Where's my salt lick?

Anybody else craving salt?  I feel like I could have a freaking salt lick and it wouldn't be enough for me.  I keep making "nom, nom, nom" noises when I pass the salt aisle at the grocery store.  You know the one... chips, peanuts, popcorn, tortilla chips...

I want to take the salt shaker and shake it directly on my tongue.  Is that wrong?  When I go to our local movie theatre, they have a popcorn salt shaker on the counter.   I shake-shake-shake it into the popcorn and then jostle the popcorn so that the popcorn salt will settle and then I'll shake-shake-shake it again and jostle...  I might even do it a third time.  In addition to totally loading it up with salt, in ensures that neither David nor Rissa can eat the first 1/3 of the of popcorn.

Are my taste buds out of whack?  Am I low on sodium in my diet?  Would it be wrong to carry a small bar of salt in my purse - just for emergency purposes? Then when I get the craving, instead of eating a bag of chips or making nachos, I could just have a couple of surreptitious licks of the salt and I'd be good to go.  Less calories, more sodium.

How early is too early for Pina Coladas?

I open up the freezer, seeking concentrated orange juice.  I've got a brutal cold and my body is craving the vitamin C.  I am Stanley, looking for my Livingstone.  This is one of those real adventures into the freezer.  I lift things up.  Sole filets from 2010, Freezies from when we moved to this house, freezer-burned mixed veggies... No orange juice.  So I'm phlegmy AND there's no orange juice. 

But there are a couple of frozen pina colada mixes...  7:03 a.m.  Too early for pina coladas?  I look at the caloric value - if I don't eat any actual food for the next 12 hours, I should be okay.  Plus the rum might just take the edge off my cold.

You ever have one of those mornings??

Lie on me!!

"Wait!  Wait!" Rissa says, as I'm trying to depart her bedside.  She clutches at me.  "You can't go yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to lie on me!!"

"Because why?"

"Because then I can put my arm on my stomach and see if I can escape."

(This is one of those things that happened by accident one night and is now apparently 'the thing to do' at bedtime.)

Rissa arranges her limbs - one arm out to the side and then one lying across her stomach.  "Okay, I'm ready.  Hit me!"

I collapse my considerable torso upon her tummy. Rissa wriggles like an ineffectual escape artist for several minutes - giggling madly, snorting and gasping with the effort to dislodge her hand.  I get up.

"No!!  No!  Not yet!!  I can do this!  Let me try the other arm!!!"

"You're insane."

"Yes, but I'm uniquely insane."  She puts her other arm on her stomach.  "Lie on me!!!"

We repeat the same procedure - she almost manages to extricate the hand at one point, in spite of my nearly double body weight upon her.  She has worked herself into a near seizure doing so, which brings on another gale of giggles.  Unable to resist, I find myself snorting, almost choking on laughter.

"You are a goof," I say, kissing her goodnight. 

"I know," she says.  She snuggles down under her duvet contentedly.  "But I'm a satisfied goof."

Popcorn Apocalypse

It's afternoon snack time!!  I have just thrown in a bag of microwave popcorn when David calls to have me find a file.  I run upstairs to find it, but immediately realize the folly in leaving unattended microwave popcorn, so I run back downstairs and ask Rissa to stand guard.

"Can you please listen for the popcorn?  2 seconds between pops." 

She rolls her eyes - immediately transforming into a 20-something who knows everything.  "I know Mummy! I know how to make popcorn.  I'll get the popcorn."  She then gives a 'you scoot' gesture with her hand.

I head back upstairs.  2 minutes later I'm wondering if I'm having the beginnings of an epileptic fit.  I'm smelling smoke.  Acrid, eye-stinging, oily...

Rissa comes up the stairs...

"I might have, um...  maybe just a little...."  She collapses on the floor.  "I can't make popcorn!!!  WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!"

In my head, I'm remembering a conversation we had not three minutes before.  "Dude!  I just told you.  You were right beside the microwave!  You had to wait 45 seconds!  What happened?"

"I don't know.  I was washing up dishes and then... then... WAILEY, WAILEY, WAILEY!!!  I... I... I...
I CAN'T MAKE POPCORN!!!!"

You know how long the odour of scorched popcorn permeates your house?  48 hours.  Plus, we now need a new microwave - it looks like vagrants used the inside of it to keep themselves warm before adding gasoline and allowing it to really spark up.

Rissa - in mid "WAILEY"

Thigh Sliver

"So, how was your day?" I ask Rissa.

"People looked at me weird when Nerine was holding my leg while I was feeling up my inner thigh."

Beat, two, three...  I close my eyes for a moment.   "O...kay...  Explanation...?"

"In Science we were using plasticine and toothpicks for a project, and I ended up sitting on one of the toothpicks, so I had a sliver in my jeans, so I went to the office and asked the secretary if they had tweezers in the first-aid kit, and she did, which was great, but then I couldn't reach it, which was bad, so I needed Nerine to hold my leg up so that I could feel for it... So it sort of looked like I was feeling myself up... In the office.  There were some kids in the hall who gave me some weird looks."

"I can't imagine why."

Maternal Reenactment of event

Okay... SERIOUSLY?!?

Have I pissed off some ancient Fertility Goddess?  Did I poop on Hera's cornflakes?   Forget to return Mama Quilla's call?  Accidentally take Nim-inna's name in vain?  'Cause it's only been 17 days.  SEVENTEEN FREAKING DAYS!! 

It's stress.  It's got to be.  I mean, I forgot to take my special herbal cyclical-extension remedy pill once last week, but that shouldn't throw me back to bloody wolves.  So it's stress.  I'm gearing up to tech week with Peter Pan, running around ragged, just started a new job... that's what it is.

Please, please, please...  I didn't mean it when I complained that it was only 23 days.  23 days would be just fine.  I LOVED my 23 day cycle - it was freaking awesome!!! 

I'm not asking for me - although easing up on the machete to my nether regions would be nice - I'm asking for David and Rissa.  They have to live with me and already suffer through those 36-48 hours of Heather Zombie every 23 days.  It's like The Walking/Curled up in the Fetal Position/Weeping Dead in our house during those hours.  There is a body stumbling around our house that looks like me and kinda sounds like me, but it ain't me.  David turns to me on Day 3 and says "It's so nice to have you back."

So I'm totally cool to go back to the 23 Day Cycle.  Just fine with me.  I'd say I will no longer complain, but anyone who knows me knows that's pretty much bullshit.   But if this is the alternative, I'll take the 23 Days.

Belly Button Lint

I've been collecting David's belly button lint.  In the lip of my crystal ring holder.  You know, just to see how much we can actually accumulate over the course of the year. 

David's pretty hairy, so during the course of a regular day, his chest hair and "Happy Trail," move the lint from inside a garment towards his belly button - kind of like the circling winds of a hurricane, or, or... the Charybdis, except instead of large, sea-faring vessels, his belly button is sucking in lint.  

After a few incidences of discovering copious amounts of lint in David's navel, I got to thinking...  If we collected it, would it be enough, say... to felt minature figures of  Shetland ponies or woodland foxes? Could I begin a new career as a felting artist?  Could I sell Belly Button Lint Minatures on Etsy?  So far this is all I have collected... but I'm hopeful.

Soon this will be transformed into small woodland animals!