND ALSO FIVE OF EVERYTHING ELSE ON THE MENU OR I WILL KILL YOU IN THE FACE.

me: RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAWR HULK SMASH!!

aaaand scene.

so what can we learn from this seemingly pointless post? 

1)  if i turn into a seven-headed bearmonster around mealtime and insult you, your mother, or some other loved one, it's probably nothing personal. however, you should probably just avoid me around mealtime if at all possible.

2)  i should have a siren on top of my car as a warning when i'm driving hungry.

3) i really need to remember my between-meal snacks. (snacky the snack says "only you can stop hanger (hunger+anger) crimes.")

wild card: a thoughtful thought.

around this time last year, a friend and i went on a little trip up a canyon near where i live. we lit a fire and roasted hot dogs and had a fantastic time.  it was an awesome night, and one that i'll remember for a long, long time.  as i was lugging a cord of wood from his car to our campsite, which was about a hundred million miles away, a thought occurred to me.  since then, this thought has popped up again and again, usually when i'm having a crappy day and nothing seems to be going right.

with more than six and a half billion people living on the earth right now, chances are good that at this moment-- this one you're in right now as you're reading this-- at least one of those people is having one of the happiest moments of their lives. not just a good moment, but a perfect moment-- something deep and warm and glowing that they will never ever forget.

isn't that a beautiful thought?  someone is absolutely radiating happiness right this very second.  and if i stop and think about it, i can share in that happiness.  i can be happy just because they are happy.  and maybe when my perfect moment comes, someone else out there in this big crazy world might catch a bit of it and smile for no particular reason.

wild card: the little prince

this book didn't really fit in over at books and biscuits, because there's no food, but i've had this book on the brain for a while now. so here you go!

Title: the little prince
Author: antoine de saint-exupery
Genre: fantasy
Audience: technically it's a children's book, but i recommend it for adults
Rating: ★★★★★

wild card: book anxiety

i have book anxiety. there's a bookcase in my front room, and more often than not, that bookcase goes through a thorough inspection whenever someone new comes over to my apartment. i always feel a little anxious about it, because in all honesty, i don't have a very large collection of books that i own. the same goes for movies. most of the books that i own were given to me or were given as gifts or were purchased because they were my absolute favorites and i borrowed them so many times that it was stupid that i didn't have them.

a book is a Very Important thing to me. a book on a bookcase says something about the person who put it there. it says "this is me, this is what i do, this is what i like, this is something important to me." and, in some strange way, they're like pets to me. you bought it, you have to take it off the shelf and exercise it every once in a while.

and i have commitment issues.

i'm a borrower. i'm a very frequent patron of my local library and read quite a lot, but my home library is... sad. small. however, i received $60 of gift certificates to various booksellers for my birthday this year and am now faced with the task of overcoming my fear of commitments and expanding my library a little. i purchased four books yesterday-- two classics that i know i love, one book i know i'll love based on previous books i have from that author, and a cook book that i have been lusting after for a month. (links go to the books) only $25 left to agonize over.

wild card: the doom of the girlfrind

a couple of weeks ago, i came home from the library with The Devil in the White City, which is about serial killer H. H. Holmes, and In Cold Blood, which is is a true crime book about a murder. the next trip to the library yielded Mystic River, which is a novel about murder, and Stiff, which is about, well... cadavers. i was half-certain that i was going to get a knock on the door after a very concerned librarian contacted the police. but the thing is, this is not a recent development. i have always been a little morbid, fascinated with the macabre. when i was in the second grade, R.L. Stine was pretty much my idol. by the third grade, i'd graduated to the "masterpieces" of Christopher Pike. i was obsessed with vampires and ghosts and mummies (oh my!), as well as zombies, voodoo, witches, and other such subjects.

i was an aspiring author at the time (which is another thing that still hasn't changed), and so, naturally, the subject of my reading and the subject of my writing were the same. yes, i was a third-grader writing about death and zombies. and a few years ago, i found evidence of this. tucked away in a box filled with drawings and report cards and old spelling tests, there was a little gem that i had penned called "the doom of the girlfrind." and here, for your reading pleasure, is a transcription of that masterpiece.  including a stunning cover illustration.

(the tagline says "Rob is dead... or is he?"  also, please note that the tissues depicted are puffs plus. only the best for my characters.)