Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Cabbage Patch Kid



Tuesday night my parents headed out to the theatre for a dose of Christopher Plummer, two of my BFFs, who I talked to via Skype were off to Bloor cinema for a movie and probably some delicious Thai food, or sushi or something considered equally exotic to where I live now, like say, McDonalds. And I assume that everyone else I know was also doing something infinitely more interesting than what I had planned.

I was settling in for a night of watching The Tudors, one of two shows I can stand on the two channels I get with my rabbit ears (if it's not raining, or windy and I'm not doing laundry.)

However, the downstairs food fairies had other plans for me. Remember back when my evenings used to consist of drinks and dancing? Me neither. Although technically there was SOME drinking involved, last night dancing was replaced with helping to make buckets and buckets of sauerkraut using an antique cabbage shredder and a homemade "pounder" to "Smuck" the cabbage together with salt. (Yes those are technical terms).

So I pretended I was on the amazing race and smucked like a million dollars depended on it, while Food fairy J told me about the giant sauerkraut parties the locals used to have. Families would bring their cabbages and spend the entire day chopping, pounding and salting together to put up enough sauerkraut for the winter.

Sometimes I think the food fairies are like those three godmothers in Sleeping Beauty, except, instead of sewing me magic dresses (which I would appreciate), their job is to educate me about various rural and historical items of interest.

For example, when I recently shouted "Look! A fox!", my city-born eyes sparkling with excitement, Food fairy J, said. "That's a coyote," without even looking at me like I was a moron.

Anyway, maybe my life is not as glamorous as it was, but at least I'm learning my animals. Plus this winter I probably won't get scurvy.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Tell me why...

I don't like Mondays.

It is 9:30, and I just got home. Normally, of course, 9:30 is well within my self-made, grown-up curfew. However, when the place I'm coming home from is a 2 1/2 hour meeting regarding the fate of local ATVs, which I only got to attend as my reward for finishing a ridiculous day of layout, with zero breaks for food, 9:30 is way, way, way past my bed time.

Naturally I couldn't just keep this to myself and go to bed quietly. I seem to be operating on some kind of adrenaline leftover. So, for your enjoyment, some of the highlights of Monday in the life of a small-town journalist, suddenly thrown into the roll of editor:

After waking up 20 minutes before I had to be at work, I stumbled outside, toast and tea in hand. I balanced my toast on top of my lucky car frog, and drove almost to the end of my street before realizing I should probably have my wipers on. Fortunately, this caused me to take a closer look at the windshield and notice that the food fairies left me an apple. (Aw) A good thing too, as it wound up being what passed for my lunch.

Fast forward through a brain-numbing day of laying out page after page after page of paper until the end of time, and yelling "What do you want from me!" at the phone every time it rang, before picking it up and pretending to be sane and/or competent.

At one point I deleriously walked into one of the offices to pick things up from the printer, only to find that the printer had morphed into a confused coworker who kindly pointed next door.

Top it all off with spending the better part of my evening seated next to a guy named Esau, who really wants to ride around on his ATV, to the chagrin of his neighbours, et voila,



this is my brain on Mondays.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Dear Canada,

What the eff?

Love,
Sarah