snot loaf

along with insects, weird things floating in the water, and chatty crazy people, i seem to attract food industry horror stories. i'm not sure if i perceive these horrors more often than other people because i'm a hyper-vigilant person, or if the restaurant gods are actually mischievous, but there it is: gross things happen when i try to eat out.

and it's funny because i've worked in the food industry. i'm very supportive of wait-staff. i never make a fuss or behave in a rude or obnoxious manner in restaurants, and i always tip at *least* 15%, so i can't imagine that it's restaurant karma. although... hm. i suppose it could be germ karma, since i am rather, um, shall we say, 'aware' of the ways in which potentially harmful microbes can be transfered....hm.

anyway, aside from the very ordinary assortment of discovered hairs, bugs, and incorrectly filled orders, the best story i have happened at subway. i ran in quickly on my busy, errand-filled lunch hour to grab a sandwich. i ordered. the woman nodded, and grabbed a pair of those plastic sanitary gloves that all subway workers wear to assure cleanliness. she put the gloves on, and stuck her left index finger deeply into her left nostril.

she stopped, suddenly aware of what she had done, her finger still buried up to the first knuckle, but safely protected from her own boogers by the plastic glove. she stared at me. i stared at her. the rest of the world came to a standstill, except for maybe one lone cricket sounding in the distance. time passed.

she stood transfixed, like an animal caught in the headlights of my awareness. it was like she suddenly realised that air is a two-way medium and that if she could see me, i could see her, and the cogs began to slowly grind to life as she tried to decide what to do.

should she apologise profusely, remove the finger, wash her hands, change gloves and just keep on apologising and offering me free stuff?

should she apologise, distract me with a few brain fart jokes and try to get me on her side as a fellow harried person who sometimes just did the craziest things, as she washed up and changed gloves, offering me free stuff?

or, should she pretend that nothing happened and carry on as normal?

evidently she chose the latter, because, keeping perfect, startled, eye-contact with me, she slowly removed her finger, and then slowly reached over to the bread i had requested and wrapped her fingers around it, preparing to cut it for my sandwich.

at this point i jumped about four inches in the air and squeaked something about having changed my mind as i bolted for the door. as i was leaving the manager rushed out from the back, grabbed the snot loaf and waved it in the air as she shouted, "i'll make it for you! i'll make it for you!"

not to be thus reassured i was already out the door and halfway down the street.

and, you know, this is just the tip of a giant iceberg of restaurant stories that i have. most people are incredulous when they hear claims that before we die we eat two pounds each of stranger-drool, insects, hair, and rat turds, but i totally believe it.

what's she building down there?

something weird happened to me a week ago. i became obsessed with the basement.

it was a few short days before i was scheduled to depart on a much-needed holiday and there i was, digging out the most obscure boxes, sorting and weeding through their contents, while spinning around cleaning madly like a runaway ferris wheel made of june cleavers.

i actually chafed the insides of my thighs with all the brisk walking about and cleaning.

and, you know, i'm really not a cleaner. i mean, i've lost roommates because i Just Don't Clean.

and i'm not using the word 'obsessed' lightly, either. every night i was up until 4 am, at which point i would reluctantly admit that i should probably go sleep. i would then lie down, only to toss and turn as my thoughts yelled at me.

at the same time i found myself freakishly moody. tears and anger were always barely beneath the surface, and, at one point, as i swept maniacally and wondered why on earth i suddenly cared about my basement, an exercise my class did in grade 11 (?) english came to mind. we were learning the story of parcival as an allegory of human development and wound up doing a number of jungian based personal exploration exercises to compliment our lesson plan. one of them was to design the perfect house in detail. after our houses were completed, we were told that the contents of the basement were supposed to reflect our basic needs and subconscious.

i stopped sweeping up the shocking numbers of fruit fly carcasses and dust bunnies and surveyed my subconscious. all the stress of being alone with a demanding and often difficult child for the past month, added to all the ways i normally beat myself up and fret about what i'm doing or not doing, about my future, about my partner, all of it, swirled around me. i grabbed a scrub brush and attacked.

i couldn't even imagine making it to hawaii. i began to wonder if i was freaking out about the house because part of me knew my plane was going to crash, or something, and i didn't want to leave a mess for my loved ones. i wondered if i was losing my (already suspiciously tenuous feeling) grip on sanity. i wondered a lot of things, growling at any person i had to interact with and protecting the cleanliness i had just created with a vicious ferocity.

this tuesday i flew to hawaii on, i noticed, a surpassingly dirty plane, and while i resisted the urge to clean it, i did glower from time to time at the antique-looking crud seeminlgly caught mid-dribble all around my little fold-up eating table. i'm still feeling unusually emotional, but seeing J has been really lovely. we've been shamelessly slovenly, getting up late and wandering along the beach for hours. the trade winds have been howling, jiggling the coconuts on the trees ominously, and playing with our hair. everyone has banana, papaya and date trees in their yards like we in canada may have spruce or cedar. the flowers smell glorious, and the water is breathtakingly warm, blue, and inviting.

and, to sweeten the deal, when i do finally go home, it'll be to a clean house!

the leprafurger

this is a story that step-bug wrote for school. they were asked to draw an imaginary creature and then to write something that described the drawing and what the creature is like. j chose to draw a leprafurger, and what follows is his description:

The Leprafurger


The Leprafurger preferably eats pickled staplers through the blue stars on his feet. He is a singular species, and can be found prosperous in Southern Arabia. When in hibernation, the Leprafurger unconsciously eats nuns through a straw. All the black lines and dots on the Leprafurger are used to scare away the farmer that is constantly trying to baptise him. Lemon is his favourite word, though he hates limes. There is no animal that doesn’t fear him, and he lives in a tree. The only thing the Leprafurger is afraid of is mustard. He uses his giant brown thumbs to hear. He is in constant solitude when not being chased by the farmer and his holy water. He uses that time to tell his only friend, Fred the worm, that he feels the inner machinations of his mind are an enigma, and that when he changes color for no reason, he says it’s because he must obey the inscrutable exhortations of his soul. Since he uses his thumbs as ears, he uses his ears as thumbs. The symbols on his body, as in the hourglasses and oddly drawn ‘4’s’, are graffiti as a result of sucking nuns through a straw. He has an average life span of 300 years.

will you be my briny valentine?

i've fallen in love.

with sauerkraut.

there isn't much else to say, really. sauerkraut, you are perfect. salty, tangy, full of friendly bacteria because you are un-pasteurized, happily peppered with little caraway nubbins.... who needs hot dogs? i eat you by the bowl-full.

* * *

i first came across this crispy, juicy, unpasturized sauerkraut at the annual victoria health show last weekend, and, after just one sample, bought a whole bottle (and then ate all the other samples). i mean, how could i not? it was like eating crunchy, shredded dill pickles, which, as any of you who know me will confirm, i can eat by the jar-full (pickles i'm talking about here. and olives).

other highlights of the show included this rogue band of vegan seventh-day-adventist senior citizens bent on curing the world's problem with heart disease by touting the benefits of a plant based diet; alarming looking 'probes' filled with tumbled semi-precious stones and attached to very large generators; a woman who would hold coat hangers in front of her, as dowsing rods, then move them dramatically apart from each other to show the expansion of your energy field if you put your hand on your head to "centre" yourself; and john gray himself, touting his latest 'men are from mars' book.

as soon as i noticed john gray i vowed to give that guy a piece of my mind, but as i paused to organize my fit i think i was distracted by the electric amethyst 'probes' and forgot all about him until after i had left. oh well.

true bear stories i heard the other weekend

1: up in bella coola mum and john had a boarder in their house who was from malawi, africa. he had won a scholarship, and had decided to use it studying forestry on the north-west coast of canada, of all places.

so, as he was traipsing around in the woods one day, the man from afirca jumped through some bushes down into a small dell that was totally clear - except for the grizzly bear in it.

the bear, only a few steps away from him, stood up menacingly, and then lunged forward, pinning him to the ground.

man and bear regarded each other, face to grizzled, rank, fetid face.

then the bear gave the man's terrified expression one giant lick and promptly ran away.

the next day, the man was back on the plane for malawi -- you know, where you only have to worry about lions?



2: after visiting several times, the same african man fell in love with, and married, a nuxalk woman in bella coola.

after the wedding, he drove to the large, open dump to get rid of the garbage from the ceremony and subsequent dinner.

the dump is often a destination for the few tourist busses that come to the area because it's typically full of bears, and this day was no exception.

most of the bears seemed to be foraging at a distance, so the man from africa climbed into the back of his pick-up and busied himself throwing bags over the side, until a bear jumped up onto the flatbed itself. the man paused, blinked, then passed it a bag.



3: in bella coola there's a youth program that aims at (re)acquainting local kids with indigenous first nations spirituality and wilderness survival skills. part of the program entails enduring a "solo", where each kid is sent off alone, or nearly alone, into the bush for a day or two with a potato and two matches.

so, this visiting german girl found her way into the program and was on her solo with two other kids. that night they decided to sleep by the side of the river. they were out in the open, tentless, in sleeping bags, probably smelling like the dinner they had just eaten, dozing soundly, when the girl was woken up by what she assumed were the snorts and snufflings of the camp dog.

she was lying on her stomach, but when she opened her eyes she saw that the creature in question was really a bear who probably thought she looked, and smelled, like a sack of garbage in her sleeping bag in the dark.

he sniffled and snuffed, huffed and nosed at her, for what felt like an eternity. finally the suspense was too much for the poor girl and she thought to the bear, "If you're going to bite me, just bit me now and get it over with!." so, right at that instant, it did.

she screamed, of course, and the poor bear had never heard a bag of garbage scream before, so it ran away terrified. the girl, on the other hand, was taken into the clinic and given all the necessary shots and medications for a bear bite to the bum, after which she elected to rejoin her solo comrads and finish the program. brave girl!