Rabbitch

Seemingly I have become a food-hoarding loon.

Now, my being a hoarder will not be news to most of you (although when it comes to yarn I prefer to think of myself as a collector rather than a hoarder. It's perfectly normal. Shut up.) however at some point in the last few years I seem to have been unable to remember how much of anything I have in my pantry.

I don't shop like most North American folks that I know do. I don't do one big shopping trip and fill up the freezer once every month or two and then thaw stuff and cook it. I shop almost every day. I don't ever freeze meat; I buy what we're going to use that day and then use it and then the next day buy what we need. I'll buy enough lunch meat for my husband to take to work for two or three days. I seldom freeze bread unless we get a deal on a huge bag of buns or something; I buy what we need for a couple of days and then we use it and then I buy fresh again. Same with fruit and vegetables; the only frozen veg. I will buy is peas. Because despite my commitment to fresh food, I love frozen peas. (Cooked, of course. I'm not that mental. Yet.)

A couple of years back, I ran out of Bisto gravy powder. I don't think you can get it in the US, or if you can it's not as common as it is here. It's just basically powder that you use to add to stock to make gravy. My daughter loves gravy on mashed potatoes (and who wouldn't be? Ermagherd, you'd be a fool not to) and so I always keep some on hand.

Always. Except for That One Day. So I had to run out at something stupid like 11pm to get some so that my kid could have mashed potatoes and gravy in the middle of the night. Don't all families eat that in the middle of the night? Don't all mothers do that for their kids? If not, then they should. It's the Right Thing To Do.

Apparently it scarred me and I got it in my head that we had NO BISTO IN THE HOUSE and I bought some every time I went grocery shopping. Twice a week. For a couple of months. It wasn't quite that bad but I ended up with something like eight or ten boxes of it before I realized I'd gone overboard.

So then I stopped. Well, actually I only stopped when Mr. Assmuppet went shopping with me one night and I went to put a box of Bisto in my basket and he said "Um, honey? Don't we have quite a lot of that? Put it back. BACK AWAY FROM THE BISTO!" or something of the sort and I realized that I might have gone a little overboard.

Yeah. It costs about $6 a box and we were completely broke and I was trying to figure out how to feed us for the week ... with $60 worth of gravy powder in the pantry. Go, me.

And then a few weeks later I realized we were out of butter one day and well ... yeah. We ended up with six pounds of it in the fridge. Or maybe eight.

And then there was the terrifying potato debacle. I think we managed to eat them all before they sprouted. We are very fond of those little tiny white-skinned nugget potatoes. For a few weeks we were very, very fond of them. VERY.

And now, this month my problem is carrots. I realized when I got home after work last night that we have six bags of carrots in the fridge. Two bags of field carrots, two bags of organic baby carrots and two bags of regular baby carrots.

There are also about five bags of coffee beans in the fridge and in the freezer.

I may be a lunatic, but if anyone shows up and wants potatoes and gravy (yes, I've sort of stocked up on both again) and a cup of coffee and a bowl of carrots in the middle of the night; I'm set.

And there's enough yarn for everyone. C'mon over.

I Like It On The Back Of The Couch.

I'm Going to Las Vegas For Eight Months.

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and there have been a ton of memes on Facebook in the last couple of weeks. All I have to say in response is: No, you're not. No, you don't. And no, you aren't.

I understand that these are all done in the spirit of goodwill, and there is no harm intended, but I wish people would just stop it right the fuck now.

It's not cute. It's not funny. We are all aware of breast cancer and some of these are actually hurtful. I've had breast cancer twice (if you want the details, search my archives for "breast badger") and I'm one of the lucky ones who got away with nothing more than a mangled boob.

The one that is the most hurtful is the one that I used as the title of this post. Many of my sisters have not been as lucky as I was, and have had to go through chemo. Chemo usually robs you of your fertility.

So yeah. Not very supportive. Stop it, now.

Please.

Please.

Oh bless you. The ten of you who are still reading. You've been reading and hoping, just waiting for this post, haven't you?

And it's not going to be nearly as titillating as you'd like.

I guess about five years ago -- whenever the first Sock Summit was -- I decided that I'd be all brave and do the cross-border vending thingie. Being a vendor in general is hard. Doing shows, standing on concrete and dealing with people for ten hours in a row? It's utter hell. But I love it, even if I have to take ibuprofen and ice my bad knee for hours afterwards.

My friend Barb Brown from Wild Geese Fibres and I decided to do this together. My car was dead at the time, so my father picked me up and drove me out to Abbotsford at half-past-sparrowfart where I met up with Barb. We loaded my crap into her car and drove and drove and drove for fucking ever and finally got to Portland. We booked into a pretty nice place, I think it was called La Quinta or something. Anyhow, we settled in and then the next day we did setup which in itself is hellish.

The next day we vended like hell all day. It was my first time out in public after having had my major crash and burn and I had cut off all of my hair, was skinnier than hell and was seriously shaky about being out but I just did it. It was horrifying being out in public. I was so glad I did it, though. I'm known for being a bit of a pottymouth, and there was this older lady who came up to my booth. She was using a walker and was in a nice pink suit. She told me that she was a widow, and she read my blog all the time and she'd come to the show specifically hoping to meet me. I apologized for being a pottymouth and she said no, that's why she liked reading my blog; because I just sang out whatever I needed to say. It made my day. It truly made my life. I needed to hear that sort of thing, so hard.

By the end of the day we were both completely punchy. Most vendors, unless they are sane, work their booths alone and are lucky if they get time for a bathroom break. We don't usually eat much. We need keepers. Alas, keepers cost money and these things don't usually make us enough money to hire a keeper, so unless we remember to bring a granola bar or two, we end the day in total exhaustion. We went back to the hotel room and I said ok, I'm in Portland and my favourite brewery in the world is here. I adore Widmer's and I refuse to leave Portland without getting some Hefewiezen. So we linked arms and marched down the street singing. Yes, singing. I was singing "I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK, I drink all night and I knit all day. I put on ladies clothing, suspenders and a bra, and then put on mittens, made out of alpaCAH!"

It was sort of mad. People gave us a wide berth.

We finally got back to the hotel, with the beer, and we realized that we had to eat or die, so we went to Denny's. We were reading the menu, which isn't like the Denny's here. Everything had the option to have grits on the side. Being Canadian, we had never had grits. We asked the server what grits were like and how one ate them, and the server said "I will bring you a sample". So we got a bowl of grits. We tried it with salt and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with pepper and it was DISGUSTING. And then we tried it with butter. Still DISGUSTING. Then I think we tried it with cheese and likely with honey and jam and ketchup and who knows what the hell. It was all disgusting. But before we knew it we'd eaten the entire thing. We likely would have eaten the tablecloth at that point, had there been one. Fortunately our food that we had ordered showed up at about that point.

Barb said "what a nice young man." I said "what young man?" She said "our waiter, he's lovely, he looks a lot like my nephew." I said "Um. Our waiter has breasts and he is named Beth, according to his name tag." She was sort of gobsmacked.

And then there was much hilarity and eating of food.

When we went back to our hotel we went out to have a smoke and the nice young couple from Ontario who had come all that way with their yarn (and I wish I could remember the name of their company because their stuff is good and I'd like to link them but I'll do it later) were sitting by the pool. I announced to them that I had just lost my grits virginity. The husband of that duo said "but there are so many to lose, there will be more" and I said that no. That was my one last one to lose, and I had been saving it for a special occasion. I was just sorry it had been so awful, and that it had been at Denny's.

There. And now you know.