Category Archives: doing it wrong

Remember how I was whining that I got the pumpkins in so late I probably wasn’t going to get any?

Look at my great crop. The biggest one was out in the front yard. I’ve never had problems with kids grabbing my pumpkins on Halloween but I thought this one looked too tempting so I brought it in.

The only thing is they didn’t get as orangey as the heirlooms usually do.

These are two that were ready earlier. They’ve already been cleaned off and brought into the house.

I’m going to have to start giving these away. There’s no way we can eat that much pumpkin.

It’s taken me the last two days but I’m caught up on a bunch of stuff. My desk is almost cleaned off. I can see the bottom of my email box. I whacked the hedge and weeded a bit in the front yard. I made a pie (apple). I finished a giant book. We found strawberries at the market this morning. They were pretty and delicious. The secret? Hermiston.

We made eggs when I was in CA. (Relax, the doctor is not worried about my Dad’s cholesterol.) I love how dated the packaging looks.

I had a nice memory of my sister giving these to my Dad when we were kids but Dad said he bought them long after we’d grown up.

I still like my memory.

I had a story published online during the summer: Estelle Makes the Casino Run.

This month Innsmouth Free Press has a poll where you can vote for your favorite story in the issue.

It’s time to vote for your favourite story in our special, Multiethnic fourth fiction issue, which was published June 2010. Read the issue here and then vote for your favourite story.

The writer with the most votes gets $50 CAD and bragging rights. Go here to vote and give an author some extra cash. Voting is open October 6 to November 6, 2010. You can leave comments about the stories, but you must vote using the link above.

Co-worker decided to clean off his desk a couple weeks ago.

Here’s my filing pile. It took me most of yesterday and today but it’s done. For now. Filing is like laundry or weeding. The sense of accomplishment is momentary.

What is that thing in the upper left?

Isn’t this cute? I’m not sure how well it will look in the photo but the paperdoll is named Pam. My Auntie gave this to me a long time ago and I had sitting around forever and then I saw someone on a blog had displayed the same paperdoll just like this.

I don’t have a cutesie bone in my body but I think this is adorable and I smile every time I look at it.

* * *

I don’t want to jinx myself but I have a wide open weekend and I think I can get caught up on all this stuff that’s been stacking up everywhere like emails and bill paying and this stack of stuff on my desk that needs attention. Plus if it stops raining I have yard stuff to do. And I’d love to fix this blog layout so I don’t cringe everytime I look at it.

We’ll see.

When I was a teenager I was obsessed with gymnastics. I subscribed to a magazine and read every issue cover to cover over and over. I watched whatever meager coverage TV had to offer. I took classes and competed in high school.

I was never very good and I was terrible in competition because I got so nervous.

Since those days I’ve followed intermittently. If I saw it was on TV I would watch the Olympics or maybe a World Championship. But I’ve been out of the loop for a very long time.

But thanks to the super-time-suck qualities of the Internet I got back into it this year. You can find ancient gymnastics all over youtube. Remember Natalia Shaposhnikova? I got sucked into both collegiate and elite. No one is more surprised than I am.

Back in the day you had to get most of your gymnastics on the Wide World of Sports and it was greatly sanitized and usually you had to sit through boxing or something before it came on. It usually only captured the three gymnasts who made the podium who were almost always from Communist countries and maybe the best American gymnast or if there was a spectacular wipeout.

I just watched most of the World Championships on cable and it’s not quite so formal with the commentators including both crazy enthusiasm and some catty comments. But it was really fun, too. In both men’s and women’s there were competitors in the event finals from countries you never used to see: Greece, Israel, Italy, Brazil. And the event finals were super fun with lots of spectacular performances. I can’t remember when I had so much fun watching gymnastics.

I hardly ever do this but I’m going to link to a clip. Seriously, watch this. It’s just over a minute. The World Championships were in Rotterdam and this is the hometown boy on high bar. He’s adorable and in orange. Even Bob watched the high bar finals and said, “I can’t believe you got me watching gymnastics.”

I’ve seen this at least 5 times and it peels my face off every time: Epke Zonderland event final on high bar.

If you squint when you look at this photo, can you see that business called Skinnidip?

Until very recently that was a Swatch store.

Swatch? Remember? Those trendy watches that were huge about 100 years ago when I was in college? Yeah, they are still around. And they have actual stores. Or at least they had a store in Downtown Portland. If you put it in a search engine the Portland store will still come up.

Every single time I walked by that store I made some sort of mocking remark about “Seriously, Swatch?” “Can you believe there’s still a Swatch store?” and “Who has a Swatch?”

Then, seemingly overnight, it was replaced by some sort of trendy frozen yogurt place with long lines out the door.

I reacted as you might guess. “OMG! What happened to the Swatch store? Where will we get our Swatches now?”

I really miss that store.

I can’t get a break.

Remember several years ago when my digestive system turned on me? (If you really want to recall the story start on April 10 and work your way backward).

I guess my digestive system decided after all the running around hither and yon and then the ginormous pile of things I had to do in order to just keep up, it would do a junior version of that again. It melted down on Thursday while I was having my huge busy day. It commenced with the churning and roiling. I lost all interest in getting food into me until about Saturday night.

After Thursday, I spent my time on the couch. On the plus side I got my DVR from 48% to 12% plus I watched gymnastics which will probably be a future post.

I ate lunch and dinner today and I did a bit of writing so let’s all agree that I’m moving forward now and all setbacks are history.

Here’s what you’ve been waiting for: the little pies baked into cupcakes post. Starring Kira the superstar baker.

Find a mini-cupcake tin for the pies. Make pie crust or use something pre-made. Whichever is easier.

Make tiny little pies and fill them with a spoonful of cherries. (Or whatever sounds good to you.) Put a top on them and seal. Vent them.

Bake them in the oven with the dog watching.

Line a regular cupcake tin with liners. Put a little cupcake batter in the cups and then drop the baked mini-pie in it.

Cover with batter. Don’t get carried away because as it bakes it will cover it.

Bake and enjoy.

Flowers in the backyard.

I generally don’t approve of waving around family drama on the Internet however I realize there are folks that know me that have only seen bits and pieces of this story here or on Facebook and would probably appreciate a few more details.

My Dad had a heart attack last week. It was scary for a little bit but he got a stent and went home a couple days later. I spent some time in Orleans hanging out with him and helping around the place. He is doing fantastic and other than maybe a little low on stamina he is his regular self.

Other than the reason for being there, it was a great week with gorgeous weather. We went for walks and made lunch and puttered around. I worked outside. Whenever I wanted a snack I stood under the fig tree and ate figs.

And now I’m home. So at the end of last month I had my Mom for a visit and a few days after she left I went to Atlanta and a few days after that I rushed off to California.

There a bunch of people expecting things from me like love notes, information I promised to pass along and photos I promised to print and send. I owe crits and have neglected to follow up on getting together with some folks like I said I would.

I’m getting to it.

So I was well on my way to a personal best driving record from Orleans, CA to Vancouver WA (I’m sure there’s a way I could embed a map if I could be bothered to try) when the electronic freeway sign warned of a wreck at milepost 266.

Sure enough by milepost 263 everything had slowed down. Then all three lanes stopped.

I’ve never been on a total freeway stop that I can remember.

Cars began doing all sorts of creative things to backtrack and get off the freeway.

They turned around and drove backwards on the shoulder and then turned on their signals and crossed the stopped lanes at the spot where they could reach the freeway exit.

I had a big bottle of water, Meredith cookies and a rock block of Ozzy Osbourne. I handled it pretty well.

I got out of the car and crawled on the hood to take these photos.

I wanted to get on the roof but it was sorta slippery and I wasn’t in the mood to fall and break my neck with a large crowd of onlookers.

We got going again after 20 minutes and when we finally reached something interesting it was the worse excuse for an accident ever. It was a fender bender on the other side of the freeway.

I very responsibly took my hands off the wheel and my eyes off the road to take photos but somehow must have done it wrong because they aren’t on the camera.

I think maybe the fender bender was due to lookie-loos for the cleared accident on our side of the freeway. There was an ancient motor home that looked like Godzilla had taken a bite out of it towed to the side and a lone orange cone guarding it. Still, not too impressive for a three lane, 20-minute closure.

I still got home in good time and now I’m tired and overwhelmed. My sweetheart fed me a great dinner and I’ve got the car unloaded.

Many photos and tales to come. Supposedly. We’ll see. My track record recently has been pretty bad.

This is the basil that I grew from a box of crackers. We had pesto the other night. Not sure what I’ll do with the rest. Pumpkin patch in the background.

I’m still way behind on everything. I haven’t had time to catch up and now I’m headed down to California tomorrow for an unexpected family matter. I may be offline for as long as week.

Updates when I return including the cup-pies we made in Atlanta.

As per always, I’m short on time here.

I got back from Atlanta yesterday evening and I’ve been trying to get caught up ever since. And a super busy week ahead.

Here’s one photo from the trip.

Lila is a little overweight so if she wants a treat, she gets a carrot. She acts like she’s really excited about the carrot but whenever she takes it to the rug to eat it, she turns around and gives a look that says, “When I rule the earth, you people are toast.”

Kira didn’t believe me so here is photographic evidence of Lila giving the stink eye. That orange thing is her carrot.