If you are interested in the recipe for this amazing taste-gasm-o-rama, click on the photo and you’ll be redirected to Les’ website for a step-by-step.

Here in Muskegon with Mike and Les, we’ve spent some time lamenting about how much we miss food in Portland. Though, I have to admit, being fed by Mrs. Naramore, I don’t miss much. Yesterday she whipped up what were inarguably the best pancakes I’ve had in my life. They were light, fluffy, delicate, and strongly reminiscent of donuts.

While sitting in a post-donut/pancake bliss I started wandering around in a culinary cloud talking about all the other things that could be delicious, in theory. Somehow, perhaps inevitably, we came around to the subject of pie.

Me: You know what would be good? Make an apple pie… throw some bacon on top. Weave it through a crust lattice.

She: Ooooh. That would  be good. It might not be easy to execute. Putting it inside would make more sense. Add some bourbon to the mixture, too.

Me: And then, maybe like some pecans in there.

She: I think the bite of a walnut would be better. Hold up better in the mixture too.

Me: How about, when you plate it… some blue cheese with it?

She: Fuck it. We are making this pie.

And so we did.

My spastic food based imagination + her unparalleled cooking smarts and flawless execution = Amazing taste-gasm-o-rama. Today talking about pie again, some more, we ended up coming up with the idea of a coconut creme pie with a pear compote. Clearly, we are a devestating team. Our Pie Empire is just waiting to rise up and smite all pretenders.

Soon enough, it will be a memory.

Dress up is my favorite game

I always manage to turn the celebration of my birthday into a multi-day affair. Sometimes, in particular circumstances, the festivities will go on for weeks. 

This last weekend I hosted a party for my peeps. I was worried that the classic party night, of the last Saturday before Halloween would present stiff competition for other goings on, but everyone I really wanted to see made a point to come see me and bestow their birthday wishes. Plus I got to see some friends who had been all too long absent from my life. It was lovely.

I did order too much beer, and now probably need to have another  party for the sole purpose of emptying the kegs. Either that or offer trick-or-treat beers to parents…

 Plusalso, the actual birthday birthday HAS YET TO HAPPEN!!!

Yay.

 

This is because I am a bit of a control freak. Having spent much of my childhood in circumstances which were chaotic and unsettled has turned me into a person who prefers a rather high degree of consistency. This is not to say I cannot enjoy spontaneity, or that I crumble in the face of the unexpected, but it is rather the case that in my day-to-day endeavors, I am happier if I know what to expect. To this end, I give a lot of thought to why things are the way they are, why I have made the choices I have, what drives me, what I might want to do differently, and occasionally, how my actions affect other people.

Turns out, not everyone does this. This came as a major WTF when it was finally explained to me. Apparently, many people do what they do without giving it a tremendous amount of thought. They don’t chase themselves around in their heads, analyzing the motive and origin of every action  they have ever taken. Weird, right?

So, I like to ask a lot of questions. Questions to which I want very specific answers.

By which I do not mean I want an answer in particular. I want the truth, whatever that might happen to be. I just want it in scrupulous detail.

“Well, was it that you found it confusing, or just annoying?”

“Did it just surprise you that it turned you on, or are you expanding your notions about your sexuality?”

“Was the whole thing gross, or was it only the texture that bothered you?”

Apparently, some people experience this as The Third Degree, and do not much enjoy the treatment. It is not that I am trying to pick them apart, but to peek inside and understand them better. I think I believe if I do this,  I can remove some of that pesky unpredictability from human behavior. For me, this is just about ensuring a high degree of accuracy in communication to facilitate more accurate predictions about the future.  Like any data, the more explicit and specific the information is, the better.

Like falling in love, though it happens gradually, there is usually also a moment where it strikes like lightning, that this is now so; true and without question.
I realized this while mulling it over this morning, just how it was that the godmother of my child and I made that transition. I knew in the more general sense; we met on the speech team my first year of college. We weren’t  debate partners and so we didn’t initially spend that much time together. We were in the same orbit, but moving at different speeds and in different trajectories.

After consulting her, we decided it was probably when, at a team dinner, I announced that I wanted to go to the beach and she and her then boyfriend were game for taking off to do this, even though it was already 10 pm. We loaded into the decrepit  VW Bug he was driving and rumbled off to Cannon Beach. The moon was fullish and low and orangey. We lay there on the sand together amusing each other, until about 2 am when I heard a very unfortunate rumbling coming from my midsection. Fucking Montage. I hate that place.

It is no small thing to wander through Seaside at 2am with someone you don’t know all that well desperately searching for facilities. The security guard at the Shilo Inn was sympathetic and let me scamper by at top speed.

When I came back to the car there was some fear that I would be upset to discover that it wouldn’t start, and needed a push. You see, they didn’t know me well enough at the time to know that I come from a long line of finicky cars with all manner of ailments, and that push starting was old hat to this girl.

It is my stated belief that you cannot help but bond with someone after both your car and your bowels fail you in the same evening together.

And now that I think about it, I suppose I can say with surety when I claimed certain other people for my own; Lyza and Emma came to Kah-Nee-Tah with me. Getting drunk in a tee-pee with someone may be unconventional in this day and age, but it was effective in this case. Jeanne spent my birthday with me on a fruitless but nevertheless totally enjoyable quest for hot springs into the gorge. I dragged Hilary to a strip club. Pretty sure I got Catherine that way too…

I like to gather people in, and I like to think about how it was done. To turn over in my mind the wondering about what brought us into the emotional proximity we now enjoy. The work of time is taken to account, but to acknowledge as well the undeniable elements of circumstance that drew us together, that bound us to each other, at last.

If you remember, or have a theory, do tell…

Lyza always manages to take photos of me that I think look the most like I actually look, but good. She captures something that I can never quite manage to, and no one else ever has. I make weird faces, I stand like I am about to wander away at any second. While I perch gape-jawed contemplating the largest fern I have ever seen.

Or I sit in an altogether unladylike position

Or sprawled on the floor like a child.

Or I show the world my armpit.

She got quite a few good ones in Hawaii, but not only those…

Me, in the gutter.

and playing with fire.

Cloudy. 31 (feels like 31)

 

VS

Partly Cloudy. 83 (feels like 85)

 

Yes. And thank you.

Aloha bitches!

We went to H&M and I bought her various accessories because that is what I do.

Then we went out to Ballard and looked at the shoreline a bit. Technically, just Allison and I did this, because by this time, Hodie was interested less in scenery and more in avoiding the drizzle. Which, to be fair, was wise since most of the scenery was clearly visible from the car.

We then went and had dinner at a place called the “Hi-Life” and I can say that the only thing to recommend it was the lovely historic building in which is was situated. The food was underwhelming and overpriced while the service was just plain lousy. Ah well, it was a last resort after Hodie got us kicked out of the first place we went to…

Allison and her husband Michael suggested we go get some ice cream, and they were talking to the right pair of girls. During the course of this outing I kept making accidentally inappropriate comments. By which I mean to say, they were fine in context, I wasn’t trying to be nasty, but then M & A would snort and make them dirty. For example;

M: “You’ll want to take a hard right here.”

me: “Yes because god forbid I do anything that isn’t hard”

(snort, cough,heh)

M: “It looks like Oregon beat Washington 53 to 16”

me: “Yeah, they beat the pants off the huskies and now they’re going to cream the beavers.”

(baha, mert, ha)

Hodie was fairly mystified, thank the baby Jesus.

M also created on purpose hilarity of his own when he said:

“I’m better than average at that; you could call me outcompetent.”

A’s laughter was echoing off the buildings and we had to make sure she didn’t collapse in the street. It was wet there.

(heehee, haha, ahem)