the final countdown

i'm so close.

so close to arriving in cairo and seeing what there is to do.

so close to having my summer and eating it too.

so close to walking away from the crown with my finger in the air.

so close to choosing a final destination.

head down; just go.

thank you nancy drew

while sitting in a colloquium last week, i received a picture text from k.a. showing a page from a book with the words "i'm going to make fortune cookies! i have the recipe right here!"

(apparently back in the 70's caroline keene decided nancy drew could cook and compiled several easily modified recipes into a collection for kids.)

"she's not serious," i thought but then quickly received another picture of a bag filled with white powder asking me if "this was flour."

i pictured the house burning down and sat nervously through the rest of the presentation on carnegie libraries.

when i arrived home, the house was intact and there were cookie-esque items on a plate in the kitchen. no fortunes, but they looked edible.

turns out it was pancake mix, not flour. but i'll be damned, they were tasty. especially with a little maple syrup.

since then, i have come home to delightful muffins, soft bread, and perfect french toast.

hats off to nancy and even more off to k.a. who at age almost 9, is the better cook out of the two of us.

with luck, i won't have to be in the kitchen too much over the next several years. ha! like i have been anyway.

hangover cure

step one: have an apocalyptic dream at 2:30 a.m. that panics you awake

step two: ooze into the kitchen still upset by dream and down three advil with a large jar of water

step three: crawl back into bed for another five hours, hoping the dream does not continue

a regular day, teaching a concept to first-year composition students. a young woman in the front row becomes combative; i ask to speak to her in the hall. we are in the hall and j.w., a professor at isu walks briskly into my classroom and begins writing on the board.

"what are you doing?'
"tell everyone to leave quietly."
"what's going on?"
"just tell everyone to leave."

she then half walks, half jogs out the door. i follow her to get more answers. she just says,
"good luck" and disappears. i sense something is wrong as i watch people start pouring out of the rooms, visibly frightened. i fight my way back to the classroom to get my stuff; it has become a large conference space full of crying, worried, terrified people.

"no signal," whispers someone i should know but cannot identify. i check my cell phone and it's the same "no service" message. i grab my things and attempt to leave, but am stopped by a friend.

"what the hell do you think you are doing?"
"i've got to find kellyn."

no resistance with that explanation.

and then a gap of time. i am wandering through the building that has been stripped of everything, no carpet, no paint, no nothing. people are sealed off into rooms along the side unable to leave; me unable to enter. a giant fan whirls out something foul into the air, and i am stuck on the outside. i have a backpack on my shoulders, a coat in my hand and i cannot find kellyn and i know i am going to die.

checking my phone again, i finally have service and send kellyn a message. "where are you?" within seconds, i received a reply. the screen says, "it's finally here. and it's not the fake one."

wandering the stark white halls, listening to constant low rumbling coming from outside, i search for an exit. as i pass one of the rooms, which intuitively i know to be the only safe places to be, i see j.w. again, playing inside with her son, giggling as her toddles toward her on unsteady one-year old legs. she does not see the woman frantically knocking on the glass, without her own child, feeling life being wrung from her body...

this is the second dream i've had about not being able to find kellyn. i panicked myself wide awake, and it didn't help that i could hear the trains down by the over-pass, rumbling away.

banoffee haiku

sweet toffee filling-

bananas sliced, yummy pie-

boiling cans is weird.

much toffee thanks to d.k. for home-made birthday banoffee pie. blandella can now be jealous.

mini brag moment

i received an email from isu's literary magazine, black rock & sage.

out of 140 submitted poems, they picked 12 to include in this year's edition and mine was one of them.

there's a creative facet to this academic yet. and before i turned 30 too.

let's go bananas

science fair alert!

kellyn's first science project is due next week. she procrastinated until this evening when i gently suggested she consider getting started so as to have enough time to actually do something testable.

after brainstorming and doing a little research, she decided to see if the banana tree i purchased actually does what it says, which is "keeps your bananas fresher longer!"

she has a banana on the tree, one on the counter, and one in a ziploc bag on the counter. she will record her observations over the next 7 days to determine which banana turns brown quicker.

i told her i did a science project once and she was the result.

she was not amused.

forget campbell's

i'm sorry you're sick she said

and the kitchen was her only home

until i sat wrapped in a red velvet robe, two sizes too big,

feasting on neighborly goodness

made with chicken.

thanks d.p. for being the kind of neighbor i forgot existed. the soup is gone, but in the immortal words of metallica, "the memory remains..."