Christmas is the season of mint. Think candy canes, peppermint bark, mint hot cocoa, mint scented lotions and mint scented air fresheners. This to me is both bizarre and unfortunate. Mint is an herb, the same as bee balm and basil and dill. There is nothing inherently Christmas-y about it. As far as I can learn, candy makers began adding mint flavoring to candy canes some time around the 1900s. If they had added oregano instead, would we be as obsessed with oregano scented lotions and oregano bark? Was that the beginning of our modern mint mania? I don’t know, but prior to that, I suppose the Christmas season was blissfully mint-free.
In case you haven’t picked up on this by now, I hate mint. Passionately.
I am an oddity, I know. A freak of nature. Everyone else loves mint. I gave homemade peppermint bark to friends as a Christmas gift one year (believe me, that was one recipe for which I had no desire to lick the spoon) and everyone raved about how wonderful it was and how much they love peppermint bark.
Yech.
My distaste for mint dates back to my childhood. Mint makes me repeatedly sneeze in size and force equivalent to multiple nuclear bombs detonating, and every morning at 7:59 a.m. you could find me in the bathroom pressing that little red button. I’d just finished brushing my teeth before going to school, of course. Toothpaste only came in mint flavor when I was a child.
No wonder I hated brushing my teeth.
This strange reaction extended to breath mints as well, and weirdly enough some medicines, like Nyquil and Peptobismal. There were two good sides to this talent of mine that I have to admit. It made faking an illness easier, and it made a great party trick.
The perks end there, though.
Part of me wishes things were different. I look at all those brightly colored candy canes, and I become a little wistful. There are lots of candy cane flavors now that I could enjoy instead, but somehow it just seems wrong to enjoy a strawberry flavored candy cane during Christmas.
Every season, I always receive some mint product from a loved one who forgets my quirk. Last year it was a mint body scrub. And every time this happens I smile politely and thank them profusely, but the whole time I'm mentally raising my fist to heaven and crying out:
“Curse you dead candy cane inventors!”
Friday, December 11, 2009
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Halloween Thoughts
If I lose my train of thought, I'm going to blame it on the trick or treaters. They're coming in hordes now. After about every thirty letters I write, I have to stop and answer the door...
I love it all, though. I love handing out candy to all the kids. I love hanging up bats and cobwebs. I love carving pumpkins. I've decided I love Halloween now as an adult more than I did as a kid. I see it this way: I still get all the candy I want (true, the downside is that I have to buy it, but on the upside I have no more bad trick-or-treating years) and I still get to dress up (this year I'm wearing a wicked-looking carnival mask). But now, I get to decorate the house however I want, and I get to stay up as late as I want watching spooky movies, and I get D-all-of-the-above in the comfort of my own home.
I remember as a kid I had certain pet peeves about Halloween, and I've decided to let my inner child vent, since I never really had the chance to vent when I was seven.
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number one? Adults who don't take the time to hang fake cobwebs properly. For some reason, this always bugged me as a kid. If you take the time to hang them the right way, they look amazing and spooky and fantastic. Hang them the wrong way and they look like Santa Claus walked past your house while he had a bad case of mange. Big tufts of white fluff fluttering wildly on porches and fences--just who are you trying to fool? Gee, some spider went spastic on your front porch. Oooo, I'm really scared. Come on. No self-respecting spider would ever weave a web like that for Halloween, and if he did, he'd probably kill himself for shame the next morning. But isn't that just like an adult? Too much in a hurry to take the time to string them up correctly so they look real, and then say "ah well, the kids won't notice." Yes. They will. Kids are particularly good judges of holiday decorating, and if they could, they'd probably vote you off the island, er, neighborhood. Especially if you give out lame candy. Which brings me to...
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number two. Lame candy. Anything with chocolate is the RIGHT candy to hand out on Halloween. There is one exception: chocolate and raisins. Whoever thought up that combination was smoking something. Anything with tootsie rolls? Yuck. Dum dums? Way too small, even for a kid. Jolly Ranchers? Eeh. Only the apple flavor. The other flavors? Bleh. As a kid I always wondered, do adults ever even eat candy? Because if they did, they would NEVER buy any of the above. It's just too cruel.
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number three. Boring costumes. My mother (love you mom!) never really put a lot of thought into our Halloween costumes. Once or twice she let me wear prepackaged costumes (I have a vague recollection of a Spanish Senorita costume one year) and once she made me a poodle skirt so I could be a '50s girl (you rock, mom!) but mostly her idea of Halloween costumes was finding an animal to make out of sweats and yarn. For several years in a row, I ended up being a black cat. Black sweat pants, black sweat shirt. Yarn tail. Black ears bought at a costume store. And as practical as that was--yes it kept me warm and yes it was financially sensible--I didn't really enjoy wearing it. Why?
IT WAS BORING.
A few minutes ago, a girl at the door said to me, "I remember your house. I remember you from last year." And I told her, "I remember you too. You were on the road." And then she got that oh-yes-I-remember-and-do-you-remember-that-too look in her eyes, because she must have realized I was referring not to Halloween of last year, but to the day after, when she was riding her bike down my street, and I was in my garden, and she waved at me and I waved back, and then she told me with her smile that she liked what I'd done for Halloween the night before. Really, it's a lesson I wish more parents would keep in mind--
Kids remember when you invest time in them.
Even if it does mean taking forty minutes to hang cobwebs the right way, when normally you would have done it in five. And if a few black paper bats hanging from the porch roof say "you're important to me" in their own unique construction paper way, imagine how much more impact the actual words carry.
My cats aren't so thrilled about all the loud music (I'm playing the theme to the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland) and all the knocking and all the weird small people on my porch. My cat Boo is hiding under my desk (right by my feet) and Taylor has buried herself somewhere deep within the underworld beneath my bed. I hope she is at least kind enough to kill a few spiders while she's down there.
I started with 199 pieces of candy. I now have 102 pieces left. That's what, 97 kids so far? A lot of slasher masks and witches and princesses. One boy dressed as Tigger (who was a little too old to be Tigger, really...) two boys dressed as Simpson characters. One dad wearing a bright red witch hat who was trick or treating for his hospitalized daughter. Several infants dressed as teddy bears, several superheroes (mostly batman). One Dorothy, one Red Riding Hood. Five trick or treaters got their various assortment of wings (bug, fairy, angel, and unclassified) tangled in the fake cobwebs (hey, what can I say, that stuff is tricky) and one boy wore a green hat that was so enormous he got caught in the spooky ripped up sheet I have hanging at the front of the porch. No ghosts this year so far...unless I count the 8-year-old boy who was dressed as Michael Jackson. Seriously, should that count as the King of Pop himself, or should that fall into the ghost category? Probably both.
Make that 105 kids happily served so far. Wait... 107. One girl on my porch just told me, "You have a really spooky house here." "Thank you," I said. "I tried." (Ain't that the truth!) and then a boy/vampire said, "Whatever you do, don't go to that house over there. It's really scary. They have a fog machine and a werewolf...I was attacked by a werewolf..." He clambered down my stairs while staring vaguely in a direction across the street.
Happy Halloween!
I love it all, though. I love handing out candy to all the kids. I love hanging up bats and cobwebs. I love carving pumpkins. I've decided I love Halloween now as an adult more than I did as a kid. I see it this way: I still get all the candy I want (true, the downside is that I have to buy it, but on the upside I have no more bad trick-or-treating years) and I still get to dress up (this year I'm wearing a wicked-looking carnival mask). But now, I get to decorate the house however I want, and I get to stay up as late as I want watching spooky movies, and I get D-all-of-the-above in the comfort of my own home.
I remember as a kid I had certain pet peeves about Halloween, and I've decided to let my inner child vent, since I never really had the chance to vent when I was seven.
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number one? Adults who don't take the time to hang fake cobwebs properly. For some reason, this always bugged me as a kid. If you take the time to hang them the right way, they look amazing and spooky and fantastic. Hang them the wrong way and they look like Santa Claus walked past your house while he had a bad case of mange. Big tufts of white fluff fluttering wildly on porches and fences--just who are you trying to fool? Gee, some spider went spastic on your front porch. Oooo, I'm really scared. Come on. No self-respecting spider would ever weave a web like that for Halloween, and if he did, he'd probably kill himself for shame the next morning. But isn't that just like an adult? Too much in a hurry to take the time to string them up correctly so they look real, and then say "ah well, the kids won't notice." Yes. They will. Kids are particularly good judges of holiday decorating, and if they could, they'd probably vote you off the island, er, neighborhood. Especially if you give out lame candy. Which brings me to...
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number two. Lame candy. Anything with chocolate is the RIGHT candy to hand out on Halloween. There is one exception: chocolate and raisins. Whoever thought up that combination was smoking something. Anything with tootsie rolls? Yuck. Dum dums? Way too small, even for a kid. Jolly Ranchers? Eeh. Only the apple flavor. The other flavors? Bleh. As a kid I always wondered, do adults ever even eat candy? Because if they did, they would NEVER buy any of the above. It's just too cruel.
Childhood Halloween pet peeve number three. Boring costumes. My mother (love you mom!) never really put a lot of thought into our Halloween costumes. Once or twice she let me wear prepackaged costumes (I have a vague recollection of a Spanish Senorita costume one year) and once she made me a poodle skirt so I could be a '50s girl (you rock, mom!) but mostly her idea of Halloween costumes was finding an animal to make out of sweats and yarn. For several years in a row, I ended up being a black cat. Black sweat pants, black sweat shirt. Yarn tail. Black ears bought at a costume store. And as practical as that was--yes it kept me warm and yes it was financially sensible--I didn't really enjoy wearing it. Why?
IT WAS BORING.
A few minutes ago, a girl at the door said to me, "I remember your house. I remember you from last year." And I told her, "I remember you too. You were on the road." And then she got that oh-yes-I-remember-and-do-you-remember-that-too look in her eyes, because she must have realized I was referring not to Halloween of last year, but to the day after, when she was riding her bike down my street, and I was in my garden, and she waved at me and I waved back, and then she told me with her smile that she liked what I'd done for Halloween the night before. Really, it's a lesson I wish more parents would keep in mind--
Kids remember when you invest time in them.
Even if it does mean taking forty minutes to hang cobwebs the right way, when normally you would have done it in five. And if a few black paper bats hanging from the porch roof say "you're important to me" in their own unique construction paper way, imagine how much more impact the actual words carry.
My cats aren't so thrilled about all the loud music (I'm playing the theme to the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland) and all the knocking and all the weird small people on my porch. My cat Boo is hiding under my desk (right by my feet) and Taylor has buried herself somewhere deep within the underworld beneath my bed. I hope she is at least kind enough to kill a few spiders while she's down there.
I started with 199 pieces of candy. I now have 102 pieces left. That's what, 97 kids so far? A lot of slasher masks and witches and princesses. One boy dressed as Tigger (who was a little too old to be Tigger, really...) two boys dressed as Simpson characters. One dad wearing a bright red witch hat who was trick or treating for his hospitalized daughter. Several infants dressed as teddy bears, several superheroes (mostly batman). One Dorothy, one Red Riding Hood. Five trick or treaters got their various assortment of wings (bug, fairy, angel, and unclassified) tangled in the fake cobwebs (hey, what can I say, that stuff is tricky) and one boy wore a green hat that was so enormous he got caught in the spooky ripped up sheet I have hanging at the front of the porch. No ghosts this year so far...unless I count the 8-year-old boy who was dressed as Michael Jackson. Seriously, should that count as the King of Pop himself, or should that fall into the ghost category? Probably both.
Make that 105 kids happily served so far. Wait... 107. One girl on my porch just told me, "You have a really spooky house here." "Thank you," I said. "I tried." (Ain't that the truth!) and then a boy/vampire said, "Whatever you do, don't go to that house over there. It's really scary. They have a fog machine and a werewolf...I was attacked by a werewolf..." He clambered down my stairs while staring vaguely in a direction across the street.
Happy Halloween!
Monday, August 3, 2009
My Missing Umphf
I seem to have misplaced my umphf. I lost it sometime last week, and I spent most of my time wondering where it went. I think it wandered away while I was reading The Book of Artix Wolfe. It's a great read--if I'd known that I probably wouldn't have started it at that moment in my life, because the book had me so enthralled that I wasn't paying attention to my umphf. Off it skittered, so when the book was finished and it was time to get back to work, my umphf wasn't there to help me get off the couch. Then, just when I thought I would finally get it back, I had a bunch of interruptions, and away my umphf went again. It's been a horrible week without it. I think I've found it at last, but my umphf is really going to have to work double time to make up for all the workload that's piled up.
My umphf has certain likes and dislikes. It likes regular mealtimes and a regular sleep pattern, so as long as I eat well three times a day and go to bed and wake up at regular times, my umphf usually remains a tamed beast. It dislikes heat, so when the temperature rises my umphf get quite unruly. It likes getting things done, but it gets overwhelmed if there's too much work for too long, and then my umphf resembles a rebellious teenager. At some point, it turns on the music far too loud, slams the door, and starts head-banging while I pound on the wall and demand that it comes out.
To sum it all up, my umphf needs balance. When the balance goes, so does my umphf. No day trips, either. My umphf goes on a week-long all expenses paid trip without me.
I'm going to get to work now before my umphf skips town again.
My umphf has certain likes and dislikes. It likes regular mealtimes and a regular sleep pattern, so as long as I eat well three times a day and go to bed and wake up at regular times, my umphf usually remains a tamed beast. It dislikes heat, so when the temperature rises my umphf get quite unruly. It likes getting things done, but it gets overwhelmed if there's too much work for too long, and then my umphf resembles a rebellious teenager. At some point, it turns on the music far too loud, slams the door, and starts head-banging while I pound on the wall and demand that it comes out.
To sum it all up, my umphf needs balance. When the balance goes, so does my umphf. No day trips, either. My umphf goes on a week-long all expenses paid trip without me.
I'm going to get to work now before my umphf skips town again.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
The Wisdom of the Ancients
Just don't tell my grandma I referred to her as ancient...
In case you haven't noticed, it's hot. Well, here at least it's hot. I don't have AC in my home, and in my desperation I decided to try on old trick my grandma used in her home.
Wet bedsheets.
The trick is that by hanging wet bedsheets around the house in areas of air circulation (like a fan) you can cool the house. Last week I tried it, and it worked. The world outside rose to a hell-blasting 98 degrees, but inside it stayed perfectly even at 80. I was impressed. Grandma was right.
I was reminded of my roses. About a month or so ago, I bought some anti-fungus spray to treat them for powdery mildew. The spray cost a fortune and didn't even last long enough to treat all my plants. In frustration, I turned to a garden tips book that gave me an old, very simple concoction to use: 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 quarts water, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap. It worked just as well as the expensive stuff and cost a fraction less.
My philosophy professor used to rail against what he called the snobbery of modernism--that we "moderns" have a disdain for anything that's old. We are progressive, modern snobbery says, and the past is backwards. We know better, modern snobbery says, and the ancients were ignorant.
"Wrong, wrong, wrong!" my professor would have exclaimed, and he would have smacked the podium if the fire in his belly was burning particularly hot that day. His campaign against such snobbery was one of his touchstones in every philosophy course I took with him. I suppose he was trying to pound a little sense into as many freshman undergrads as he could.
Wet bedsheets. Baking soda, water, and liquid soap. Certainly worked better and cheaper than modern progressive techniques.
I think my philosophy professor would be proud of my very un-modern approach at tackling these problems. I wonder if he'd give me extra credit...
In case you haven't noticed, it's hot. Well, here at least it's hot. I don't have AC in my home, and in my desperation I decided to try on old trick my grandma used in her home.
Wet bedsheets.
The trick is that by hanging wet bedsheets around the house in areas of air circulation (like a fan) you can cool the house. Last week I tried it, and it worked. The world outside rose to a hell-blasting 98 degrees, but inside it stayed perfectly even at 80. I was impressed. Grandma was right.
I was reminded of my roses. About a month or so ago, I bought some anti-fungus spray to treat them for powdery mildew. The spray cost a fortune and didn't even last long enough to treat all my plants. In frustration, I turned to a garden tips book that gave me an old, very simple concoction to use: 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 quarts water, 1/2 teaspoon liquid dish soap. It worked just as well as the expensive stuff and cost a fraction less.
My philosophy professor used to rail against what he called the snobbery of modernism--that we "moderns" have a disdain for anything that's old. We are progressive, modern snobbery says, and the past is backwards. We know better, modern snobbery says, and the ancients were ignorant.
"Wrong, wrong, wrong!" my professor would have exclaimed, and he would have smacked the podium if the fire in his belly was burning particularly hot that day. His campaign against such snobbery was one of his touchstones in every philosophy course I took with him. I suppose he was trying to pound a little sense into as many freshman undergrads as he could.
Wet bedsheets. Baking soda, water, and liquid soap. Certainly worked better and cheaper than modern progressive techniques.
I think my philosophy professor would be proud of my very un-modern approach at tackling these problems. I wonder if he'd give me extra credit...
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Happens in Three's
Today was a long, long day--the kind of day when I want nothing more than the comfort and solace of my home. But, as soon as I crossed my threshold...
I spilled beer on my best work pants (and it wasn't even my beer!)
My cat peed on my favorite floor rug
My toilet overflowed
This happened in the space of about an hour.
I'm going to bed now. I'm going to wrap myself up in my pinkie binkie, which is reserved especially for times such as these, and I'm going to pretend that the last hour or so of my life never happened.
I spilled beer on my best work pants (and it wasn't even my beer!)
My cat peed on my favorite floor rug
My toilet overflowed
This happened in the space of about an hour.
I'm going to bed now. I'm going to wrap myself up in my pinkie binkie, which is reserved especially for times such as these, and I'm going to pretend that the last hour or so of my life never happened.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Evil Omens
It's been a little while since my last post, I know. Mostly the time has been spent working, and the time before that was spent recovering. New Year's Eve saw me sick in bed, surrounded by boxes of Kleenex and empty packets of Theraflu. The noises and curses I groaned and moaned were so unusual and so complex that some linguists might have considered them to be a new language.
But I'm better now.
I did wonder, though, when the clock reached midnight and I listened to people banging on pots and yelling strange things and setting off car alarms (and the naughty people setting off firecrackers, though fireworks are banned here in the mountains) if starting 2009 sick in my bed was some sort of evil omen for the rest of the year.
We shall see.
But I'm better now.
I did wonder, though, when the clock reached midnight and I listened to people banging on pots and yelling strange things and setting off car alarms (and the naughty people setting off firecrackers, though fireworks are banned here in the mountains) if starting 2009 sick in my bed was some sort of evil omen for the rest of the year.
We shall see.
Monday, December 22, 2008
I'm Dreaming Of A...
It's snowing again.
When I was a child, I prayed very very hard throughout the month of December. Mostly my requests were selfish at best--that on Christmas day I would receive the things I wanted, that my ensemble would sing better than any other during the school Christmas performance, etc. Always at the top of my prayer list was the request for a white Christmas. I can remember only once when we had an actual white Christmas. The next year, I prayed doubly hard for a repeat performance, but didn't get it. One year, we had snow the week before, and my father tried to comfort me.
"See, there's snow on the ground," he said, "so it's still a white Christmas."
To my young and dissatisfied mind? Hardly.
This year, it seems I will have my white Christmas, and even though a heavy snow storm will keep me from seeing at least half of my family members on the day, a part of me is thrilled at the chance of it. I can still feel the child-side of me hopping up and down a little at the beauty and mystery of falling snow.
I'm beginning to think that as we age, we stop lifting up our faces to feel those small, wet, white crystal feathers chilling our cheeks, and instead we only see the brown slush in the gutters and the chain checks and the ice patches. I can feel this transformation of childish awe to adult practicality taking place within me, I must admit. My car is an igloo-shaped lump bordered on three sides by a berm of snow four feet tall, and it will probably stay that way for another week at least because I'm disheartened at the very thought of the work it will take to rescue it.
More snow, says the weather forecast? Well, isn't that just great.
The snow falling tonight isn't like the snow storm we had last week. This snow pecks and scratches at the windows, like some bird trying to get in. Frankly, the sound is a little unnerving to me at the moment. I doubt it would unsettle me quite so much if it were day. Or if we hadn't already had three feet of snow the week before.
And yet, I still caught myself singing "Let It Snow" this evening.
When I was a child, I prayed very very hard throughout the month of December. Mostly my requests were selfish at best--that on Christmas day I would receive the things I wanted, that my ensemble would sing better than any other during the school Christmas performance, etc. Always at the top of my prayer list was the request for a white Christmas. I can remember only once when we had an actual white Christmas. The next year, I prayed doubly hard for a repeat performance, but didn't get it. One year, we had snow the week before, and my father tried to comfort me.
"See, there's snow on the ground," he said, "so it's still a white Christmas."
To my young and dissatisfied mind? Hardly.
This year, it seems I will have my white Christmas, and even though a heavy snow storm will keep me from seeing at least half of my family members on the day, a part of me is thrilled at the chance of it. I can still feel the child-side of me hopping up and down a little at the beauty and mystery of falling snow.
I'm beginning to think that as we age, we stop lifting up our faces to feel those small, wet, white crystal feathers chilling our cheeks, and instead we only see the brown slush in the gutters and the chain checks and the ice patches. I can feel this transformation of childish awe to adult practicality taking place within me, I must admit. My car is an igloo-shaped lump bordered on three sides by a berm of snow four feet tall, and it will probably stay that way for another week at least because I'm disheartened at the very thought of the work it will take to rescue it.
More snow, says the weather forecast? Well, isn't that just great.
The snow falling tonight isn't like the snow storm we had last week. This snow pecks and scratches at the windows, like some bird trying to get in. Frankly, the sound is a little unnerving to me at the moment. I doubt it would unsettle me quite so much if it were day. Or if we hadn't already had three feet of snow the week before.
And yet, I still caught myself singing "Let It Snow" this evening.
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