I felt that today was perfect for cleaning up the tiny little garden plot I have by my doorstep. The weather is beautiful, the birds are singing, and I always find the earth restorative.

I’m afraid to go into the bathroom. Ass Burger Boy emerged from it, no longer resembling Jesus. Oh, he still has the Jesus hair, but the beard, it is gone, and I suspect is mostly decorating the bathroom sink. Holy facial hair, Batman! The sink, it is clean! I guess it’s safe to hose myself down now, after digging in the garden.

I’ve been rather cranky of late, not feeling perky, and having childhood issues emerging. I decided when I started this blogging thing that I was going to be very careful what I said about my family, because there is a member or two who have the URL. I have no desire to hurt feelings or make anyone feel defensive. Not my style anyway. It’s frustrating because that is where I want to go right now when I sit in front of the keyboard. It’s making me more bitchypoo than witchypoo.

One thing that has been re-emerging has me a tad baffled. It’s the issue of fire. I’m smelling fire a lot lately, and images of fire I encounter are bringing up strong emotions. And of course, there are the strangely clad men who barged into my home.

When I was about ten years old, our house burnt to the ground in the middle of the night. I don’t believe we had pajamas unless it was Christmas, because this happened in November, and will never forget the gray t-shirt and white undies I wore to bed, and which I wore outside to escape the flames and smoke.

We sat in the car and cried because we were scared. I’m pretty certain I didn’t have any idea of the enormity of the loss of possessions the fire caused, but it pounded the final nail in my parent’s marriage, which was never a peaceful one in the first place.

We were in the process of building a house at the time, and we moved into it while it was only roughly finished. My father built bunks and dressers into the bedrooms, and other furniture as well. He was pretty handy that way.

Then he disappeared. He was posted about two hours away, and seldom came home. My mother took to her bed a lot. There were a lot more suppertimes than there were suppers. We should have had enough to eat. My father was military, and the pay was decent enough to live on.

When I look back to all that happened, and link it to the fire as a catalyst for the disease that was choking my parents marriage, I can’t help now but compare it to the Tower in the tarot deck.

The Tower signifies an event which causes all the smoke and mirrors to fall away, all the pretense to be exposed, and the opportunity for a new beginning. It is dreaded, but is the card of transformation. Sometimes, we believe that we cannot learn through joy.

The events after the fire seared my innocence in many ways. I think I am only now really mourning that. So excuse me if I’m a tad cranky. I was fixing to be all over Ass Burger Boy now that he no longer is a ringer for Jesus.

Warrior Woman pimped for me yesterday, bless her heart. She brought me a friend of hers who was very reluctant for a reading, but who came away from it very peaceful and glad she had decided to face her fears.

She brought another friend, who I had met previously, and while I did the reading in my office, the two others concocted food plans for the day. Her food buddy, Red, is a professional cook, and never cooks for Warrior Woman. Instead, she buys a load of food and schleps it over to WW’s apartment, and entrusts it to her excellent care.

Warrior Woman has a fetish for cookbooks, and by that I mean, get your mind out of the gutter, Knudsey. She collects them. She is a most excellent cook. I always look forward to her needing my techy help because she prefaces the request with an invite to dinner. Yum. It gives a whole new delicious meaning to “Will work for food.”

She hasn’t yet been able to replicate my most excellent homemade pizzas though, and it causes her pizza envy, Oh, be quiet, Knudsey.

So whenever she asks me if I have a hankering for my favourite red wine, I start a batch of pizza dough, because I know that’s what she wants for supper. She doesn’t ask directly for anything, rather she offers something first. It’s a funny little dance we do. The dance is funnier with the larger bottle of wine.

There is an art to making cheeseless pizza. (We both have issues). First, the crust must be thin. I use a rolling pin. And multigrain flour. I’m quirky that way. I also throw a few herbs into the dough.

The sauce is nothing special, just your everyday pasta sauce. I saute my onions and garlic before I put them on. I make sure I add herbs and spices to the mixture while it is frying. I use a mixture of ground pork and ground lean beef, suitably fried and spiced, and the thing that makes it so yummy is the sausage. Oh, the sausage. Sun-dried tomato sausage, fried and sliced up ahead of time. A few raw sliced mushrooms, and Bob’s your uncle.

It’s a lot of work to make pizza at casa witchypoo, but I cook a lot of the ingredients ahead of time and freeze them into pizza-sized portions.

It’s practically a tradition now. We only eat pizza when WW visits. If someone else came for pizza, it would feel like we were cheating on her. I guess you could say about me “Will cook for wine.”

I used to scoff at older folk when I was a young upstart.

It seemed to me that the closer they got to death, the slower they would drive.

I didn’t have the patience for an old turd who was enjoying the scenery, as opposed to courting a senseless death by automobile warp speed.

Now that I am an ole turd myself, things are different, baybeee!

It makes sense to enjoy the drive, rather than trying to arrive somewhere a full two minutes ahead of the oldsters.

You take for granted how things are, until they change in the name of “progress”.

CAUTION: Here comes one a those “When I was a kid” stories.

Heh. When I was a liddle gurl, I made it my mission to be out of the house ALL DAY LONG. This was my clever strategy to avoid any possible work to be done, or any other unpleasantness family life involved.

I spent the time mostly exploring the woods, fields, and dirt roads on foot. I ate berries and whatever grew wild or on abandoned properties. I tracked animals, and healed a lot of early childhood pain in nature.

When my military family moved near a big city, I fearlessly made long walks into the city to parks, museums, playgrounds, and any event where there was free food.

A regular grade 5 savant.

Changes were a given in my household; making the best of them worked for me.

Did I mention that I was ummm…easily amused?

The foods I tasted as a child are harder to find now.

Now there are preservatives and all kinda nasties in them.

It’s getting more challenging and more expensive to find REAL FOOD anymore, unless you grow your own.

The good food was not profitable.

Can you say agribusiness, kids?

The earth says it is an abomination to cultivate this way. The earth is diverse, to maintain the balance.

Big Business says: make it cost effective to feed people.

Stuff their pieholes with sheer poison if it makes money.

Ignore the balance of our mother earth.

Observing changes over a long period of time allows many illusions to melt away.

We have defined ourselves by tv in the past, and are conditioned by advertising to want all the instant crap.

It’s poisoned I tell you!

The earth is already pitching hissyfits because the balance is too far out of whack.

Big Business uses her like a toilet.

A men’s room toilet.

Has anybody taken note of the extreme weather phenomona in the past 5 years or so?

Think it’s gonna get better soon?

See, ole people ponder that kinda stuff.

Now I feel a deep longing to be living amongst my tree friends once more.

We are bombarded with so much money-making sensory crap that we’ve forgotten who we really are.

The trees know, and share freely with those who commune with them. I was wisest as a child in nature.

Ole people don’t care if the younguns think they’re whacked.

I’m fixin to really enjoy my second childhood, starting now.

Note: This is an old piece I resurrected. I have no idea why I was using that particular folksy voice, but around that time I also hung fairy lights on a ficus tree beside my bed, and placed my unmentionables on said tree to dry. It was quite a sight.

PPS: I forgot to mention I’m guest posting over at Dawn’s site. Getting old isn’t for sissies.

A money order that was addressed to the wrong province. Mailed March 11. A money order that was made null and void this morning, and a replacement sent in the mail today. Possibly to the wrong province again.

An iriver multimedia player / storage thingie. Won in a contest that ended February 29th.

It has 20 Gigs to play with. Loaded with 7 Gigs of movies, tunes, and pictures. I’m scared to look. Ass Burger Boy was laughing his Burger off at a clip entitled “Donald Duck Blow Job”. Thanks, Noob. I really needed to have that in my brain.

It’s worth $250 and I just posted it on Kijiji for $150.

The weather forecaster hereabouts announced that there would be three storms before spring. That’s within eight days. There are things that make me happier.

I was informed today that my automatic withdrawal system rejected the rent payment because I was overdrawn. I’m always overdrawn. Frantic call to bank manager, who was totally pleasant. Total extra cost: $80. There are things that make me happier.

Two money orders that I was told should have been here Have.Not.Arrived. With plenty of lead time, they should have both been here, by Tuesday. Did I mention I’m overdrawn? There are things that make me happier.

I can’t seem to come up with a fresh post today that does not have the word “bitch” in the title. Tomorrow is not looking great either. There are things that make me happier.

My liddle sister and her gorgeous son, Bonkers, didn’t show up the other day. I was all psyched up to see them. Bonkers shared my disappointment. I have proof. Liddle Sis sent me a picture of his displeasure.

There are things that make him happier.