Favorites 10.7.13

Broiled cheese toast: Didn't you know that broiling things makes them taste better? Throw a slice of bread and a slab of cheese in the oven and in no time you'll have something that sits squarely at the intersection of melty, toasty, bubbly, and crispy. Dip it in yer soup, or don't.

When the dog stretches: A mid-nap move whereby he rolls from his side to his back, scrunches all his limbs up real tight like a baby in his mama's belly, and then stretches them up spindly and stick straight into the air above him. A groan from the depths of his canine soul. A smacking of chops. Then he's back on his side in silent slumber. It just crushes you with cuteness.

The brink of tipsy: There's an art to navigating the knife edge between sober and drunk over the course of an evening. Act dumb with yer friends, sure—but don't sacrifice those acceptable levels of PMA in the morning. A fine—nay, VERY fine balance.

Wake Up: A Life Of The Buddha by Jack Kerouac: Y'alls know how I feel about Kerouac. And the story of Buddha as told by him? I mean please! "Until recently most people thought of Buddha as a big fat rococo sitting figure with his belly out ... People didn't know that the actual Buddha was a handsome young prince who suddenly began brooding in his father's palace, staring through the dancing girls as though they weren't there, at the age of 29, till finally and emphatically he threw up his hands and rode out to the forest on his war horse and cut off his long golden hair with his sword and sat down with the holy men of India of his day and died at the age of 80 a lean and venerable wanderer of ancient roads and elephant woods."

To October

To the year turning toward darkness—and the quietness that that brings.

To a month of zero holidays—except Halloween (which isn't for family, it's for me and for you).

To all the food from the harvest—alien squash with bulges and warts, tomatoes of red, yellow and orange, potatoes still shrouded in the dirt they grew in ...

To backlit clouds and brilliant-blue days with the sun in your eyes.

To wild storms that whip the trees and then depart quietly in the night.

To new serial TV shows and the rainy Sundays for watching them.

To hard cider.

To change.

Renewed Subscription

October, guys! And my birthday weekend passed in a blur of cake and candles—candles on the cake, and candles for the darkness of a 9-hour power outage in SE Portland on the very eve of my birthday fete. It's okay to sit there in the dark drinking with your friends, though. Candle light licking the walls. Dogs lying around licking themselves. I see nothing wrong with any of it. When the lights did finally come on, it was like a gift! Don't take anything for granted ...

Anyhow, it's nice that your peeps come together to celebrate, but I tend to believe that a birthday doesn't really mean anything to anyone but you. There's a filing away of the past hours and days—documents rolled back into heavy mental drawers. Was there something you were supposed to have done by now? Did something vital fall away from your life? Did you grab something new, like a feather on the wind?

See, it's pretty private stuff—the unspoken renewal that comes with an anniversary of something like the day you were born.

Cold One

Right around Monday of this week, I got my first cold in, say, a year? My feelings about this are that I prefer chunky soup to creamy soup because I like to have something to chew on and that I could handle all the mucus if it came without sneezing seizures and the red, watery eyes associated with them. This is obvious stuff. Also, the chili oil at Pho Gia on Sandy is incendiary—a healing elixir sent down from stuffed-nose heaven. It simultaneously throws open the doors to your airways and makes you sweat out the bad stuff.

Anyhoo, all better now. Chomp on some garlic so you don't git what I got!

Fall To-Do List

Oh hi. You prob noticed, but a couple September storms rolled through this weekend, and now it's decidedly not summer anymore. So, here's what I'ma gonna do about it.

1. Make more backyard fires. Toast my feet. Turn my back toward the cold of night.

2. Skate all the razor scooter parks while the children are locked up in school.

3. Master making my own bread. For the warmth from the oven. For the feel of kneading dough. For the art and the chemistry. For the way it makes the house smell.

4. Lay around in bed ’til late.

5. Throw a party—celebrate another year of me. Hope someone brings cupcakes (someone usually does).

6. Take longer dog walks. Watch the changing light.