Pancakes

They baffle me. I've never been a big pancake eater, so I've never really made them before the last couple months. The last little while has changed that. I've been making chocolate chip pancakes (we'll set aside the fact that I'm on this chocolate chip pancake kick to address my sweet-tooth/carb cravings since I won't bring cookies or buns into the house because I'll just eat them all - something isn't working out quite right here). I'm a pretty good cook, and a pretty good baker. And anything I try usually turns out pretty well the first time. But I just can't get the hang of pancakes. At first the outsides were burned before the insides were cooked. Now the outsides are okay, but somehow, in my effort to make them a little thicker, they've gotten too thick and doughy. I can't work out how to grease the pan, how hot, how long to cook. It's getting much better, don't get me wrong. But I still feel like I'm fumbling about. I just can't get the hang of pancakes.

Pancakes

They baffle me. I've never been a big pancake eater, so I've never really made them before the last couple months. The last little while has changed that. I've been making chocolate chip pancakes (we'll set aside the fact that I'm on this chocolate chip pancake kick to address my sweet-tooth/carb cravings since I won't bring cookies or buns into the house because I'll just eat them all - something isn't working out quite right here). I'm a pretty good cook, and a pretty good baker. And anything I try usually turns out pretty well the first time. But I just can't get the hang of pancakes. At first the outsides were burned before the insides were cooked. Now the outsides are okay, but somehow, in my effort to make them a little thicker, they've gotten too thick and doughy. I can't work out how to grease the pan, how hot, how long to cook. It's getting much better, don't get me wrong. But I still feel like I'm fumbling about. I just can't get the hang of pancakes.

Not without my OJ

Because I was away all weekend I didn't get to the grocery store. Last night my laziness prompted a silly decision - to see if I could go all the way to Friday without going to the grocery store. To see if I could survive using what's currently in my cupboards and fridge (an already skeletal offering given I hadn't gone to the grocery store the week before either). My resolve was firm. Until this morning. When I realized I didn't have enough orange juice to last me the week. Orange juice is like my coffee. If I don't have it first thing in the morning, I'm "off" all day. Orange juice wakes up my mouth and fills my body with life. It just might be the dealbreaker. I may have to hit the grocery store after all. I can't live without my OJ.

Nature vs Nurture

I went into the cupboard to get a bowl. In the set of stacked bowls I needed to get to were several pieces of tupperware. I went to move them out of the way, and couldn't figure out where to put them. They were spilling everywhere. I couldn't control my tupperware. I thought of my mother's tupperware cupboard which I avoided like the plague, swearing when I had my own place my tupperware would be organized. And in 5 months, with less than 10 pieces, it's completely unorganized. It made me wonder, is tupperware inherently chaotic? Can it be tamed? Or is it its nature to spread wildly in cupboards, taking over everything like a nasty parasite? I believe so.

Or, you know, I've already become my mother.

You know you're not managing laundry chores well when...

You have to dump last week's clean clothes from the laundry basket so you can add this week's dirty clothes to carry them down the hall.

You find your sock, that you didn't even know you were missing, pinned to the corkboard of the laundry room. And this is the second time you've left a sock in there.

For the third week you completely forget about your laundry and go back an hour after it's done, hoping no one's moved it. Well okay, that one shouldn't be a surprise. Even at home, I couldn't remember laundry to save my life. It became the family joke. My mother could ask me to take something out of the dryer when it finished, it could finish literally 3 minutes later, and I would completely forget. For days even, if I didn't need something from there. (Literally - once when I was home alone for a couple weeks, the towels stayed in the dryer for about 4 days).

I'm not at all good at this laundry thing. And I don't think the remembering will ever improve.

Home is where...

the heart is?
your stuff is?
you hang your hat?

What if you're the kind of person who doesn't hang their hat, but just leaves it sitting on the shelf, or the table?

I went home for the weekend. Or, rather, "home home". As opposed to my home here, which would just be home. Except, no one was home at home. And since they're gone on an extended vacation, the house was extremely tidy, with no signs of life, and no food in the fridge. So, on top of not feeling like my home anymore (because it's not), it also felt more like a hotel than a home. Or, actually, a ghosttown.

It was so bizarre. The counters all cleaned off. My sister's room sitting bare (as it has for years). Mine completely bare full of foreign furniture and decorations. No familiar voices or background noises. It felt like a shell of the house, which was very unnerving. Add all the creeky noises from the furnace and the house settling that I had forgotten about, and the size difference between my little one-bedroom apartment and the big house, and I felt uncomfortable the whole time. It was very odd feeling brought home by a scene in Garden State, which I was watching Friday night.

"You know that point in your life when you realize that the house that you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of the sudden even though you have some place where you can put your stuff that idea of home is gone."

(It always cracks me up to find life meanings in things like random movies and songs and tv shows, but hey, sometimes they say things so much better than I could. :p)

Driving around the city during the weekend, I completely forgot I had moved. Yet returning to this town, entering my apartment and locking the door behind me felt so good.

With my parents' house, the cottage and this apartment, I have keys to three dwellings and yet I can't figure out where my home is. Bizarre.

Much More Music feels my soul

I turned on the tv while I was eating and reading email and didn't pick a channel. It was still on Much More Music from this morning. By the time I realized that, it had a bit about Madonna on. For some reason, despite being squirrely and oversexed and messed in the head, I really like Madonna. I really like how she's always had a goal and done whatever she needed to, to reach it. How she's always been unapologetic for who she is. But enough life inspiration from Madonna. My bigger problem is that I feel like there's an important show I should be watching. I can't think of what it is, but I have this feeling like I'm missing something I really wanted to see. But I can't change the channel! They have some late 80s/early 90s version of Pop-up video on, with songs like "Buffalo Stance" and "Toy Soldiers" playing, and, after every song, just as I go to find the remote, they start playing a song that's even better than the last! It's sucking me in and I can't get free! What's worse, I don't know if I want to!

Can someone tape Amazing Race for me?

Starbucks

Okay first of all, I generally abhor anything trendy. Or namebrand. Or doing things just for show. I don't like the taste of coffee. I'm known among my closest friends for being unable to make a decision. I adore the movie "You've Got Mail" more than any reasonable person should.

The last 6 months or so, I've started to get cravings for caffe lattes. But not real caffe lattes, sweet ones. Like the Vanilla Bean one from Second Cup. Which is fine. I can go order a medium Vanilla Bean latte with no problem. I don't know if that's because it's vanilla (which is simple, yet wonderful, enough that it should be in everything), or if it's because, being a Canadian company, it doesn't get the overexposure Starbucks does, or (most likely) if it's because you can order a medium. Or a small. Or a large.

At the end of November, because of overwhelming marketing and peer pressure, I tried a gingerbread latte from Starbucks. And then, since I was in cities with Starbucks several more times in December, I had more. I've been to Starbucks 4 times in the last 2 months. I think I've only been 6 times in my entire life.

Every time I stand in line, I feel my self-respect slipping away. I hear people ordering "Venti peppermint mochas" and I wonder why we need all the cutesy names and the ridiculous sizing convention (I mean, really, how pretentious do we need to be?) and I start to hate myself for falling victim to the over-priced, self-indulgent marketing machine. Then, it never fails. One person from the cashier. They order. "Grande cappucino, non fat." I hear Tom Hanks with one of the greatest lines in "You've Got Mail":

"The whole purpose of places like Starbucks is for people with no decision-making ability whatsoever to make six decisions just to buy one cup of coffee. Short, tall, light, dark, caf, decaf, low-fat, non-fat, etc. So people who don't know what the hell they're doing or who on earth they are can, for only $2.95, get not just a cup of coffee but an absolutely defining sense of self: Tall. Decaf. Cappuccino. "

By the time I get to the cashier, I'm biting my lip to keep from bursting out laughing. I still hate myself, but at least I'm laughing at myself. Even if I'm nearly drawing blood so I don't look weird in front of the moccachino money man.

You got it Tommy. But the whip cream man. It just tastes so good!

Sports Writers

Do you think they ever look in the mirror in the morning (or at night) and go "wow, my (professional) life is completely irrelevant to the spinning of the world."

I spose the same could be said about movie and music writers (and many other professions), but for some reason it hits me most with sports writers. I really want to know if they ever feel completely useless in the grand scheme of things.

Better not rush into that cooking show yet.

After 2 hours of indecision and lack of motivation, I finally decided to make peanut chicken satays for dinner. While defrosting the chicken breast, I pulled out a plastic ziploc bag. I added some peanut butter, some dry onion soup mix and then couldn't find the brown sugar. I looked in the lower cabinet where the sugar and flour are. Then I looked in the upper cabinet where the chocolate chips and baking powder are. Then I wondered if I just dreamed having brown sugar. But, no! I knew I had some! I had a flash of inspiration and went into the lower cabinet again. I reached for the flour container and sure enough, there it was! In one fell swoop, I found my brown sugar and answered the question I had a couple nights ago as to why the flour was sitting on the cupboard shelf and wasn't in the flour container!

So, after cutting my chicken with my new Forever Sharp knife, that my sister got for free at a cooking pan demonstration, and which worked like a dream, I put the pieces of chicken in the little ziploc bag. I started walking across the kitchen, mushing the chicken around in the bag. Suddenly I hear "plop, plop, plop".

Several pieces of peanut butter and oil covered chicken on the kitchen floor. I forgot to close the ziploc bag.

I think I'll put that cooking show on hold.

Sometimes I wonder about this place

It really hit me when I discovered the Dairy Queen wasn't just closed for the night, but for the season.

When I was weighing the pros and cons of moving here, one serious con was the lack of sushi place. My father suggest I open my own. During a recent visit, my friends were lamenting the lack of Taco Bell and told me to open one. I told them I would be far too busy opening my sushi bar. They decided I should open a Mexican/Sushi restaurant. It's gonna be a huge hit.

Coming soon to a town near you... Javier's Poisson!

I wear my sunglasses at night

Watching World Poker Tour. This guy's got some serious shades on and all I can think, aside from how stupid he looks, is how much he doesn't deserve to be there. So much of poker is reading the other players - if your poker face is so bad you need sunglasses, you don't deserve to be on the World Poker Tour. Pathetic.