Merry Christmas to All!

Things I Adore, Things I Abhor

Wombat reminded me that I haven't done this post in awhile. Not that she wanted to read it, she just wanted to fancy it up and sell it over on her blog. Good on her.

5 Things I Adore:

• Maraschino cherries. Left over from the infamous Oh Henry! bars I made for work. Adding a whole new dimension to the crappy Absolut New Orleans.


• Christmas picture cards (or Christmas cards with pictures). Why do we only share once a year? Warning! Boom is thinking about sending out a summer picture. He's all about busting up tradition.


• Pete McCarthy. Author of McCarthy's Bar and The Road to McCarthy. If you can't travel, hitch a ride with Pete. The search for his Irishness within his English self reminds me of my Canadian/American issues and he is funny.


• Having 2 vacation days left. I will work no more Mondays until 2008. The Man can suck it.


• Friends who listen. Thanks for listening to me for the past 5 days. You ALL know who you are.

5 Things I Abhor:

• Being clumsy. Liquids are not safe around me. And my 2007 Christmas Card list is now lost to the ages.


• Being dizzy. Only 3 weeks to go before I see the physical therapist. Please goddess let her fix me on the 11th. I'm over it.


• Being guilty. So I'm not going to be guilty any more. I'm taking care of me first. The rest of you can get in line and fill out the appropriate forms. In triplicate.


• Being slack. That resume isn't going to update itself, unfortunately. Can't get away from The Man without it. Word.


• Being alone. The next guy is going to feel like a stud because I'll be zero to O in under a minute. Guaranteed. No need to form a line, just knock.

Let's face it, even if the maraschino cherries are floating in some serious alcohol, they aren't going to beat the long dry spell. Abhor wins.

Tell all your single friends, dizzy, clumsy, and EASY.

XO, JamieSmitten

Unbelievable

I can't quite wrap my head around it, so I don't expect any of you to manage it. Especially speaking in such oblique terms. But remember back when JamieSmitten found some peace and started smiling again right about here?

Well somebody should have told JamieSmitten to enjoy the feeling while it lasted. Because apparently, the ride for which I did not purchase a ticket but spins me around anyway has started up again.

Give me strength.

And therein lies the rub for the non-believer. I know that finding the strength is all up to me. Although Zeus with a few well placed lightning bolts wouldn't be rejected.

I refer to this Zeus

Not the four-legged one that lives on the other side of the fence, although that Zeus has his charms too.

Tell all your single friends, rough weather ahead.

XO, JamieSmitten

Your Guess Is As Good As Mine

I do believe I previously stated herein that I would not inflict my poetry on you, the unsuspecting blog public. Yes, I did -- right here. So abandon ship, save yourselves, I've gone and done it. Perhaps a reaction to the soul-deadening effect of working for the Man or to having to explain what 'practicable' and 'deleterious' mean to people who make twice my salary, this just had to come out. I'm not totally satisfied, but self-editing for me is the delete button. So forthwith and forsooth, my offering.

Quite Possible (or maybe My Times)

a poem by J. Smitten

It is quite possible that I will

when all is said and done, be still

outwardly

while raging inside at the sheer

lunacy

of my times

(this is not the times owned by the masses which are lamented

Oh the Times!

whether they be a-changin' or not

no, not those times at all)

MY times which ought be loud

with laughter and loving, yet crowd

silently

forward brimming with the sharp

focus

of the aware

(my times are not delivered to your doorstep

Nor should they be!

for they don't delight or quite frankly show

that I'm even right)

So fair warning to him

listening raptly or not, no whim

resolutely

tilting against the Sisyphean

task

of my times

Tell all your single friends, sometimes you just have to let it all hang out.

XO, JamieSmitten

Cooking with Gas (Literally and Figuratively)

Ah the holiday season. Not enough money and too many pot luck lunches. For tomorrow's fete, I was asked to bring desert. No, not a typo on my part. I flirted with the idea of bringing some sables au citron. That is French for lemon cookies, but sable also means sand. Yep, I geek out in French sometimes.

But then I dug out the recipe box and the Better Homes and Gardens and made some choices.

From Better Homes, I chose the Blonde Brownie recipe and made it more exciting with the addition of chocolate chunks.

From Grammy's recipe box, I chose the Oh Henry recipe. The resulting square bears no resemblance whatsoever to the Oh Henry chocolate bar. Grammy said there was another candy bar called Oh Henry and this recipe tasted just like THAT Oh Henry bar. But I've never seen one. In any case, it is yummy and different, containing graham crackers, coconut, maraschino cherries, and buttercream frosting.

Here is what you are missing if you aren't attending the pot luck tomorrow:

Good thing I explained the Oh Henry bar, eh? Here's a shot of the Blondies too -- on my souvenir plate from the bistro at the Paris casino in Vegas. (If you go, order the moules et frites.)

It looks like I burnt the counter, but I didn't.

That is cooking with gas literally, where is the cooking with gas figuratively? Read on.

My baking done, the kitchen cleaned, the Boom bathed (Al fresco! 70 degrees in December!), I sat down to catch up with my blog boys. Wandering over to the site of my unrequited Blush Aeleope, I found him writing up a storm as usual. That boy is nothing if not prolific. He even entered a contest -- 250 words or less -- to be inspired by this picture:

For details and to enter (deadline is 12/14 -- hurry!) check out An Innocent A-Blog here. I like these writing challenges -- convey your thought and get out quickly. Heck -- I wouldn't be blogging here if it weren't for a similar contest. So I looked at that picture and I started cooking, figuratively speaking.

Here is my entry to the Weirdly contest:

Everyone remembers before. "You should have seen it. Why it was the pride of the county! Folks came just to walk down Main Street and take their picture in front of the falls." Why that town was nothing short of paradise, to hear them tell it. That's how it got its name anyway. Eden Falls, in case I forgot to say.

When they talk about after, they always shake their heads and lower their voices, like somebody died. Some families were just gone. Just like that. My granddaddy says if he had skipped school like he planned, he'd be deader than a doornail and missing to boot. He always says that when I miss the school bus. Sometimes if I ask him just right, he'll drive me over to see where Eden Falls used to be. There's no more Main Street, that's for sure. The government men that came after said only a fool would build that town back up. Just a matter of time before those falls did what they done before.

But you know what? Those falls never have done nothing. I've lived here my whole life and all I see is a waterfall and a field and bunch of ugly old trees. Joe's granny says that each of those trees is the soul of an innocent that got washed away when the falls broke through and came down Main Street. But I don't think that's right. Those trees would be pretty if they were.

It came out rather quickly -- like the falls.

Tell all your single friends, JamieSmitten can feed your body and mind, if you just let her.

XO, JamieSmitten

What The World Needs Now

...is TWO great events on two consecutive nights! You have NO idea how rare that is in Richmond. This is not NYC. But it does happen and I took full advantage.

Saturday night was Cracker at Toad's Place. I love, love, love Cracker. I know every song, I worship every guitar lick, I am a fan. Even having just seem them a few months ago at a much smaller venue, it was instant bliss. Two full hour sets and another 1/2 hour encore. I wish you'd been there. Standing behind me, of course.

In typical Richmond fashion, I ran into the estranged wife of my ex-roommate's brother. (She says hi.) I also saw a lot of PBR tall boys being consumed. Again, typical Richmond fashion.

Sunday night was the PostSecret/Found charity tour. If you don't already visit PostSecret every Sunday to read the new secrets, I highly recommend you do. Found Magazine keeps me looking around when Boom and I go for a walk, hoping to find the perfect note to send in. I bought founder Davy Rothbart's book, The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. It is a great read so far and there was something oddly hot about him in person. Despite the gangsta chains. And for some reason, there was also a sword swallower from North Carolina named Brett Loudermilk. Definitely, an unexpected Sunday night occurrence, but most enjoyable. And that Davy was hot.

So that's why I've been silent for a few days. I'm full of good times and trying to make them last.

I've Got (Incredibly Artistic) Mail!

Crankster had a post recently about an artist who was offering his art on postcards to those who saw the drawing on his site and emailed him. His name is Nat Dickinson and you can find him at Nat Dickinson Doing Art. In the case of more than one art collector, Nat rolls a die and sends it to the lucky winner.


I did not win Priceless Postcard #13 -- a rendition of coconut cake, so perfect for me -- but I was victorious with Priceless Postcard #20. It arrived in the mail yesterday:

They are tomatillos and so incredibly detailed that if I hadn't known Nat created the postcard himself, I would SWEAR it was printed. I'm going to purchase a frame for it today. You can see all the Priceless Postcards here.

So -- head on over to Nat's website and look around -- there are beautiful paintings under the Recent Work link. If he's offering a postcard, do yourself a favor and enter the drawing.