Adios Amiga

I had a lovely post about mud pies all ready to go, but I find myself not in the mood for frivolity tonight. J., one of my closest and dearest friends, is moving to Chicago tomorrow. She's going for all the right reasons - love, career, better pizza. I can't say that I blame her. Instead, I blame her fiance. He had to go and be all smart and successful and charming and love her to distraction so she would move away. Stupid boys.

J. and I met our first year of medical school. She was my level-headed conscience when I came up with ridiculous ideas that had very good odds of getting me kicked out of school. She was also my conspirator in crime when I had ridiculous ideas that had lower odds of getting us kicked out. (Reference the "kick me sign" story and the "syphilis cookies" idea.) We solved a thousand crosswords together in the back of class, watched movies when we were supposed to be listening to lecture, pulled peanut brittle, and made caramels at Christmas. We cried over the same sappy movies and laughed at the same jokes.

She ventured south for me, and I braved going outside in Northern winters for her. We explored Spain together. We had dinners of goat cheese, baguettes, and honey; drank cava and vino in great restaurants and dives. We shared a love for dark chocolate and a hatred for monuments under construction.

She rescued me from myself and from the airport police. She has more shoes than I do, which is a feat unto itself. She emails me Pearls comics when they remind her of me or to cheer me up. (I am always Rat. You would think with my sunny optimistic outlook and eternal faith in humankind I would be Pig. You would be delusional.)

I will miss her terribly. I know it's not like she's moving to Mars....but it's close.

One of my favorite cousins graduated high school this past weekend. She was adorable, all red curls and green eyes. (Good looks run in the family, along with humility and stubbornness.) She has a temper to match her hair, and I love her for it. I'm not sure what the rest of us have for an excuse. Let's blame our Irish genes.

The family was all gathered up (for the most part) to watch her graduate. My friend Bradley has a habit of saying "deuces" at the end of his podcast. I find this hilarious; I have no good reason why. I decided to take this opportunity to teach my little cousins this invaluable piece of pop culture. Daniel now knows exactly what to do when he hears the phrase "throw 'em up". His father is less than proud of me.

Home Sweet Home

There are moments and experiences that define home to people. A soothing accent, a familiar landscape, a certain meal or drink all affirm you are near your roots.

It was a little after midnight, and I was headed home with my cousin. She was catching me up on local gossip when my headlights flashed on a huge group of bicyclists speeding toward us in the opposite lane.

Bicyclists with hooves and horns. Mooing bicyclists. More precisely, a herd of cattle that had escaped their field and taken it upon themselves to relocate. They were running full tilt toward freedom. (This was incidentally also the direction of the local stockyard which I am sure came as a shock to the escapees. It's like breaking out of prison and taking refuge in the lethal injection chamber. Poor planning.)

I realized I was home when the first thought I had wasn't "why are there cows in the road?' but rather 'at least they are staying in their lane'.

Nice to know living in the city all this time hasn't erased the country from me.

The girl who cried wolf

I am trying to raise Pup as a hybrid dog- both polished and raw. She goes to the city dog park during the week, and runs wild in the country on the weekends.

This weekend, she learned how to swim. One dainty auburn paw dipped in the pond. She looked up at me. I said 'all right', her command to go forward. She gathered herself up and jumped.

Forty minutes later I gave up any hope of getting my prissy city pup voluntarily out of the smelly country pond. I was pulling off my jeans preparing to jump in too when I had the eerie sensation I was being watched. I turned toward the woods.

A huge gray animal with pointed ears and a long fluffy tail came creeping out of the treeline. I froze. I had heard the howling the night before. There I was, stuck with my pants around my ankles and nary a shotgun in sight.

Pup scented the newcomer and bounded out of the pond, tail wagging. She bounced toward the wolf, and it bristled. It growled then snapped at her.

I was tearing my way across the field, hollering, and waving my arms. I was aiming for intimidating. I achieved crazy and ridiculous. Luckily for me, wolves are not good judges of appearances.

Pup yelped and scrambled backward, blood oozing out of her wounds. I started throwing everything I could get hold of at the animal- rocks, sticks, cow pies. (Gross, I know. Deal with it.)

The wolf ran for the woods. I scooped up my pup and ran for the house. She is doing fine now, just a few little scars. I am keeping a closer eye on the woods and a gun closer by my side.

I do have a question. If the Game and Fish Commission is firm that there are no wolves in this area and then one dies of unexpected lead poisoning, can the shooter be prosecuted for killing a non-existent animal? Or does this fall under the "tree falls in the woods" clause in the law?

Side Effects

So there is yet another side effect to this raw food diet I was not warned about. For the sake of the delicate eyes in the audience, let's call it 'Very outrageous meals in the intestines - not good' (VOMITING).

This side effect occurs after attempting to drastically deviate from the raw food diet....say eating a slice of pizza or your grandmother's homemade blackberry cobbler. It is almost immediate. The room might spin. Driving may become difficult. Problems with the other end of the GI system may ensue.

All in all, something SOMEONE SHOULD WARN YOU ABOUT.

Life in the slow lane

I have a long held theory about traffic jams. It wanders dangerously close to my theory that people should have to pass a test to procreate but is, in fact, separate.

Picture yourself driving down the interstate going an acceptable speed. Five over the speed suggestion or so. All of a sudden, brake lights are lit up as far as you can see. You slow down to forty or less and crawl along with all the other fellows stuck in the same predicament. You look for a wreck, a broken down car, construction, a flock of low flying seagulls... anything to explain why you are now behind schedule and increasing your carbon footprint by burning gas for longer than your planned time period.

Then, like Moses and the Red (or Reed Sea depending on your original translation), the lanes open up. Freedom is visible. You slowed down for....nothing. Nothing. No reason you can suss out for the slow down. You write it off as one of life's little mysteries.

I believe I have solved the mystery.

I have a tendency to push my car a little too far. Drive a little too fast. Change lanes a little too aggressively. Yell a little too indiscriminately at other drivers. (If my windows are up, it doesn't count, people.) Because of this particular set of my flaws, I have been to the front of the traffic jams. I have seen the nidus of congestion. It is almost always one car. One driver who has chosen to follow the bottom sign "Minimum 40". He or she (though it is usually a she) has chosen to putter along enjoying the complex and varying scenery along the interstate. They invariably have chosen to do this either at the peak of rush hour or at the time of day the road should be essentially empty. They choose to drive only on the busiest section of the road. They drive solidly in the middle or fast lane, switching to the slow lane just in time to exit before they are throttled by anger passengers. They are stealth poopheads.

I must assume it is one family tree that contributes these tortioses to our gene pool. We have to find that tree and cut it down. They have to be descendants of the guys who advocated chewing your food 100 times before swallowing. They must be related to the guys who drift sideways when walking in front of you so you can't pass them. Surely, they are cousins of the people who slip in front of you in the check out line at the grocery store, arrange all of their purchases by type, then are startled when they have to pay and spend five minutes digging through their purse ('cause it's always a female) looking for their wallet/coupons.

I appreciate their dedication to their slow lifestyle choice. I still have the occasional urge to run them down with a steamroller. I would bet I catch at least a few.

Once upon a time, I was smart

Today I realized how much I have forgotten. I was organizing our books, of which there are too many, and listening to the radio. Old fashioned, I know, but my iPod was dead and the laptop was still living at our old apartment. It was a 'smarter than the DJ' portion of the show, and one of the questions was "What is the capital of Mississippi?" It took a minute, but I came up with Jackson.

On the trip to kickball, DH and I tried to come up with the capitals to all the other states.

Maine posed a problem. DH was convinced the capital was Banger. While I did not dispute that this was a city, I had personally never heard of it. I came up with Augusta, to which DH promptly replied, "That's in Georgia."

We bet on it. I hate betting. I never bet unless I am over 90 percent certain, and even then it makes me uneasy. Vegas is not my kind of town.

To settle the dispute, we called upon our official judge and resident know-it-all, Bradley "Hot Pants" McRoar. He has been arbitrating for us for ages. (He is also funny, smart, single, cute....and TOTALLY impartial.) I was right. This does not negate the fact I had trouble with New Mexico.

It also does not change the fact that I have forgotten more facts than I thought possible. I don't think I could do a simple integral anymore. I have only vague ideas about how to balance chemical equations. Art history is fuzzy, and most of my childhood is conjecture. I have replaced all of this with vascular supplies, innervation of muscles, normal lab values, medication dosages, and ventilator settings. I don't miss the organic chemistry knowledge. I am okay with not knowing the four types of speeches.

I do miss my eighth birthday though. I hear it was nice.

What do these people have against fire?

My dermatologist recommended I try a raw food diet for a month. She said it would make my skin clear and glowing. I'm not sure what kind of drugs the people were on who invented this diet. I always assumes it was a step forward in our evolution when cavemen found fire. I was apparently mistaken. Fire is the enemy.

In spite of that, I was up for giving it a go. After all, it couldn't hurt to up my intake of veggies and fruits. Lose a little weight. Clean out the system. Plus it would give those cancer cells hiding somewhere in my body a one-two punch. (I know they are lurking in there waiting for an opportune moment to take me down. Just haven't nailed down their exact location yet.)

She said I could eat as much raw food as I wanted. Nothing cooked though. (I made the executive decision that scotch is not cooked.) In all fairness, she warned me I would feel a little sick the first couple weeks.

Steak tartar-I'm there. Sushi sans rice - all over it. Smoothies and salads - bring it on. Then I realized I had to give up bread and pasta. A minor problem, as I practically live on pesto and angel hair. Things had taken a turn. Day one, not so bad. Day two, okay. Day three I realized there was a side effect she neglected. I was STARVING!

Yesterday I ate a pint of strawberries, a cup of walnuts, three bananas, a cup of yogurt, half a pound of grapes, five glasses of milk, a huge bunch of broccoli, a lemon, two carrots, celery, and four ounces of cheese. I was eating all freaking day. It's a lot of work to even chew all this stuff; I'm pretty sure my digestive enzymes must be pulling double shifts here.

I am also cranky as a sore tailed bear. James is bearing the brunt of this part (poor guy....I'm sure he just wants to hold me down and force feed me a hamburger). I do have way more energy and feel better in general, but I'm not so sure it's worth the price.

I don't think I can make this a permanent diet. It's murder to cook amazing meals and desserts and then force yourself to only have the salad. To be honest though, I made cookies today and ate the batter. It counts because everything was raw. At least that's my version of the story.

I'm almost a week into it. For giving up chocolate soufflé and cheesecake, Jessica Alba better be calling me at the end of this month to find out my glowing skin secret. Otherwise, that doctor owes me a steak - and not a rare one.

Murder, She Thought

We were driving to the dog park today and noticed a car parked in a lot in the side of the road. It was an eighties model Chevy car, bronze, fringe in the windshield. A couple of nervous looking guys were inside. Another man was attempting to shut the enormous trunk with little success.

He slammed it once, twice. It bounced back open. He pulled out some twine and started tying it shut.

I said, "You know it's easier to do that if you chop up the body," as we drove past.

DH looked at me in horror. "How is it that you go straight to murdered body in trunk? What is wrong with you that your first thought is murdered body? I was thinking drugs or moving or broken latch. Seriously?"

The man poses a good question.

I am open to good answers.

I assume it is a combination of my dark and rather dry sense of humor (Is there a wet sense of humor, by the way? Shouldn't it exist as a counterpoint? Is it the same as a sophomoric sense of humor?) plus my over exposure to the worse side of humanity.

That's what I'm sticking with anyway. It has nothing at all to do with personal experience. I swear I only rented the woodchipper for limb disposal.

Moving up....21 Stairs

I consider myself to be a pretty strong female. Biceps of steel, thighs of titanium, abs of sterling silver. My abs have recently been downgraded from platinum.

Twenty one steps at a forty seven degree incline. My new apartment is determined to prove me a weakling.

I have now made the trip up those stairs carrying a couch, two sets of mattresses, five pieces of heavy furniture (including the stupid armoire with a curved top so there are no hand holds), six ice chests full of food (frozen and fresh), and countless loads of books and miscellaneous materials that I am pretty sure I am donating before we move again.

I am sore in muscles that I knew I had but had no intention of ever using. I have blisters. I have tripped twice and skinned my knee when my darling pup wrapped her leash around my legs as we were headed up the stairs. I hate those stairs.

However, I love the new flat. Having an oven big enough to hold a full size cookie sheet is totally worth the sore muscles.

We came, we cried, we ate

Last week was a tough one -

Saturday started with one of my favorite breakfasts: biscuits and gravy. I can make a pretty mean biscuit - light, flaky, buttery. I can cook sausage with the best of them.

I make terrible gravy.

I know it doesn't seem that hard. Cook the sausage. Make the roux. Add the milk. Stir and cook. Enjoy the deliciousness. Except when I try to make gravy, there is far less deliciousness and far more squirrel food. Luckily for me, I was with my grandma, and she makes amazing gravy. My arteries are so pleased.

I graduated Saturday afternoon (you may call me Dr. Q now), then we headed back home to prepare for the funeral.

We had a cousins' slumber party one night. We met at my aunt and uncle's. L. and I attempted to make cheese dip. (I was unaware that it was a recipe requiring timing worthy of MacGyver. It was easier, however, than the subsequent scraping of the cheese off the microwave. Velveeta is sticky.) We then proceeded to eat an entire tray of apples and caramel in about thirty minutes. Stayed up late, watching movies, talking, getting pictures together for the memorial service. It was bittersweet.

E. and D. came over too (S.'s little brothers, our youngest cousins). D. fell asleep in my lap holding pup. Unluckily for him, someone had been feeding pup table scraps. She had some seriously smelly GI issues. He shouldn't have hugged her that hard, that's all I'm saying.

We took the boys flyfishing, saw my little brother get commissioned (Congratulations Second Lieutenant), said our last good-byes to S., and sent L. off to prom. It was a wonderful terrible week.

Seth

I have seen more than the average person's share of death. I think it is fair; not everyone can handle death on a near daily basis. Some deaths hit you harder than others though.

My cousin Seth passed away today. He was barely twenty years old, just back from a tour of duty in Iraq. He was tall and thin, sarcastic, fun, and trying hard to get his life back on track. He loved his family. He was a hard worker. He loved the military. He was a good kid, a good man.

I remember when he first got back from basic training. He was going to be a gunner, so he had taken extra shooting courses. The family gathered up at Christmas, and we were shooting clays in the back field. He missed all but two of them. We teased him that it was easier to hit targets with cannons. He took it good-naturedly, like he always did.

He will be missed.