Snowy in Siberia

Have I mentioned this at the onset of previous rural winters, the snowy Siberia? It never fails to amaze me the amount of snow that falls around here early in the b-season. I use small b without the itch accompaniment because I find the snow fall soothing before the holidays. I like to cover up that forgotten bloom of September and prepare for the one that is coming, much prettier, next April.
O the bloom will be severely and perhaps brutally painful this season, but whoppers, so tremendous and life changing in the way that all life changing occurrences are.

There has been sadness recently, the type that makes you ask questions why, and so on.
I won't exploit this issue though, just wish peace to all of those who have been affected, as I myself will try to do so.

The holidays are coming soon.
It's funny to remember what it was like last year when the nesting sensation was new.
Holidays before then hadn't been very enjoyable.
I remember one particular holiday when I had just purchased the old house and was left alone by company on Christmas Eve so sped home from the bus station and watched romantic movies and got a belly ache from roasted beets. It was dreadfully lonely in the old house, but special in a way.
My memory, my treasure.
On Christmas morning Perri Perks and I walked over to visit Ron Lord, the Birthday Girl, and the Mayor, but not before we had a morning coffee listening to CBC's Orchestra rendition of the Messiah.
Beautiful.
But things, they change and quickly.
Last year marked the first year with eight feet, and next year there will be ten.
So this holiday season we will enjoy the last remaining bit of subtlety in the holiday season. We will put our eight feet up one more time and string cranberries and popcorns while we secretly stuff goodies into our homemade stockings and eat fine cheeses, enjoy the snowy sights and the quiet.

O the quiet.

Change come, that inevitable turning of tides and events that thrusts you into new places.
I remember those ugly changes too, as much as the beautiful and exciting one's.
And while when it's ugly, the change is hard to reconcile, it isinevitable because it maps our human experience, just as all of the good has.

So I guess that this holiday season I wish everyone peace in all of the changes good and bad that have occurred this past year, and that whatever is to come in 2010 is, after awkward or difficult, manageable, even welcome and enjoyable.

Pictures of Siberia to follow.

Until I am outside in my Parka with my big black dog,

JP

Culinary Art & Offputting Behaviours

Meddlers you're salivating over this; I'm revealing myself in part, to ward you away.
I find recent revelations frustrating, and far beyond my capacity to describe without swearing.
So I will vent, meddlers, at YOU.

The Difference Between Adults and Children:

As adults, and unlike children, we have the ability to make decisions for ourselves based exclusively on our personalvalue system. Working on the assumption that said value system is moral (according to some universal guidelines) why not STEP THE F*** BACK, meddler, and let said adult do their job in trust.

Once upon a long time ago and still in certain cultures, young people made important and valuable decisions that decided the fate of themselves and others. EEEEEEE GOD, a wild revelation, meddlers, but TRUE TRUE TRUE. And guess what? Sometimes it works out, sometimes...

Respect:
Have you none? Is it so hard to come by?
Do you not trust and therefore cannot respect?
What do you need to let go of to find respect?

Have you been done wrong?
Your morals, have they been compromised because of something I have done?
No!?!?

Well then kindly STEP THE F*** BACK, meddler.

Because:
Because I know I/we nice, meddler.
And in fact can count on my hands the number of times I have tried unsuccessfully to reach out and integrate into your meddling oddities, but in a neutral way....cause I/we neutral.
We diplos.

This taste, divine!
This style, divine!
Your point, I understand!
ETC ETC

But guess what, meddler, I'm not in accordance when you're f***ing with my s***
and with my family, whom I am entitled to protect.
Because I love and ruhspect, ma famillie.

JASUS, this grief make me tired.
Make my belly protrude further out and make me want to make crawl under space beneath my desk.

Let's talk food, happier revelations!!!

Baking by James Peterson, have you looked at this book?
I've created a seven day sour dough starter, and learned all about the chemistry of bread!
And quick breads, did you know their wonder and ease?
Scones are simple and elegant, muffins, fantastic...
all when you follow the recipe, which unfortunately I have never done prior to this new desire to overthrow the baking empire of Mageet.

I will never be as good as Mageet, at least not for sometime.

Corn cakes with shredded paprika chicken and avocado
Sticky BBQ'd ribs with celeriac and walnut salad and traditional rice pilaf, which did you know has broken linguine noodles in it? It's true.

I guess I like to eat when I'm stressed.

Until the days are longer or sooner,

JP

Writing Class

I used to take this writing class where the instructor would encourage me to write more of what was happening around characters in my stories.

I have this tendency to get swallowed by myself.

Today hovers on the line of day break and twilight, you know those early November days.
The sky is wispy and the leaves are all fallen; it's mostly quiet.

I'm reminded of this strange dream I had this morning were there was a hidden shark infested water hole that our boat had been ship wrecked to. The conditions were very rough but I decided to dive into the cold to retrieve a red canoe that had sunk deep into the dangerous waters.

Throughout my dive, which was not actually shark infested at all, I was delighted to find a secret portal into a dry (but underwater) department store, where I fondled red wedge shoes and delicate fashions from up and coming designers.

When I awoke I was groggy and restless and immediately in search of online affirmation;
realized dreams, you speaking some strange psychological language to me?
And then I looked at job boards and dreamed for hours of working abroad.

November, you are one of those bitch seasons.
I remember many, November, and you always evoke in me plans to escape.

Where to:
Interested in Caribbean islands, specifically Barbados and St Lucia
Italy
St Elsewhere...

The surround of November:

Ian Brown's Boy in the Moon
a book I devour with oily black espresso and a racing mind, this man can write sentences to knock em dead. Gruff Globe reporter, one of the many from the boys club of yore, I bet.

Using leftover applesauce to make butter squash soup
Tasting, hoping, tasting, hoping that it won't end up tasting too fusion-y and dessert-like.

Avoiding bathing dog
Cause he smells like a barn that has a swamp bubbling through the middle of it.
Damn the hose for busting, and damn the damn hot water tap in the upstairs tub for not working because..

Wanting bath of my own
But cannot do that here, not until there is cash abundance.

And yet just last month we thought of so many things to be thankful for:

Laundry laundered, CHK
Flowers and plants watered, CHK
Dinner dreamed of and possible, CHK
Bed linens fresh, CHK
Domesticity mildly adept and steadfast, CHK
Morality " ", CHK

This afternoon it is my quest to do like that Huey Lewis and the News song and...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_BVYgA-ZnM&feature=fvst

Planet Perks

Machu Picchu, the gateway to spiritual renderings and body work.
It's been raining here, hard and relentless;
drenching a life time of forgetting into wild manifestations.

Listless sleep on neither right nor back nor belly.
Imagining Esme climbing, yourself upwards to hilly exhilaration and vomiting.

Are you really happening

Machu Picchu that place I've never seen
Vows, and jungles away

I wish on eyelashes and synchronized times
The pendulum swing to period.

Autumn Awareness

I can hardly deal with the beauty;
HENRY IF YOU REALLY LOVED ME YOU WOULD GIFT ME THESE COCLICOS!!
J goddamn K

UGH....

One thing I like about today:
jasmin green tea instead of coffee.
Good idea, JP.

One thing I don't like about today:
When people call breakfast, brekkie
UGH!
It's not adorable, it's AUSTRALIAN, no?

Just sitting here at my computer biting my fingernails and drinking some eau de source..
My mind is racing:
Should I run for Council in 2010?
And WTF is up with this Michael Bryant case?

If I go for Council, much more organizing I tell you.
I cannot find any of my University records anywhere.
Careless Joe, Momma HP used to call me.

I'll also need a proper office.
AHEM....

Then there is the wardrobe conflict;
very conservative dress and pant suits I don't like.
Can I pull this off without looking clownish?

I shall look to some role models:
1. Her Worship, EA - - has been photographed in cowboy boots and ten gallon hats.
2. Fatima Boujaneh, youngest female Councillor of Rural Tata commune in Morraco

September is here; time for heady decisions and apples!

This labour day long weekend, I remind all of you:
IT IS YOUR LAST CHANCE TO WEAR WHITE!

Until the next,

Doily.

FYI Ima Voracious Reader

IMA VORACIOUS READER
Did you know?

I read constantly.
Atwood, the other day in an interview was saying things like:
O yes, I'm a voracious reader. I read subway cars, internet news, posters, the like..


Well, PHEW!
I was getting scared as I was thumbing my way through Finnegan's Wake

'cause it's Frightening, no?
And I didn't feel very voracious, rather stchoopid.

Anyways, I'm fumbling through these pages of demented Irish dialect thinking, am I reading this?
Then I put it down, paced a bit, and picked up the Two Mrs Grenville's and then (GULP)
an unnamed book by Plum Sykes.
PLUM SYKES!
Who am I?
A voracious reader, that's who.

In related/creepy news, Dominick Dunne died the day after I borrowed TMG's!!
How odd.

But then a very special book arrives and takes the edge off:
The Almond Picker by Simonetta Agnello Hornby
So I'm back to intriguing fiction and will likely drop the Plum.

These days...
There is never enough BLT in my life, NEVER.
When the short seasons come, so do the cravings for rich and satisfying comfort foods.

And one chilly Thursday recently I tried so hard to send Henry telepathic brain waves about Top of the Rock Pizza but he was bass fishing, and alas, no pizza.

Can you tell my guts have not been satisfied today?

It's a rainy Saturday, late August.
Everyone has forgotten summer and is now bracing themselves for sweater socks.
I have just this morning drooled over several bath tub variety.

MY GOD ANOTHER RENO COMING.

Thoughts and Wishes to the farmers who lost their plenty in the tornado, Touties.

Until the Empires,

JP