Lemon Meringue Pie

Lemon Meringue Pie
Originally uploaded by seriouslygood1

pie in the sky

i went to a celebration of life party this evening, a memorial event for a family friend who died in march. we looked at pictures and told stories and toasted him and ate some of his favourite foods (although lobster and corn on the cob, his absolute faves, were sadly absent). my mom made a lemon meringue pie that was to die for. her pies of late have been stellar, the apotheosis of pies (am i using this word correctly? i love it and don't want to abuse and misuse it.) she made a rhubard raisin custard pie with a whole wheat crust last month that is currently at the top of my Best Pie Ever Eaten list. i know i digress but i think that bud would approve of the current tack of this post. he was a big fan of pie. so, let's hear it - favourite kinds of pie, best pie ever eaten, pie to die for - don't be afraid...hit that lil' ol' comments button......

indian food (a song)

Another hit by monkey boy.

Accompanied by a drum kit consisting of a plastic yellow hardhat, a plastic red fireman's hat, a cowboy hat and a live cat:

indian food!
indian food!
we've got it
indian food!
right up here
on the stage
come get it
on a plate
right now!
indian food!
indian food from thailand!
yeah!

over the hill (and back again)

On Tuesday night I drove an hour to meet a dear friend (hello dear friend) in a small town neither of us knew, a quiet little half-way hamlet. There was not even a Tim's ladies and gentlemen, I kid you not. We had fried dinner and chocolate milk in the only game in town and walked to the gas station for a chocolate bar for dessert. By then, whatever had been happening at the Legion had wound up and the Weight Watchers meeting at the library was over so we just drove around talking and listening to music until I had found every dead end in town. We saw it all: the co-op, the water tower, the old folks home, the co-op again. I was glad I went. We got honked at (twice!) walking back from the gas station which was funny because we were talking about how we started to think of ourselves as old this year. Which is also funny because I feel simultaneously old and adolescent at the same time a lot lately: awkward, over eager, shy, scattered, pretentious. I am not sure how to present myself, how to dress, how to talk.

Hey friends far away if you are reading this, I miss you! I think of you often! I am thinking of you now! I would drive an hour to meet you too if I could, walk under the maples (or the lindens or the pines or the palms or whatever tree is growing in that half-way town) and talk, laugh, cry, be silent, talk some more. And then take the long trip home feeling full again, feeling myself again.

summer solstice

We spent the last few hours of this longest day of the year at Dufferin Grove Park enjoying the Cooking Fire Festival. Had a very tasty dinner of vegetarian enchiladas and a rich beautifully textured bowl of hominy soup with wild boar cooked over an open fire. Dessert was fresh ice cream sandwiched on cookies. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Monkeyboy spent the night kicking up the dust and running as fast as he could. He has a need for speed and bouncing these days. Googirl just wanted to eat grass and scoot around.

Ah, Les Trouveres, you have captured my heart (again) and made laugh until I almost peed. More please, more please, more please.

procrastination and the five point plan

Well, here it is, procrastination, happening now. According to the Five Point Plan, as orchestrated by the brilliant and beautiful Jennifer W (also talented - multi-talented) I should be working on writing and illustrating a children's book, while formulating an outline for a blockbuster young adult novel that will make me tons of money and allow to immediately fulfill my lifelong dream of writing for a living. I don't like to write these things down because I worry about putting new fresh little ideas out in the cold. But is almost midsummer and the soil should be well warmed by now so I should just lay them in.
Smith was playing ultimate frisbee at J's school tonight so I walked over with the kids. J wanted to play mini-car store and practice jumping up at the monkey bars. S watched J and sang her loud songs and charmed folks with her lil' button eyes. The geodesic dome/climbing structure was gone from behind the school. I guess it was getting dangerous. The little girls running ahead of us called it the beehive. "Mommy, mommy the beehive is gone!" Too bad, because it was groovy and retro and nobody seems to put them up anymore. Oh Buckminster Fuller, where have you gone?
J caught a moth and was deeply, tragically saddened when it flew away. He perked up when we got home and by then time I had gotten S down he had brushed his own teeth, changed into his pj's and gotten his own snack!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AMAZING! The snack was a big bowl of marshmallows, but I couldn't bring myself to chide him after such a rockin display of independance so we just saved some for tomorrow, threw a glass of milk down after them and brushed our teeth, again.

(sorry about the neckstretcher photo...)

We went to the Auto Flea Market last weekend and got ourselves a good dose of internal combustion glory!!!! And got to see Great Uncle Hughie, that jolly old elf. What a boy's paradise - or nightmare - especially loooooved the old boy who gave J a toy gun, saying "There you are, that's what you need. We've got to take care of the kids."????????? OK, that said, most of the people giving J free stuff were quite sweet about it. You could tell that they just saw a little guy with a hankering for little cars and wanted to make his day.
Miles and miles of tires, coveralls, old mufflers, Crocs knockoffs, spare hoods, pistons, headlights, side panels, repair manuals, antiques, gaskets, gew gaws and of course beautifully restored old cars and trucks. J was in heaven.

dark saturday

Yesterday morning we went out for lunch. I had done some stinky painting and we needed to get out of the house for a few hours. We had walked around the block scoping for garage sales, thought about going to the park but it looked like rain. We finally headed up to the junk food plaza (Tim's, our pizza place and Subway) and here's where the day started to feel warped and unreal. All of the light fixtures and ceiling tiles in the Tim's were hanging crazily from the ceiling. Renovations, ok but for some reason I found it very unnerving. Then we saw two cruisers and yellow caution tape around a pair of sneakers and a pile of bloody clothing. They were big white sneakers, teenage boys sneakers. We distracted monkeyboy with food and headed home and on the way home saw that the park was also ringed with yellow caution tape. That morning a couple of 16 year old boys had been stabbed across the street from the park(our park) by another couple of boys, thrown into a stolen white Lexus and then thrown out again a few blocks later at a plaza (our plaza). They were taken to the hospital where one of the boys died. Sad, sad, sad.
All day even before I knew all of these details, I felt edgy, out of sorts, charged, but in a totally aimless, frustrating way. On the late news, this story was preceeded and followed by stories about traffic accidents - a huge one to the south of town that closed part of the 400 down for the night and another, small but fatal, just north of my parents house ( both of these pretty much at the boundaries of my existence right now). Nothing touching me directly but my whole personal geography bracketed and laid over with violence and death, the dark underbelly of summer's energy.

calling all angles

One of my high school English teachers loved to stress the point that it was The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence, NOT The Stone Angle. All anglers would be mocked.

The title of this post was supposed to be Calling All Angels because the beautiful song of that name by Jane Sibberry (actually a duet with k.d. lang, another Canadian gal) is running through my head but a typo intervened and i feel that the tone of the new title lends itself more to examination, prediction and dissection than to transcendence, luminosity and feathers.

So in this post I will not be lamenting that the beautiful play Icaria by Number Eleven Theatre will no longer be produced (the set was ceremoniously burned last summer after the final performance). If you missed it, you should feel a little sad.

I will also not be relating the story of how my cousin's budgie was killed by the fumes of a chili sauce being pickled in a summer kitchen.

Or, I suppose the transcendence of that chili sauce - the earthy spiciness! the tart bite of vinegar! the sweetness of the tomatoes that summer! Oh for a mess of scrambled eggs!


No, none of that.

Instead I call forth the engineer within (not a very good one - neglects to measure twice or use a level), the pool shark of my soul (cue awonk), the protracting pundit to look at all the balls on the table, the lay of the land, the hang of the string in the wind and call all angles, name them now!

But first I need to go and listen to that song. (And maybe go to bed - these long midsummer evenings make me lose track of time.)

firefly boy

Img_0618
Originally uploaded by nannamamma

Song to googirl on the way to the Cottage by monkeyboy

we're almost there
we're almost there
we're almost there
we're almost there

500 reasons why
we are a family
feel like a hmmmm
yeah yeah
we're almost there

500 treeeees and
what do you get
but it's so fun
we're almost there

it's a long way

400 thiiiiings
so so so so so so
it's a long time ago
it's a dark sun
it's a sad sad day

why are we getting off of the way
500 clues

whooooo! yeah!

it's so fun when we're drivin to the cottage
why are we getting so big and loose
it's jus the cottage no worries to see
it's just the cottage road