Gee, that boy can dance..but we're seated...and there's no music

Being in touch with an old friend has been a true pleasure.  I found him on Facebook and we've had a chance to reconnect.  A recent email exchange really took me back...

...it was 1993...  wow, I wasn't even 30 yet, but I was employed, I had a gym membership and four roommates in a three story Victorian house.

I was a regular at the gym and since I had very early commitments and very late commitments at the job I took very long lunches and worked out for hours at a time.  The best shape I have ever been in...

Juanito was one of my roommates.  He had been the manager of a video store and had a copy of nearly every movie that had ever been put on tape.  They lined the walls of his room in the house and he always had a movie playing...always...

Juanito and I had not been friends for very long and therefore did not have all the same friends - I'd known the other guys for a while and since we traveled in the same groups we knew all the same people...  so it was that he mentioned some girls he had met and a double date - was I interested?  I wasn't, I had recently split up with a fiance and well...  I said "Yes" anyway...

The date was set for a Saturday night - it was June - it was hot already...

I walked up to the gym from the house, got in a workout and headed home.  As I stood in the shower I was overcome by true insanity and, without explanation, decided to shave my chest.  I always kept a spare razor in the shower for the back of my neck and this was what I grabbed...  two scrapes and I was committed...  after four scrapes I was bleeding... after 10 scrapes I was late...

"We need to leave in 10 minutes!"

"What?"

It was madness.  Madness.  As I hacked away at my (what was later referred to as perfectly furred) chest, I realized I was in no way prepared for the task at hand.  They don't teach about this in school - no one says to trim it all first (although these days Gillette.com does have video shorts on body grooming-they are actually funny to watch)  It took forever and I had to sneak to my room for another razor in the middle of it all...

"Are you almost ready?"

"YES!"

"You're still in the shower!"

I'm almost done" I lied...

...after nearly a half hour my chest looked like I had a body full of bird-shot - nicks and cuts all over my torso.  I didn't know if I should try the toilet paper trick (you know little pieces to stop the bleeding or whether it would stop)...  I stared into my closet...  searching for the right shirt - it didn't have to look good, it just had to hide the blood seeping out of the open wounds on my chest...  All I had was a VERY dark, silky thing which I slipped into and then a pair of jeans...

...off we went...

"What's wrong?"

"What do mean?"

"You look uncomfortable..."

"I'm just stupid."

"For going on a double date?"

"Nope..."

And uncomfortable I was...

I do not remember anything that happened on the date.  I couldn't tell you if the girls were pretty or friendly, I don't know if the food was good or if we ate or went to a movie.  I don't know where we even went... except that it was somewhere about 8 hours away and it took even longer to get home...

...I was uncomfortable...

Let's start with the shirt choice...  the silky shirt was catching on the razor stubble every time I moved.  I tried pulling my shoulders forward to make my shirt hang away from my chest, but it didn't work...  I sat holding the front of my shirt away from my chest, but realized that I must have looked weird, so I simply sat back and leaned forward so that my shirt hung free...

and the shirt was hot

and the jeans were hot

and I sweat...  I can't help it...

and worse than the shirt, was the jeans...  Jeans are meant to be worn tight...  I firmly believe that.  Not so tight that you get varicose veins in your neck, but snug...  and I was in great shape and had jeans that I had no business owning...  and they were warm and I had shaved my chest...

if you ever decide to shave your chest remember this one thing...  you need ample time...

you need time to shave - which takes forever 

and you need time to rinse - which takes as long as it takes...  

As you shave, the chest hair runs down your body and while most of it goes to the drain, some of it catches in other body hair, below the chest...

...I was running late - it was bad enough that I had to completely shave my chest (couldn't put off finishing until tomorrow) which no one was going to see, but I had not taken the time to rinse all the chest hair out of my crotch...

The sweat, the hair, the jeans, the heat...  I couldn't sit still, I couldn't scratch...

I went nearly mad.

..and the more I resisted scratching the more I sweated - which only compounded the problem.

Juanito never invited me on a double date again...

After all the trouble, well, I kept my chest shaved that whole summer - which was easy after that...

You know...  at 28 a guy is just too smart to know how stupid he really is, and I'm not too proud to say that I was no exception.

-silly

That's "Mister" Silly to you or Betty Boop gets a new voice...

Driving along and realize that I'm on automatic pilot which always scares me, but it happens.  While I'm on automatic pilot I look in the top left corner of my windshield and think, "Hmm, I was due for an oil change in February..."  Now, being enumployed I don't log quite as many miles so I'm not so worried about the oil, but...

...the other night Cricket and I went to visit Shimp and Slinger and when I turned on my headlights (with a great flash and flourish) one of them became a supernova and then a black hole...  I don't know about you, but if I have a headlight out every cop within a 25 mile radius sees me coming and stops me...

(otherwise, I'd drive around for a while with one headlight just to give every jr hi boy looking for a pedittle a chance to get a kiss)

So, with one light out and well past due for an oil change I went to the car Spa...  I call it the car Spa because well, if my insurance covered it, I'd call it the car doctor, but since they don't it's more like a spa treatment.

Louie recommended this great place on Rte 10 that I actually have come to trust with my little VW.  I love my car, but boy-howdy does the dealership take me for all I'm worth when I take it in there.  I don't believe that I have EVER left the dealership without paying less than a Grand for whatever service I needed.

So I called and set up an appointment. 

-10AM...  

-oil change, headlight, that's it... 

-great, thanks

Sure enough, I dragged myself in to the Spa in time for my appointment...  sure enough, my last name was on the white board...  I spoke with the nice girl at the counter, she asked if I had an appointment, I said I did... she checked, she asked for my last name a second time, said, "Oh" smiled "there you are.."

...yes, she smiled...  it was enough for me to notice, but not enough to have remarked about at the time...

So I waited...

What I was going to originally comment on about the visit was a conversation that happened between the owner - think Uncle Fester - and a guy - think John Bellushi...  Uncle Fester and John were having one of those conversations that men have about NOTHING and vying for the champion of world's loudest.  Uncle Fester has about 15 years on John and asks if John is even 40.

"Yes, I'm 46..."

He went on to say that when he turned 40 he felt great, but that the years between 40 and 46 had been unreal and that every morning he wakes up with a new pain.  He noticed that I had laughed and looked at me...

I simply said, "44" to which he nodded...

My car was pulled up the door at the same time that a man too old to be driving walked in the door and declared he wanted to buy tires.

-Which tires?

-For my car...

I laughed again, but the ensuing conversation was every bit as annoying as the earlier conversation.  "If I stand in line behind the old guy, they'll get the hint that I'm ready to go..." I thought...  So, I stood behind him and started to look around the place. 

...and there it was on the white board, how had I missed it...

10AM - VW - Oil change/headlight

and before it...  Ms "____".

Ms?  What? Ms?  Do I sound like a Ms?

I'm relatively confident that I do not look like a Ms, but I do NOT think I sound like one either...  I was miffed - maybe more than I should have been...

Is this why counter girl smiled?

Do I sound like a Ms on the phone?

Was it because I was free at 10AM to bring my car in?

Was it because I couldn't change my own oil or headlight?

Was the staff secretly watching me and laughing?

What if someone I knew walked in there, knowing that I had an appointment and saw Ms before my last name? I'd never live it down...  UGH...

Counter girl came up to the counter to help me.  Looks like you're all ready.  "Yup" I said, dropping my voice a full octave.  Of course, having dropped my voice, she couldn't hear me and looked up asking, "I'm sorry?"

I was tempted to reach over and smudge the "Ms" before I left but I knew that if no one else had caught it, a smudge would be a dead giveaway and THEN there'd be a story...  Nope... I hopped in my little car and drove off...

Knowing that there are people out there who I can call at any point in time, who would recognize my voice tho it's been years since I've seen them, people who would never call me "Ms..."

Note to self:  The next time I call for an appointment at the Spa I'll drop my voice and start with "Hey, Buddy..." and not "Hi..."

Hopefully, they won't think I'm Rosie O'Donnell...

- (Mr.) silly

some more celadon

As you can tell from some of the comments, Wolf is not a fan of the celadon glaze I chose for the most recent group of pieces I made...  I, on the other hand, think it's one of those glazes that is a lovely canvas.  Francine uses the celadons for most of her stuff and does a great deal of embellishment.  I'm not one to adorn the piece as much as use the piece for the right thing.  For instance, a vase is meant to hold flowers, I like them simple so that they cooperate with the flower to make a pretty combination.  Peonies are my fave flower and I really think they ae lovely with the blue green of the vase.

Here are some photos of my latest stuff...

 All this and a big Happy Birthday to Louie today!

-silly

Peonies in Bloom

No special title today, but I wanted to share some new photos.  Linus shared an idea a few months back that was a short, shallow dish with a metal frog in the bottom for flowers...  the frog helps the flowers stand up straight...  so when I was working I wondered how successful I'd be at making a pot with a lid, a lid with a single narrow hole that would hold the flower up...  These are not at all what Linus suggested, but I'm pleased with how they came out.

I have been calling them my "peony pots" for a few months now and was getting rather worried that I would not have them in time for when the peonies bloomed and yet (thanks to Francine and some cooler than usual weather) I got them just in time.

Crack! It's what's for dessert or "Oh, Crap!"

When I heard that we were putting together a surprise birthday party for Johnny Schenks for his 40th I was all in.  I declared that I would make the cakes.  After much thought, questioning and consideration I decided to make a white cake, a carrot cake and a chocolate cake.  (Stand in awe of my creativity!)  OK, I admit it, they were some very safe choices, but in my own defense I have some fantastic recipes for some very basic cakes...and let's face it, the classics (which are classic for a reason) are so poorly done these days by the mass producers of baked goods that a really good classic is almost like coming home.  Come on, if it isn't angel food cake then it shouldn't be light and airy, it should be dense and moist...  I labor on, but you get my point.

I'm still enumployed so I spent Wednesday fetching everything I needed for a major bake-off on Thursday.  On Thursday I made my cakes...  they were all perfect.  Once they were cooled through to the core, I wrapped them up and stored them away in a cooler that we got a few years ago.  The cooler is big enough to bury a Jr Hi kid in and was just the right place for the cakes (someone bought a side by side fridge that isn't big enough to put a turkey in).  The cakes were safe and sound in the cooler.

Friday came and I began the ordeal of decorating.  I started with the dark chocolate ganache because it takes over an hour to set-up (if it sets up too quickly it's to hard to frost a cake with and has to be eaten with soup spoons - this isn't a bad thing, but I didn't have the ingredients for two batches).  Then the cream-cheese icing, into which I put crystalized ginger chunks (a nice addition but to be honest the punch of the ginger was not strong enough to compensate for the fact that it looked like there were boogers in the icing).

Cricket was running errands so I asked for a box to put the white cake in and a board to carry it on.  I got just what I had asked for, but it wasn't until I put the cake on the board that I realized it just didn't rise high enough to slice and add a layer of lemon curd (which I was already in the process of making).  I had borrowed Louie's half sheet layer cake pan and used a double batch of white cake to fill it...  So, I made another double batch of white cake to create my second layer.

I made the dam of icing around the edge of the bottom layer filled the dam with lemon curd and then stared at it trying to figure how on earth I was going to plop the second layer on top without causing the lemon to squirt out the sides...  In Classic Cricket style the response was simply, "Gee, I don't know..."and I promptly found myself alone in the room.  What to do???

Now, on a separate occasion my mom had suggested that I cut a cake in half to facilitate the ease of moving and manipulating it once it was iced no one would be the wiser.  I thought this was a terrible idea, because it seemed to me that the cake would pull apart when it was moved, but now that I had all this cake to work with it seemed like a great idea.  I cut the cake into two pieces, managed to find a way to lay them in the appropriate spots on the filling without it gushing out and pulled the icing from the fridge where it had gotten as hard as a rock.

I'm a stickler about icing so I'd used a block of butter and almost five pounds of powdered sugar to make a vat of butter cream (I have an easy recipe that never fails me and tastes pretty good) [sometime I'll tell you about the time Linus, who knew I was bringing to a party a batch of cupcakes with my white icing, made a white cake himself with his own white icing just to see whose icing would win in a taste competition]  So, I had two Gladware containers full of icing that I had to get to the right temp to be spreadable on a freshly baked, mostly cooled cake.

I iced it.  It was good.

I piped a turquoise border around the cake.  It was pretty.

I wrote out the lettering with a meat thermometer and then piped it in.  It was nice.

I took the bottom out of a styrofoam cup and used the cup as a funnel/stencil for small circles of colored sanding sugar on the top of the cake.  It was finished.

Of the completed cake Cricket said, "it's gorgeous..." , and it was.

We loaded the chocolate and carrot cakes into Cricket's SUV,  I packed up a triage kit in case I need to re-pipe some of the stars around the egde of the big cake, and I climbed into the car holding the cake, on a board, in its box, on my lap...

...and I'm in Jersey...

...and the pot holes are monstrous...

and as we drove I watched the cake.  Sometimes resting it on my lap, sometimes serving as a shock absorber, I carried this thing...

..and I watched it happen, just like I would have guessed that it would happen.  First the icing appeared to have been stretched on the far side of the cake, then it split and the gap began to open.  the blue stars on the far side of the cake began to sink into the crack.  "Birthday" became "B    irthday".

"CRAP!"

Cricket looks over.

"I can't believe it..."

Cricket looks over.

"Surprise, for your birthday you get an all expense trip to the Grand Canyon."

Cricket laughs.  "Can't you fix it?"

I began to wonder why, if Cricket was so blind, I was not the one who was driving. "NO!"

"Well, it will still taste delicious."

"Great!  Close your eyes and blow out your candles and keep em closed until I have a chance to cut this mess into squares."

I had worked the entire day on something that would "still taste good".  Oh, Yea! for me...

We got there as the continental divide happened on Pangea.

I brought the cake to the kitchen in the basement and stared at it.  Louie responded to my distress text and said I should just fill the crack in with icing...  I said that I couldn't fill the grand canyon with one truckload of dirt... 

I came up with a Plan B and decided that I wouldn't stress, but enjoy the party.

As we stood in line for the dinner buffet Wgeoff bent over (he's 6'8) and said to me, "Did you see the cake down stairs?  What a mess!  they spent all that money on a cake when they could have had you make one that would probably have tasted better; even if it wasn't decorated as nice."

Call me crazy, but this was one of the highest compliments of the night; he had mistaken my cake for a professional cake gone wrong!  I couldn't have been happier...

When it was all said and done I piped a big "40" on the carrot cake and called it "decorated" - thats' where the candles went and it was lovely...

...and Cricket was right, even with a crack right down the middle, the white cake filled with lemon curd and frosted with white lemon butter cream icing was still delicious.

-silly

Don't put words in my mouth or "even my phone punishes me for having fat fingers"

The thing that I find most amazing about texting with my I-Phone is not simply that I can do it, which is a miracle on so many levels.  Truly, it is a miracle both that there is a device I hold in my hand which will send a message to my sister deep in the woods and because I (the techno-challenged) have actually figured out how to do it.  Nonetheless, what stuns me is that my phone tries to figure out what word I'm typing as I type it.  Every text is like Wheel of Fortune as I start the letters of a new word l-i-t-e (it guesses "lie", then "little" and finally "literature")... and that is just the word I'm sending.  (Ok, so I don't send the word "literature" often, but you get the idea).

My niece has mastered this on a phone that does not give her a key board (something my I-phone has).  Like most texters she uses the numbers to somehow send a message and they get there...  ...and she knows just how to push a couple buttons so that the phone can guess what word she wants to send.  I am amazed.  Her texts are not only decipherable; they are coherent.

And so it is that late last night I received a message from my friend Schmi saying, "I'm dirty I didn't come to your show."

...then a follow-up message saying "OMG I mean sorry"

This kind of thing used to be called a freudian slip, and to be honest, had she been standing and talking with me saying aloud that she was dirty that she didn't come to my show (only to apologize that she meant sorry) , I'd have thought something along the freudian lines.

...but I know this, Schmi also has an I-phone.

You see the I-Phone will guess words as you are typing and if you don't tell it specifically that you don't want that word it will simply over-ride you.  One might think that with D being next to S Schmi typed D instead and I-Phone started looking for D-words, but that's far too simple an explanation.

It's really gremlins with a two-fold purpose.

Their first purpose is to completely humiliate us by sending words in messages that make no sense whatsoever.  Schmi caught her mistake - I never ever catch mine.  Most often when I text the receiver wonders, not that I have two masters, but that I even have all my marbles.  the classic response from Wolf is.  "Um what?"

The second part of their purpose is to lull us into a world where we do not have to talk to anyone.  I have friends with whom I chat regularly, but to whom I have not spoken in months.  They don't pick up the phone (answer), they retrieve my message and send a text. "Sorry you're so depressed, hope it's better soon"

On Saturday I received a text from my niece who was coming to my show.  She needed directions.  I started a text back and sent it both before it was finished and before it was proof-read.  So I started another text with directions and the most amazing thing occurred to me - I could actually call her and speak the directions - this method worked beautifully; she got lost, but that wasn't my fault.  

-silly

Saturday's show

Cricket came home last night from pottery class (lessons are at the studio where the gallery is) and said that a woman who came to the show on Saturday stopped back last night to buy the small casserole dish (if it hadn't already been sold).  

YEA!!!

What a success the show was.  I didn't keep track of the number of people that came through; the crowd was mostly made up of friends, tho a few people who saw a note in the local paper's calendar section stopped in to check it out.

I asked any of my friends who purchased pieces to leave them for the duration of Saturday's show so that those who came late could see my work.  We marked the bottom of anything that was sold with a sticker.  At one point, a guest complained that everything she picked up and looked at was already sold.  To ease this frustration, Cricket ran around and put stickers on the rim of everything that was sold - it wasn't until then that I realized just how many pieces had sold and it actually caused some of the folks that had been hanging with us for the day to grab the pieces they wanted.  A neighbor walked around with a bowl under one arm and a vase under the other.

Francine, my pottery teacher, was there and it was a special satisfaction to have her see and compliment the show.

-You know what this means, she said to me.

-What's that?

-Now you have to make more!  

We laughed. (I actually do have half a dozen stoneware bowls in the works already.) 

I couldn't have done it without Cricket who worked so very hard all day!

Here are some pictures: 

the three free standing shelves that I filled comprised "the show" 

there are also some shots of groups of the pieces

one funny thing to remember is that everything is glazed in the same glaze

it really was a great day - most of the work sold, which completely shocked me.

-silly