Writing Prompt: Friendship

I might despise this weeks writing prompt. I have put off the writing it for as long as I can, until I was called on to pick the next writing prompt for the week. It kicked my rear in gear and forced me to actually complete the writing assignment.

Writing Prompt:What is the best thing about being your friend?

Every time I started to write about this prompts, I felt like I was writing a resume on why you should be my friend. It makes me nauseous. It is like preparing for an interview, where you have to sell yourself and that self being the best version of yourself. 

So with lots of thought and then even more over thinking, the best thing about being my friend is the access one gains to my cats.  My cats are fur covered devils that will charm your socks off. They demand that even the most allergic and praise their majesty.

In fact here is proof of their talent and majesty:

I am a Pizza

This weeks Prompt:  If you were going to design a pizza after yourself, what would be on it, and what would each of those ingredients represent.

I know that I picked this weeks writing prompt, but the more that I look at the questions, the more it begins to feel like a Caliper Interview question.

I feel a little ridiculous that I spent as much time thinking about this question as I did.  I have probably asked my husband half a dozen times what he what type of pizza would I be. I was running the gambit on toppings and what they could possibly symbolize. If I said extra cheese does that mean to imply that I think I am cheesy? If I said spicy sausage, does it become an innuendo to something more? The line of thought moved onto the best pizzas I have ever eaten and what was on them.  I have had pizzas that have had peaches on them, and other that are more taco than pizza.  Then I thought about shows that I watched that talk about pizza. (If Ugly Delicious doesn’t make you want to eat a pizza, nothing will.) There is so much symbolism when it comes to food and food shows love to talk about it. However, it still did not answer the question on what type of pizza I would be. 

It then came to me. 

I knew I wouldn’t be a traditional pizza. There is nothing wrong with a traditional pepperoni or cheese pizza. Millions of people love them and they are a standard at any pizza party.  I personally am an introvert. Parties are something that are fine every now and then, but I wouldn’t’ want to be at one all the time the way a pepperoni pizza is. 

I would be breakfast pizza.  It would cover all the aspects of my personality. The cheesy, the salty, the starchy and a little bit of spicy, but over all filling and full of protein. A pizza that is a little unique but not outside the spectrum of normal. 

Breakfast Pizza: Hashbrown crust topped with scrambled eggs, cheese, peppers and diced ham. 

Writing Prompt: Family History

 It is pretty obvious to any that read this blog, that I am at best an inconsistent writer. I probably spend more time in my  head then I do putting words down. My dear friend, Faye sent me a book of writing prompts over the holidays. She picked up a copy for herself. In an effort to get the words out of my head on a more regular basis, we are going to pick a new writing prompt every Wednesday and then spending a couple of days to do something with it.  Faye has picked this weeks writing prompt.

Writing Prompt: Do you know any interesting facts about your family history, if so what?

I am loosely interested in genealogy.  Mostly I like to know where the bodies are buried and if I ever needed a kidney, who to go to.  This means I have done a little bit of genealogy on both side of my family tree. Someone on my mothers side of the tree at one time was very much interested in genealogy and completed almost 8 generations  of tracking that almost makes me feel like British royalty. They included a little bit of history on the starting point of the family.

I think that one of the most interesting points in family history is that Solomon Scholl who is used as the starting point in the genealogy was a farmer, cabinet maker and undertaker. I have to marvel at the different career changes through out his life and it gives me hope that if I ever feel stagnant that I can dig up the energy to change my direction.  It also give me a laugh that I got into genealogy to know where the bodies were buried and here is an ancestor that literally knew where the bodies were buried. 

Zombie Anniversary

Every year for our wedding anniversary, my husband and I try to do something special. This year we had a loose theme to our anniversary road trip. I loosely called it Year 10 - The Zombie Anniversary. 

Now, you might be asking, what sort of things or places may a person go/do on a Zombie anniversary.  I am glad you asked. Some of these events need little to no explaining on how they are related to zombies, but trust me they belong. 

Zombie Anniversary Highlights 

1. Rocky Horror Picture Show
2. Abominable Dr. Phibes
3. Castle Halloween
4. Space Acorn
5. Evans Cemetery 
6. Monroeville Mall
7. Living Dead Museum
8. Carnegie Natural History Museum
9. Carnegie Art Museum

Rocky Horror is not just a catchy cult musical, but a story about a mad scientist bringing their creature to life. Is a zombie not a creature brought back to life? Therefore Rocky Horror is a zombie musical.

Abominable Dr. Phibesis a Vincent Price movie where the antagonist is pretty much a walking corpse seeking revenge upon the living. That might be the summary or plot devise of most zombie movies. 

Castle Halloweenis a fascinating museum that is dedicated to the history, origin and continuation of Halloween and Halloween traditions. While the proprietor is not keen on the horror aspect of Halloween, there were many historical tie ins for undead and celebration the dead. 

Evans Cemeteryis the cemetery where Night of The Living Dead was filmed. What is more zombie themed than one of the most famous zombie graveyards?

Monroeville Mallis more than just a failing shrine to consumerism. It is also the film site for one of the movies that inspire killing zombies in unique ways. That movie being Dawn of The Dead.  In addition to maintaining the majority of its structure from its gory film days, it contains a bust of George Romero, the progenitor of the zombie of modern culture. 

Living Dead Museumis not just a museum that features George Romeros famous works of film art, but discusses the media evolution of the zombie. 

Carnegie Natural History Museumhas unique animal displays that show an animal being half bone and half taxidermies. It is a fascinating to look at and has a slight Return of the Living Dead vibe to it.

Carnegie Art Museumliterally has a sculpture in bronze by Thomas Schutte called Zombie VIII. It is a unique piece of work that makes me wonder what the other pieces in the collection looked like. 

Now you are probably wondering, how does the Space Acorn tie into a zombie themed excursion? In December of 1965 an object fell from space.  In 1968 Night of the Living Dead was released. In the movie there is discussion of a comet that fell from the sky and may have caused the calamity with the undead.  

Gift Idea

 Now that it is November, the Christmas holiday decorations are in full bloom.  There are certain stores that I am just avoiding to avoid the glitter.  Part of the holiday season, means finding gifts for loved ones and family. I am going to share with you the gift that keeps on giving.

A gift that will not only provide emotions but create memories. 

A gift of a potentially haunted object.

It doesn’t matter where you live, thrift store and antique store are a staple. Anything you buy at thrift store or antique market has the potential to have memories attached to it. What is a haunting but a memory of a person or event? 

This gift is simple:

1. Find an object that speaks to you. 
2. Write about a potential history of the item
3. Gift the item to someone

You want an example?  Absolutely.  

 

The Dog:

When I was a young girl, my mother had a dog named Riley. Riley was a sheepdog mixed with terrier. My mother loved this dog, and took this dog with us when we moved across country.  Riley was sweet as can be, but epileptic. There wasn’t any sort of trigger to what would cause an epileptic episode for Riley, so all of us learned how to take care of him when he would start to shake and drool.  This statue is a memory of the epileptic dog of my childhood. 

If I were to gift this statue to my mother, it doesn’t matter how ugly it is or that the eyes look like they are trying to escape its face. Adding a little story to the statue would guarantee that she would keep this monstrosity forever and ever, because it is now haunted with a memory.  

Bread Ape

  I am sure that you have heard the old saying “Some people make bread. And some people bake apes.” I think that I might fall into the later category.  I also may have made that saying up.  No one bakes apes.

My friend Tanya gave me a bread starter. It is kind of like a tamagotchi. Occasionally I need to feed it and take it out for a walk and sometimes even make bread out of it.  This is my first attempt at turning a tamagotchi into bread. 

I am pretty sure I made an ape. I don’t think that bread is supposed to look like this. A yeasty, warm bread ape. I am currently letting it cool, before I chop its face open.  

I don’t know if this counts a bread win, but I tried. That counts for something, right?

Deciphering Dreams

I thought I would share something out of my dream journal.  If you are into deciphering dream, I would be interested in your interpretation. 

Niece 

Dream

I had the most terrifying dream. I was teaching my Niece how to drive. We were rounding a corner and instead of easing on to the break and turning she hit the accelerator and went straight in her panic. We drove into a house via double doors and them up the stairs. The nose of the car touched the master bedroom door. We eased the car to the street and the placed the doors against the frame. Then spent time looking for paper to leave a note/ apology. The owners came home and were so happy that we were fine and had meant to replace the doors anyway. The owners name was Debra. My Niece was very sheepish over the whole thing. Like this isnt the first time she has driven a vehicle into a house. I am pretty sure I was more upset than either of them. 

Random Thoughts

 Random Thoughts

1. Can you make instant pudding with chocolate milk?  
2. IF you can make instant pudding with chocolate milk, how does that effect the flavor? Say if it was pistachio pudding and you used chocolate milk, would that make it a chocolate covered pistachio?
3. If possession is nine tenths of the law, how does that applies to exorcisms 
4. My grandmother was right, the older you get, the more sympathy cards you need. 
5. Everyone might need a zipper bag, tote bag or a zippered tote bag.
6. How do we know that Kool Aid isn’t just Fun Dip without the sugar?
7. How different would the street view look without telephone poles?
8. If we didn’t have telephone poles and phone lines, where would the birds perch?
9. The stinkier the cat food, the more likely my cats will love it.
10. What if this reality is some other reality’s fan fiction? 
11. Can you eat the same thing for Breakfast and Second Breakfast if you were a hobbit?

Coaster Turned Cat Toy

 My cats aren’t spoiled. 

You can stop laughing now.  I know my cats are spoiled. It can’t be helped.  I am pretty sure it is in my genetic makeup to spoil cats. 

You might ask why I brought up my cats being spoiled.  It is because I am going to tell you about turning a coaster into a cat toy. Or a perhaps this a just another tale of craft adaptability to prevent a Pinterest fail. 

On Pinterest I found the idea for really cute cat coasters made out of extra fabric and quilt batting.  (Website for pattern is www.sewverycrafty.com) While we have nice coasters in our living room, I thought the cat coasters would be nice for the upstairs. The weather is getting warmer and cold drinks tend to sweat. I would like to have cold drinks in the sewing room with out worrying about messing up the wood.

The instructions for this pattern are easy to follow. They even provide a template for the coasters.  I did not download the template. I thought that I would be brilliant and eyeball it. After all it is just a cat head shape.  This is were it could almost be considered a fail. 

My recommend is to download the template. While I don’t think mine turned out terrible. I do think that the end product was supposed to be bigger.  Due to the size of my cat coaster, (or would it be called a kitten coaster?) I thought it would make the perfect cat toy for my feline friends. 

Instead of sewing the coaster shut, I shoved it full of catnip. And then when I thought I couldn’t get any more catnip in it, I used a chopstick to makes sure there was catnip in the ears and compress the catnip in the toy. I then sewed the side shut. 

While Dib was interested while I was making the toy, once it was complete he wandered off to cause chaos in other areas of the house.  I presented the toy to Nami to see if she had any interest.  While she didn’t attack me, she didn’t really want to get up from her nap either.  Iggins is the one that had the most interest, and that might be due to him being the most awake during prime time nap time. It may also be due to him thinking that anything orange belongs to him, since he is orange. It really is hard to tell.

Long story short, is I would recommend using this pattern to make cute cat toys, but adding a step of filling it with cat nip. It is a cute toy and is easily customizable based on your fabric pattern choices. 

Love Notes

 Often things are not as bad as they seem.  

It is all a matter of perspective. I was reminded of this when I tried a recipe out of The Baking with Kim Joy cookbook. Kim Joy was a contestant on The Great British Bake-off who makes ridiculously cute eats. Most of them are almost too cute to want to eat.  I was gifted her cookbook recipe for Christmas and used Mother’s Day as an excuse to try something out of. 

This is what  I was trying to make.

This is what they looked like coming out of the oven.

This is what they looked liked iced.

The entire time making them I was nervous. I am admittedly more of a cook than a baker. Baking is really precise with measurements and if you don’t follow it exactly then the chemical reactions in the bake will be off and it won’t turn out right.  Cooking is more forgiving. If you screw too terribly cover it in cheese or gravy.  Many things have been fixed with cheese, gravy or both. (This is where my theory on the creation of Poutine is pretty sound.) 

While I agonized over how imperfect the bake was and how Paul Hollywood would hate it, I forgot something very important.  These treats were not for Paul Hollywood. They were for my mother in law. My mother in law didn’t see how shaky my icing was, or how imperfect the envelopes were shaped. She saw how much effort my husband and I put into making them for her. We did everything from making the jelly from scratch to rolling the short bread to keeping the cats from tasting them.  It was an adventure that I was able to have with my husband for a beloved member of the family that appreciated our efforts.  

Sometimes you have to step back take a breathe and give yourself a break.  It is about perspective and the hardest  view to change is your own.  Often things are not as bad as they seem. 

Cat Aprons

 I made aprons.  They do not fit my cats.  

I want it to be noted that my cats were not at all helpful in trying on aprons. They were not thrilled about any of the colors or patterns available to them. They in fact would rather play with the apron strings, then to actually wear an apron.

It is times like these, that make me thankful that several of my friends have cute tiny spawn. The failure for cat aprons (that the cats insist they never wanted in the first place) is a victory for small humans.  Several small humans in my hemisphere have been gift with aprons.  The cats are relieved.

Truth:  This was a Pinterest experiment. Nowhere in the instructions does it say it can be used for cats.  In fact the pattern that I used was called “Ann Kelle - Childs Apron Tutorial”. There is nothing that pattern that specifies this can be used for fur children, but also there is nothing specifies that this cannot be used for fur children.  If you are sewing inclined, I would recommend this pattern. It was easy to follow and turned out well for tiny humans.

Cemetery Picnic

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Okay.  I should probably back up. For Mother’s Day, I took my mother to a cemetery for a picnic. This is not a hint to my mother that she has one foot in the grave and not a me being dramatic and exaggerating the truth.  The truth is, I did take my mother to a cemetery.  The cemetery in question is about an hour away and is the cemetery that hold the remains of the first generation of our family in America.  Pretty exciting stuff if you are interested in family history/ genealogy.  Since the cemetery is about an hour a way, it makes sense to bring a picnic and refreshment, which bring me back to my original question. 

What do you pack for a picnic at a cemetery?

Do you go full funeral meal and bring cold salads and finger food? Do you liven it up and play off a Halloween theme? Do keep it to traditional picnic food? These questions rolled around in my head, until I did a mash up of all three.

Cemetery Picnic Menu

Chicken Salad on Onion Rolls with Cheese and Tomato

Deviled Eggs

Marinated Mushrooms

Mozzarella and Tomato

Strawberries

Dirt Cups. (Chocolate Pudding with crushed Oreo’s and Gummy Worms)

What would you pack for your picnic?

Album Art Appreciation

 There was a great mental debate on writing about my Mother’s Day plans and in the end I have decided to hold off and write about it at a later date. Mostly because I don’t want to provide any spoilers to my mother and mother in law.   Instead I will talk about something that both my mother, mother in law and myself have in common and that is art appreciation. 

My husband is a connoisseur of vinyl records. It is his hobby and he is constantly on the hunt for new music. He has a talent for finding obscure and often very interesting records. While not all the records are to my musical taste, some of the art on the album covers is remarkable.   Below are 11 gems from the record collection that I think have interesting album jackets.

1. Monomyth - Exo - This is amazing because not only is the jacket a space trip, the inside is fascinating to look at.
2. Comacozer- Binbeal - I love how psychedelic this is. 
3. Orphans of Doom - I am not going to lie, I picked this one because of the octopus.  The flowers and octopus is beautiful to me.
4. Alunah - Amber &Gold - I feel like this one could be the cover to several fantasy novels. It reminds me of a fallen angel in the garden of eden with the apples and wings. 
5. Book of Worms - Remythologizer - This is the exact type of fantasy novel that I would have bee drawn to. The more you look at it the more details you see. 
6. The Pilgrim - Walking into the Forest - This reminded me of the sort of folk music that I enjoy. 
7. Slift - Ummon - This is another amazing one that the out side of the jacket is just as interesting as the inside of the jacket. 
8. The Well - Pagan Science - This I would expect to see in a museum. 
9. Waveshaper- Artifact - I love how retro and futuristic it is. I makes me think of an 80’s set in what they thought the future would look like.
10. Turned to Stone Volume 2- Masamune and Maramasa- Howling Giant- Sergeant Thunderhoof -  There is so much going on in this.  The more you look at it, the more details you see.
11. The Greasy Gills- The Spring Collection - This album cracked me up. It made me laugh.

Filling the Bag

My mother gave me a box of zippers. I have been practicing by making zipper bags. After about a dozen bags, I needed to come up with a purpose for the bags. I cannot keep giving away the random bags. 

I decided to make some of the bags into a To Go Kit. Or as my husband has called it a The Girl Kit. (In truth my husband did back peddle beautifully and renamed it The Non Gender Specific Kit.)

The idea behind the kit is to keep it in the car and use it when needed. It isn’t a first aid kit.  

Here is what is in the kit so far:

1. Hand Sanitizer
2. Allen Wrench (hex key)
3. Bands Aids
4. Alcohol Wipes
5. Lint Roller
6. Floss
7. Tooth Paste
8. Bobby Pins
9. Sunblock
10. Hand Lotion
11. Face Mask
12. Magnifying glass
13. Nail File
14. Sole Savers
15. Hot Chocolate
16. Vanity Kit (cotton balls and cotton swabs)
17. Pads/ Tampons
18. Face Mask
19. Shampoo
20. Makeup wipe
21. Safety Pins 

Other than a cup of tea, is there anything that you think is missing in this kit?