PeaPodPage

Ok. she loves Bella. To bits. Ooodles and tons. Bella even gave homes to not one, but two homeless socks. she would gladly send Bella sponge candy. *That* is how much she loves Bella.

*commercial break*

www.sockdollies.com

*end commercial*

But, Bella had to go and mention one of her major pet peeves in her blog. Way to go Bella. Now she is on a rant.

Nothing annoys her more than the Christmasization of Hallowe’en and Thanksgiving.

she loves autumn. she loves leaves and pumpkins and hay bales and corn stalks and gourds and squash and indian corn and crisp days and frosted grass and *EVERYTHING* about autumn. It is her favorite season. Bring on the mulled cider and doughnuts and toasted pumpkin seeds and visiting every pumpkin patch and farmer’s market in a hundred mile radius from her house. she mails leaves to relations in arizona who don’t have an autumn so they don’t miss out on autumn.

she loves hallowe’en. she loves giving out candy and getting candy and seeing the kids in their costumes and her annual pumpkin carving contest that her father *always* wins and crunching through the leaves and dressing up her dogs and toasting pumpkin seeds and carving Jack O’ Lanterns and the smell of slightly toasted pumpkin from the candles singeing the inside.

she loves Thanksgiving. It is her very favorite holiday of them all. she loves turkey and stuffing and sweet potatoes and having seven kinds of pie and nuts and cornucopias and pilgrims and green bean casserole and the parade and nuts and tangerines and jello and mints and all the people and stuffing things into one little oven and the good dishes and the gravy boat and being stuffed to the gills but still having dessert *with* whipped cream and chestnuts .

Please take note that NONE of the above things involve holly. or Santa. or reindeer. or christmas trees. or ornaments. or lights. or tinsel. or bows. or mistletoe. or christmas carols. or giant inflatable musical light-up revolving snowglobes that she wants to stab. (But that is a different rant *entirely*)

Back when she was in school, when mastodons roamed the earth, she was taught about the first Thanksgiving. As far as she knows SANTA WASN’T INVITED. Sweet mother of god…the pilgrims were so religous they squeaked, and even *they* didn’t invite Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the Magi and the Shepherds to Thanksgiving dinner BECAUSE IT WAS THANKSGIVING AND NOT CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!

she almost falls out of her pod every year when she goes to the market, expecting to see the foyer awash in pumpkins and hay bales and squash…only to be smacked upside the head with a platform of fully decorated revolving christmas trees spewing “Joy to the World” in bad MIDI music.

IT IS NOT CHRISTMAS!!!

IT ISN’T EVEN ADVENT!!!!!

What really burns her buns as she wends her way through a forest of christmas trees as she tries to find a pumpkin, is that her local market puts up a big sign, claiming that they push christmas down her throat with an earth rammer, because that is what customers want.

Now, she knows a few people who are serious about their christmas. she is *very* fond of christmas herself, in December.

And she understands that retailers need to purchase this stuff early to have it for the Christmas season…which is in December.

Has she mentioned December yet?

DECEMBER!!!

she hasn’t even had her pumpkin pie and turkey and they want it to be DECEMBER now!!!

*falls over and twitches*

When she starts singing “O Little Town of Bethlehem” to the tune of “Turkey in the Straw” she is probably going to go postal.

All she can do is hope that someone…not to mention names, Bella, will take up a collecton to post bail.

Ok.  So the Peapod gets a *little* involved with her Christmas cookies.

She probably *seriously* needs to get a life…

But, she just can’t *help* herself…

Most of her Yahoo away messages, or other online status messages, even mobile phone status messages, are pretty self explainatory. At least she thinks so. To her, “Singing in the shower…la dee da dee dum” means just that…she is in the shower, and being tuneful.

Now, granted, just because she is in the shower, and singing, that does not mean that her lil ditty is limited too the aforementioned “la dee da dee dum”. She could be singing just about anything. Truth in advertising can be taken too far. If “la dee da dee dum” is too limiting for your collective imaginations, feel free to imagine the air of your choice. Let’s just stick to imagining songs, and keep our more, shall we say, lascivious imaginings to ourselves. (certain Parties excepted…You know who You are…)

That said, in rather prossy prose, to the rest of you…sending her endless IM’s wondering if she is here, she is not.

Da Peapod is, as advertised, singing in the shower.

Please feel free to add a similar explaination for messages such as: “Supper Time…Yum :)” and “Snoozin'”. If you aren’t able to figure those out, she probably doesn’t want to talk to you anyway.

As to the more esoteric messages one is likely to find in her status bar…

“Puttering” is the default yahoo Pea setting. It means she is home, and, well, puttering. It means she is home, and the computer is on, but she isn’t sitting right at the keyboard waiting to wave hello back to you. she could be walking small, slightly incontinent dogs so they don’t pee on the carpet, or cooking something yummy that you only *wish* you could taste, or feeding lettuce to rupert… Lots and lots of things go into puttering. Rest assured…as soon as she sees your message on her screen she will say hello back to you. Unless you happen to be a troll, then her response, or lack thereof, is strictly up to her whim.

“Pottering about” is sort of like puttering, but with less intentions of actually accomplishing anything…

“Curled” means that she is curled up on her sofa corner, with the computer right there. “Curled” does not refer to idleness…she could be typing, talking with someone she likes much better than U, or working on some other computer related busy-ness.

“Go REDSOX” translates to she is watching a game, right now, live, on her computer, in living color thanks to the magic of broadband. Feel free to say hello, but realize that conversation is likely to be sprinkled with color commentary and interjections like “YAY PAPI!” and “YOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUK” Note to Yankees fans…Yankees suck.

“Jammified” is related to curled…she is not only curled up on her sofa corner with the computer in easy reach, but she is in her jammies and thinking about going to bed. she is likely to answer, or iggy, taken on an individual case basis.

“Spinning” is a new hobby she has…no not exercise. she has recently learned to spin wool into yarn. she has an entire alpaca fleece to play with. Spinning requires two hands, and until she gets to a point where she can wind her yarn and put the spindle down, she isn’t going to answer promptly.

Now, she knows that this isn’t going to keep the average troll from buzzing her fifteen times while she has her hands full. And it isn’t going to keep certain people *coughsweetcough* from asking her what her status means…

But it is a good introductory lexicon.

Does she get points for using “lascivious” and “lexicon” in the same blog post?

The other day Peapod was in the mood for something simple and bistroish…

So she started thinking about a nice clear veggie-ish soups and grilled sandwiches…mmmmmm

Being the resourceful pea that she is, she set about making her noshable notion in to an eatable actuality…

Smoked pork neck bones, beans, peas, carrots, onions, celery, barley, various seasonings…a nice long simmer.

Sounds kinda yummy doesn’t it?

As her soup cooked, she spent the day in wondering what sort of nice grilled sandwich she would make to dunk in it…just cheese? a trip to the deli perhaps?

she was never to find out what sort of sandwich would go with her soup. Alas. her soup *SUCKED*. It was the nastiest thing to come out of a stock pot since evoloution produced the government educated and supported public school “lunch lady”. Actually…it was worse.

Pea isn’t sure how she took the ingredients she had, and arrived at such an icky mess, but, as the title to this post suggests, even great chefs have the occasional flop. she is sure that even Julia Child has faild roasts buried in her back yard.

Ah well.

She just hopes that the shepherd’s pie she is making today will turn out better than the soup did.

As many people know about the Peapod, she likes thrift stores. she likes rummaging through assorted bits of junk and finding a pearl. Perhaps it is some wierd cro-magnon hunter-gather gene that she has, but, she really gets a charge out of finding something really really spiffy. Peapod’s best find to date is a Gorham solid sterling silver spoon, in the “Lily-of-the-Valley” pattern. she got it for a dime.

Anyway…

Everyone knows what a thrift store is…sort of a stationary yard sale, a brick-and-mortar church jumble sale. They are set up along the lines of a regular store, but, everything in there is generally twenty-five years out of date.

A thrift store is the repository of chiffon bathrobes from 1950, apple-seed necklaces, and eight-track tapes. Some are more organized and clean than others.

Peapod went on an adventure this week…a bittersweet foray into the land where out of date and broken stuff goes to die…

The local Salvation Army has an “as-is” store. The name seems redundant to her, as all thrift stores, and yard sales are, by definintion “as-is”. That seems to be the point of them. she doesn’t think that someone would plunk down fifty cents for a tricycle with two wheels thinking it was some sort of obscure bicycle. No, they bought it for parts, because goodness knows real red metal tricycles are hard to come by these days.

This place that she went to was more like Watto’s Junk yard, minus of course, the power generators. Or, maybe there were power generators, and she just missed them in the general confusion.

Essentially, this “store” is a garage, with boxes of stuff in it. Headless dolls cheek-by-jowl with china in various states of chippedness alongside cheeseboards and broken fondue pots from 1970. It is everyone root for themselves. Nothing even has a price on it. If you find something whole, and you want it, you take your stuff to the counter, where a bored cashier glances at your accumulated stuff and charges you a few bucks.

she had a good time, but, when she was done, she needed to wash her hands. A *lot*.

From this last outpost of fifth, or perhaps sixth hand stuff, she did come away with a few treasures…a hand thrown pottery pie plate, and a pfaltzgraff bowl which she intends to let her herd of cats eat out of. her big find of the excursion though, and oddly enough the thing responsible for such a long, useless and nattering post, was a brand new, still in the box crystal trifle bowl.

she can hear the british among you licking your lips. 🙂

Of course, now that she *has* trifle bowl, she finds that she has to make trifle. And, with the upcoming Independence Day holiday, what better time to trot out a red-white-and blue themed trifle? she spent the morning making real pound cake…well, *half* poundcake. she didn’t need a four pound cake lurking about, so she made it with only half a pound each of eggs, flour, sugar and butter. On tuesday, she will make her custard, and then set about layering everything with strawberries and blueberries for that whole patriotic-themed dessert.

It ought to be a nice finish.

Speaking of finishing, she ought to stop rambling, and go slice and sugar her strawberries.

The old bulletin board preceding this blog can be found HERE.

Some of the cute graphics from that time are below …