A Blast From The Past

November 18, 2015November 18, 2015 / Diane Henders / 43 Comments

A few weeks ago I mentioned that I’d risked life and limb by cleaning out the fridge and reorganizing my bin of plastic containers. Well, pshaw. That was nothing.

Emboldened by my survival of Trial By Crisper Drawer, I foolishly bravely went where no man has gone before (or at least not for several years). Yes, I tackled our basement storage room.

I’m not kidding when I say no man has gone there. I swear, for the past few years Hubby never got closer than the doorway, from where he simply tossed stuff onto the heap. (I may be exaggerating. He might have waded into the shallow end and carefully balanced stuff on the heap.)

I wasn’t much better, though. I ventured slightly deeper into the morass to retrieve my canning jars and restock the shelves with this summer’s harvest, but the chaos struck such fear into my heart that I fled as soon as I could.

But no more. It’s all tidy now.

The last time we organized that room, we unearthed gems like a box of clothes containing briefs Hubby must have worn in junior high. They were small enough to fit a Ken doll, and the elastic crumbled to powder when stretched. But this time we found nothing like that… and I had great fun reacquainting myself with some treasures from long ago.

Very long ago.

Case in point: My baby book, in which my long-suffering mother penned a few revealing statements: “Stopped screaming at 2 months…” and then, “At 8 months, Diane was a real good little girl for 4 days in succession.” Later she noted, “I got tired of scolding and spanking so we tipped the chairs on their sides to keep Diane off the table.”

My Grade One report card tactfully states: “Diane is a very good student. She has a very independent little spirit which sometimes creates problems for her, but I have no doubt that she will work things out in her own way very well.”

Which of these siblings looks most likely to get into mischief?

More treasures included the teddy bear I got at 18 months old. (This was actually my second Teddy. Apparently I ate the first one. No wonder I had colic.)

Teddy then and now. He’s been through quite a few surgeries, but he’s still in one piece.

Then there was my Mickey Mouse T-shirt from a family trip to Disney World when I was a young teen. I actually considered squeezing into this just for laughs, but decided not to subject you to the retina-searing sight of me crammed into a too-small T-shirt.

Lucky I didn’t try to wear this. Poor Mickey would never be the same.

My memorabilia box also disgorged my UMZOO Pub T-shirt from university days, my Bob Seger concert T-shirt, a corsage from my Grade 12 grad, and medals and ribbons for everything from track meets to wins at the Carman Fair to archery competitions.

I’m still proud of these two.

(The Award of Excellence came from the ParticipACTION program ‘way back in 1973, and the silver medal was from the archery team event at the Championship of the Americas in 2003. Yes, I realize 30 years is a lo-o-o-ng hiatus between awards. On the up side, it’s a manageable precedent – I don’t have to try for another one for 18 years or so.)

I also have every single letter and card anybody ever sent me. From Grade One valentines to angst-ridden teenage confessions to the latest Christmas letter, I’ve got ’em all. So if you ever wrote to me, beware. I have potential blackmail material.

Finding my school pictures was scariest, though. This, above all, convinces me my parents must truly have loved me. After all the misery I caused as a baby, I turned into this… and they still let me live:

The 1970s were not kind to me. Note the massive zit, dead-centre of my forehead.

The best thing about all this memorabilia is that it’s useless crap to everyone but me, and when I’m pushing up daisies it can go the landfill and never be missed.

But while I’m here, I like to dig it out every now and then… and it always makes me smile. 🙂

What’s your most treasured keepsake?

* * *

P.S. Another book cover is finished! This is the new look for Book 6:

A Mix Of New Feces

November 4, 2015 / Diane Henders / 36 Comments

When I read the headline “Liberal cabinet expected to be a mix of new feces”, it seemed like the perfect title for this post. I’ve had some oddball items burbling around in my mind for a while, so this is a perfect opportunity to mix them up and erm… eliminate them.

As you’ve undoubtedly guessed by now, I had misread another headline. The actual title was “Liberal cabinet expected to be a mix of new faces”. We just had an election here, so the article was about the shakeups in cabinet. But ‘new feces’ pretty much sums up how I feel about politicians and our party system in general. Same shit, different pile. Or maybe it’s ‘different shit, same pile’, but you know what I mean.

However, since Miss Manners says discussions of politics and religion are to be avoided in polite company, that’s all the political crap I’ll mention here (because you know my blog is always suitable for polite company).

‘Moving’ right along…

Speaking of headlines, I saw an article a few days ago discussing the merger between Pfizer (makers of Viagra) and Allergan (makers of Botox). At first glance it seemed like a bit of a conflict, since Viagra gets things going while Botox makes them stop. But on second thought, it actually makes perfect sense: used properly, either of them will take the wrinkles out.

And speaking of the little soldier, my friend Chris sent me this link a while ago: http://www.fastcodesign.com/3050334/a-condom-package-that-youll-just-know-is-the-right-size-for-you along with the note, “Must be a blog in here somewhere”. And yes; yes there is!

I think the concept of ‘sizing by grip’ is brilliant in its simplicity, not to mention the exquisite tact of making the largest and smallest sizes the same colour so the checkout clerks might not notice at a glance if a guy’s buying the ‘teeny-weenie’ size. I hope Guan-Hao-Pan’s innovation catches on; if for no other reason than to finally put to rest the giggle-worthy discrepancies in public condom dispensers. Am I the only one who’s ever noticed that in men’s washrooms¹, the condoms are all ‘Magnum’ or ‘Extra-Large’, but in women’s washrooms, they’re ‘Slim Fit’? Sorry, boys, we’re onto you. Stand closer; it’s shorter than you think.

Neatly combining the topics of unlikely mergers and amorous encounters, I recently discovered that Crimestoppers is taking advantage of the hottest literary trend by branching out into erotica. Don’t believe me? Check out the photo I snapped last week of a Crimestoppers poster in a grocery store in Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. (Note: This is pretty kinky stuff, so read with caution.)

Dear Crimestoppers: Please proofread your posters more carefully.

There’s a whole new career awaiting the person who penned that little gem. Literally, a whole new career. Because after a few more slip-ups like that, their current career will be down the toilet.

And that’s all the poop for this week.

* * *

¹Yes, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in men’s washrooms, but it’s not what you think. Explanation here.

P.S. Another cover update finished! Here’s the new look for Book 5: How Spy I Am:

Fear Factor: Freaky Edition

October 28, 2015 / Diane Henders / 29 Comments

Halloween is only a few days away, so it’s time for the final edition of Fear Factor. Today’s post is about two events that gave me the shivers even though I found reasonable explanations for them… kinda… sorta.

I’m not ‘freakable’ by nature, but these occurrences were freaky.

Here goes:

Flashback to the 1970s. I haven’t picked up a Reader’s Digest in years, but back then their format included jokes, informative articles, one lurid description of some horrific event, and a health column that explained the basics of anatomy and diseases.

A brief digression: Anybody remember ‘I am Joe’s (fill in body part here)’? And I vividly recall an article about a woman who got hit by a car and had her leg ripped off – I can still see the little bird’s-eye-view sketch of cars all bunched up on the street, the woman’s body, and her leg lying in the road a couple of yards away – brrrr! I was pretty young at the time so it made a big impression.

Anyway, on to the spooky stuff. When I was around twelve or thirteen I was reading about cancer in the Reader’s Digest. I’d never heard of such a thing and as I read the article, absolute cold terror overtook me along with the certainty that something bad was going to happen. I had read lots of scary things before but this was a new level of fear, and I felt impelled to go and find my mother. I didn’t tell her what the problem was; just stuck close for a while. But the fearful feeling never really went away.

My mom died of cancer when I was nineteen.

I know the laws of probability can explain that. Cancer is pretty common, and there’s certainly nothing unusual about a child being frightened by learning about a scary disease like that. So I filed the whole thing away as a creepy but explainable coincidence.

Until a few years later.

My then-husband and I were living in Halifax, and his brother was attending Dalhousie University. My brother-in-law’s term had ended and he was soon to return home to Calgary so we took one last drive together, puttering around down by the shore and having a pleasant day. As we were driving back, I glanced over at my brother-in-law in the driver’s seat and a thought blazed into my mind, sudden and forceful: “I’ll never see him again.”

A month later he was killed in a climbing accident in the Rocky Mountains. When I saw him again, he was dead in his coffin.

That really creeped me out.

But again, I’ve explained it to myself. People have lots of weird random thoughts in a day. Make predictions often enough and sooner or later you’re bound to hit on something that actually happens. If they don’t come true, you never think of them again, but if you actually get one right you think, “OMG, I predicted that!”

I’m sure that’s all it was.

Well, mostly sure.

But still…

*shivers*

* * *

P.S. I’m on the road again, so I’ll reply to comments later today or tomorrow. ‘Talk’ to you then!

May your Halloween be just scary enough to be fun!

Fear Factor: Adrenaline Edition

October 21, 2015October 21, 2015 / Diane Henders / 41 Comments

If I stick to the classic ‘Fear Factor’ format, this post should be about fear-defying stunts. I generally try to avoid doing those, but into every life a little adrenaline must drip (or, in my case, surge like a tidal bore). So I asked myself, “What are the scariest things I’ve ever experienced?”

After ruling out politicians and 1980s boy bands I was left with a ragtag collection of memories, but I never remember being abjectly terrified. That’s probably because I’ve lived a charmed life and all the potentially dangerous situations turned out to be lucky near-misses. Still, they were seriously butt-puckering at the time.

The earliest scary situation I remember was when I was a young teenager on the farm. We were always wary of skunks, not only because of their fearsome stink but also because they often carried rabies. When they rambled through minding their own business we gave them a wide berth, but if one seemed unusually aggressive, Dad would shoot it just to be on the safe side.

I was home alone one day when a skunk marched up bold as brass. I’ll never forget staring at that skunk over the trembling gunsights, holding off until the last second to pull the trigger… and then I didn’t have to. The skunk turned and wandered away, leaving me shaking like a leaf.

As a young adult I narrowly avoided a couple of fights when I got cornered in remote places by guys much larger than me. Nothing pumps up the old adrenal glands like facing a fight you know you can’t win. Fortunately they were cowards, and when they realized I was going to fight them anyway they backed off. Whew.

Anybody who’s ever ridden a motorcycle knows there’s nothing quite like the horrifying weightlessness when gravity turns against you in a high-side. Aydan’s wild ride in Book 2 is based on the time I almost high-sided on a street bike, complete with the dragging footpeg throwing up sparks. But my guardian angel was working overtime that day (and every day, I suspect) so I pulled out of the turn unscathed and went home to change my underwear.

Then there was the time I was riding a dirt bike up a steep trail of loose shale with a cliff on one side and a hillside on the other. Getting up was a challenge, but coming down was truly scary. Especially when my brakes failed. Fortunately I was near the bottom and I hadn’t been going very fast, so I turned into the side of the hill and jolted anticlimactically to a stop.

Experiences like accidentally skiing onto a double-black-diamond downhill run or watching a tornado bear down on me were good for a few extra heartbeats, but either I’m not wired for panic or else I’m too stupid to react with appropriate fear. I got down the mountain, the tornado skipped harmlessly overhead, my guardian angel developed a drinking problem, and I puttered off happily to my next adventure.

But everything except the skiing and the tornado happened when I was young and foolish. These days I get all the adrenaline I need from crawling out the window onto our second-floor roof to wash the third-floor windows. (Okay, so now I’m old and foolish. Never mind.)

But that’s about all the fear factor I want!

* * *

P.S. I’m on the road today, so I’ll reply to comments tomorrow – ‘talk’ to you then!

Fear Factor: Creepy-Crawly Edition

October 14, 2015 / Diane Henders / 42 Comments

Warning: There’s a snake photo at the bottom of this post! (Just thought I’d mention that for those who hate/fear snakes.)

No Fear Factor would be complete without a few creepy-crawlies, so here we go:

Even though I’ve had quite a few close encounters with things that crawl and slither, most of them don’t really creep me out.

(See what I did there? ‘Creep’ me out…?)

*ahem* Sorry.

Anyway, I’ll start with spiders (and I don’t mean the lovable Spider Webb from my books).

I guess after you’ve had a large spider walking around in your mouth it’s hard to get too wound up about bugs of any sort. Mind you, I didn’t tongue the spider intentionally. I just didn’t realize the potential consequences of drinking from a hose without letting it run for a few seconds first. That poor spider probably achieved low-earth orbit when I spat him out. (The world’s first spidernaut: One small step for man; eight giant steps for arachnids…)

Over the years I’ve lifted spiders off my eyebrows, shaken them out of my hair, and, if statistics are to be believed, probably eaten close to a dozen in my sleep by now. Spiders don’t bother me.

But wood ticks?

Bleah!!! I hate wood ticks! They’re bad enough when they’re crawling around all flat and icky but once they latch on and get engorged to the size of revolting dead-white grapes… *shudders*

Before the advent of flea-and-tick collars, picking engorged ticks off the cats and dogs on the farm was a disgusting but necessary chore. It was too bad they didn’t make flea-and-tick collars for humans, too, because after being outdoors in Manitoba we almost always had to evict a couple from our clothes or bodies.

Moving on to the crawlies: I’m not crazy about centipedes, mainly because I’ve heard they bite. But wooly-bear caterpillars are cute. As kids we loved to pick them up and watch them curl into a furry ball. Then after a few seconds they’d relax and crawl around our palms while we giggled at the tickly sensation.

Cold-blooded crawlies don’t bother me, either. My fifth-grade teacher confided to my mother with some dismay, “All the other children bring me flowers. Diane brings me salamanders!”

I didn’t mean to upset her. It was just that the other kids were tormenting the poor salamanders, so I rescued them and carried them home to release by our pond after school. I kept hoping they’d stay and have families, but I never saw them again. (Maybe I should have tried bringing two salamanders home. Clearly I didn’t think that part through.)

And then there are the ‘slitheries’. I class leeches under ‘slitheries’, and they revolt me; but then again I figure it’s probably healthy to harbour an aversion to critters that want to suck my blood. (No vampires for me, either, thank you very much.)

Snakes, on the other hand…

Years ago, friends had a six-foot long boa constrictor who loved to cuddle up and tuck his nose under my hair where it was nice and warm.

Snakes are okay, but I do prefer a little advance warning. Sudden snakes are rarely a good thing, particularly if you’re poking around one of our desert micro-climates where the rattlesnakes hang out.

Snakes in quantity are another thing entirely. The garter snake pits at Narcisse, Manitoba are amazing (click on the videos at the bottom of their page if you dare). I don’t know how they all manage to untangle themselves. Apparently the accepted collective nouns for snakes are ‘bed’, ‘pit’, ‘den’, ‘knot’, and ‘nest’, but I think a ‘macramé of snakes’ would be appropriate.

Which creepy-crawly do you loathe the most?

P.S. You may have noticed that my site was down for the better part of a day last week. My domain host crapped out completely (yes, I’m switching to a new one now) and all my emails vanished into cyberspace. If you emailed me any time within the past couple of weeks but didn’t get a reply, please resend your message. I promise I’m not ignoring you!

Fear Factor: Kitchen Edition

October 7, 2015 / Diane Henders / 54 Comments

Since October is Halloween month, I’m doing a series of Fear Factor posts. Here’s Number 1:

* * *

This week I embarked on a perilous mission. One that forced me to confront the darkest places in my soul. An epic crusade requiring nerves and stomach of steel.

Yes, I cleaned out the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

Ew.

I don’t know why I have such a mental block against vegetables. I eat a healthy diet most of the time. Fruit never goes bad in my house. But veggies? Um… yeah. If it’s not irresistibly delicious like fresh peas and beans or durable like carrots and beets and cabbage, it’s bad news.

I lifted out a bag of lettuce that had turned into soup without ever nearing a stockpot. Half a cucumber squished softly inside its plastic wrapper, its skin dotted with fuzzy black and white spots. A green pepper had only a small ring of black around the stem but when I cut it open it leaked foul-smelling liquid, like a giant green pustule.

Who knew that neglected green peppers turn into witch zits? Dang, if I’d only known, I could’ve kept it until Halloween and used it for decoration.

And speaking of the scariest night of the year, I could’ve offered a pretty good fear factor if I hadn’t cleaned out my bin of plastic storage containers. Seriously, that thing would scare anybody. Any time I need a container, it’s a quest worthy of Indiana Jones.

When I realize I need something from The Bin Of Doom, my heart sinks and a sense of impending disaster washes over me. I don’t even want to open the cupboard door because I know that therein lurks mortal peril. One time I opened it without sufficient preparation, and I spent the next week with a bruise on the bridge of my nose because one of the larger containers hurled itself at my face in a fit of unprovoked aggression. Plastic containers may look benign, but never trust those suckers.

So I cautiously open the cupboard door, muttering arcane incantations to protect myself: “Stay put, you bastards. I’m just going to eeeease out this one little tiny container- Aagh! Ow! Shit!”

That’s another thing about plastic containers: They ferociously protect their young.

Anyway, I finally faced the inevitable. Donned my body armour and face shield and hauled the whole bin out. The plastics mounted a daunting counterattack, but I escaped with only a few dents in my skull and equanimity. Then I sorted and reorganized the whole thing and put it back in the cupboard with my sense of accomplishment tempered by fatalism.

For now, it’s safe to open that door. But I know my enemy all too well (and the enemy is me). After a few iterations of “Oh, I don’t feel like dragging the whole bin out just to replace this one thing; I’ll just balance it on top”, I know the situation will recur. If it happens in time for Halloween, I’ll invite the little ghosties and ghoulies in and scare the crap out of them.

Or I could introduce them to the Tower of Terror: the precarious heap of bottles and cans that threatens to inundate anyone foolish enough to reach into the corner of the pantry. That’d do the trick.

What’s the scariest place in your house?

The Terrifying ‘Bearrot’

September 30, 2015October 2, 2018 / Diane Henders / 44 Comments

My mind goes strange places when I’m half-awake (or half-asleep, depending on whether you’re a glass-half-full or glass-half-empty type of person). So it didn’t really surprise me when halfway through my shower, my brain announced, “Parrots! We should write a post about parrots!”

Me (grumbling into my washcloth): “What’s this ‘we’ shit? I don’t know anything about parrots. Where the hell did that random thought come from?”

Brain: “Come on, it’ll be fun! You could write about the World Parrot Refuge on Vancouver Island.”

Me (still cranky): “There was nothing funny about the refuge. It’s a cool place and it’s great that they take in unwanted parrots, but I spent the whole visit wishing I’d brought an umbrella to fend off the birdshit, and that creepy little bald cockatiel kept landing on my shoulder and cuddling up like I was his long-lost Mommy. Besides, I don’t trust any bird that’s capable of biting my finger off.”

Brain: “Oh, get over it. Parrots are amazing! They come in spectacular colours, they’re smart, they can live as long as humans, they can talk-”

Me: “Yeah, great. So now we’ve got a crafty old bird that lures you over with a display of pretty feathers and a cutesy ‘Polly want a cracker’, and then it bites your finger off!”

Brain: “Aw, come on. You can find something funny about parrots. How about Monty Python’s ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch?”

Me: “Well, there’s that…” (returning to the debate): “But that’s the only funny thing about parrots. Forget parrots. Maybe I could blog about my bear belt; make a few jokes about how dorky I look striding around the garden with that strapped to me.”

The bear belt: Everything I need to frighten a bear through sheer dorkage.

Brain: *martyred sigh* You’ve written about bears. Over and over. Everybody’s tired of bears. And they already know you look like a dork on a regular basis. Parrots, I tell you. You need to write about parrots!”

Me: “Piss off. Parrots are scary. Those blank soulless eyes…”

Brain: “Huh. Like bears aren’t scary? But you still manage to joke about them.”

Me (weakening): “Well, yeah, but…”

Brain (sensing imminent triumph): “Bears are terrifying! Parrots are much funnier.”

Me: “True, bears are terrifying…” *tries diversionary tactic* “Hey, you know what’s the only thing that could possibly make bears scarier?”

Brain (distracted): “Huh? Bullshit. Nothing could make bears scarier.”

Me: “Oh, hellz yeah! What if…” *pauses dramatically* “…you crossed a bear with a parrot?”

Brain: *stunned silence*

Me: “Imagine it! A bear that can not only chase you and eat you on the ground; it can also fly. Swooping down on silent wings with claws and teeth bared…”

Brain: “A bearrot. The most terrifying animal to stalk the earth…”

Me: *snickering* “…and you’d really want an umbrella…”

This is what happens when I blog while not completely awake.

Ears Like A Fruit Bat

September 23, 2015 / Diane Henders / 56 Comments

In the past I’ve complained about various parts of my body starting to mutiny as I get older, so I thought I should give credit where credit is due: My ears are still loyal citizens of the Kingdom of Diane.

Mind you, they do enjoy making me look like a goofball on a semi-regular basis. F’rinstance, they don’t necessarily translate other people’s speech accurately. Some of the things I’ve thought I heard would raise an eyebrow or two. But considering that they have to use my brain as an intermediary, my ears are probably doing the best they can.

Their preferences can be picky and arbitrary. I always carry a set of earplugs because movies are invariably too loud. Same with live bands, and sometimes even noisy bars. Outdoors I shoot wearing sound-dampening earmuffs; indoors I have to use muffs and plugs because muffs alone don’t soften the reports sufficiently for my princess eardrums.

But give me the fat lolloping rumble of a tricked-out big-block with straight pipes, and I’ll just grin and soak it all up earplug-free. Until I get to the drag strip and those pipes really start to bellow. Then I need earplugs again.

But I don’t mind indulging my ears a little. They’re good ears. I can tell whether a CRT is switched on without even being in the room, because I can hear the high-frequency electronic resonance. When we had cats, I could always hear them coming by the sound of stealthy paws compressing the pile of the carpet.

Or, as my brother-in-law puts it: “You’ve got ears like a fruit bat.”

(*Giggle* I originally mis-typed that as ‘ears like a fruit bag’, which is an entirely different thing.)

Anyway, I didn’t realize how dependent I am on my hearing until I had a bad cold and both ears got blocked. Apparently I cook based on sound. Whether it’s the barbeque or an open fire or the frying pan, I know it’s the right temperature when the food sizzles properly. Pancakes sizzle at a different frequency than, say, scrambled eggs. Foil-wrapped potatoes/butter/onions over an open fire should sizzle loudly but not crackle. Until my ears cleared I hovered anxiously over everything I cooked, wondering whether I was cremating it or barely warming it.

Since I’m a gearhead, I’m also attuned to even the tiniest change of sound in my car. We were driving this weekend when I mentioned to Hubby that I’ve been noticing a very slight whine lately that might be drivetrain-related. He couldn’t hear it even when I hummed its frequency (admittedly not the most effective diagnostic tool, since I can’t carry a tune in a bucket).

But I know he has a few flat spots in his hearing, so I remarked, “Oh, well, it’s probably just in one of the ranges you can’t hear.”

And he said, “Oh, you mean like the ‘wife zone’. Guys don’t pick up that frequency at all.”

I’m just going to pretend I didn’t hear that…

That’s me: Ears like a fruit bat.

Attack Of The Killer T… Oh, Wait; That’s Been Done.

September 16, 2015 / Diane Henders / 49 Comments

They’re coming. They slowly fill our house like an inexorable tide, backing us into the corners while we battle them with knives and saucepans…

Okay; so they’re not exactly ‘killer’ tomatoes.

We’re about to get our first hard frost so we brought in most of the garden produce this past weekend. (The snow in August was just a warning. This time they’re serious: Predicting -4C. Brrr.)

We measure the production of our garden in gallons because we transport it all home in 5-gallon pails. Our weekend haul was 10 gallons of green tomatoes (fortunately they ripen easily indoors), 15 gallons of carrots, and 60 gallons of potatoes. We could probably feed a small town.

But we can’t help ourselves. Every year I say to Hubby, “You know, we’re planting an awful lot of potatoes.”

And he says, “Uh-huh”, and keeps on planting.

I don’t really try to stop him. For a foodie like me, a plethora of potatoes is pretty close to heaven. When we dig them in the fall, Hubby maintains a stoic silence while I exclaim: “Oh, wow, look at this one! Now that’s a potato! Look at the size of this one! Oh, look, look, there are tons of them under here! Woohoo!” On and on I go with boundless enthusiasm until we’ve extracted the last tuber. You’d think I’d never seen a potato before.

It’s the same with the zucchini and tomatoes and beans and everything else throughout the summer. Chortling over the plenitude of produce, I drag Hubby hither and yon in the garden babbling, “Look at this one! And this one! Look how big/shiny/beautiful/(fill in superlative here) this one is!”

It’s not until I’m into the umpteenth hour of standing in the kitchen chopping and blanching and canning that the thrill begins to fade.

Yes, that is a 10-gallon pot full of carrots.

That’s when I begin to remind myself that there are three supermarkets within a mile of my house. I could just trot over and buy whatever I wanted throughout the winter instead of going to all this trouble. And if I wanted to ogle large quantities of vegetables I could go and stand in the produce department.

But it’s not the same. They’re not my vegetables. Supermarket potatoes are generic. Ours are Norlands and Vikings and Purple Caribes and French Fingerlings and Yukon Gems. We line them up and do taste tests and debate production levels with the seriousness of a UN conference. (Potato taste-test winners thus far are the French Fingerlings and Norlands, but more testing is required.)

And despite my aching back, I know that in a few months I’ll eagerly yield to the seduction of the hortiporn once again.

Hey, if it made sense it wouldn’t be a hobby, right?

* * *

P.S. Just because I know you’ve come to expect dirty jokes on my blog, here you go:

Q: Why do gardeners make excellent gossip columnists?

A: Because they’re always digging up dirt.

And:

Q: Why did the gardeners get kicked out of the church picnic?

A: Because they were telling dirty stories.

And finally:

Did you hear about the 1-900 line for gardeners? When you call in, a happy hoer will talk dirty for you.

I could go on, but I wouldn’t want WordPress to censor me again for all these dirty jokes…

Games With Whipped Cream

September 9, 2015 / Diane Henders / 39 Comments

It all started with whipped cream and a devilish grin…

…Sorry to dash your hopes, but this isn’t going where you think. Nope; for a change I’m writing a G-rated post. (Well, okay, I realize how unlikely that is. Maybe PG-13.)

Anyhow, a couple of days ago Hubby and I were eating dinner. I had made crêpes and I was alternating flavours: dousing the first one with maple syrup, then rolling up the next one with whipped cream, sugar, and cinnamon.

I had just finished rolling up a plump crêpe when Hubby looked over at my plate and gave me a devilish grin. “That’s really full of whipped cream,” he observed. “What would happen if I did… THIS!”

And he mimed slamming his hand down on the end of my crêpe.

Imagining my crêpe being transformed into a whipped-cream cannon, I burst out laughing because it brought back great memories of being in the Taché Hall residence at the University of Manitoba a few decades ago.

Taché Hall now houses the Marcel A. Desautels Faculty of Music, but it was originally built in 1911 as dormitories for the Agricultural College. (The College later expanded and became the University of Manitoba. For history and architecture buffs, a fascinating account of Taché’s history is available here.)

Taché Hall in 1911, when the U of M was still the Agricultural College.

It still retained most of its original grandeur by the time I got there in 1982, but we rowdy prairie teenagers failed utterly to respect it. Fortunately it was mostly stone, because it never would have survived otherwise.

That’s where the whipped-cream memory comes in. Or rather, shaving cream. (Or sometimes sheep shit from the agricultural buildings, but that’s another story.)

The room doors had been modernized and the locks were good (unless someone who shall remain nameless managed to purloin a master key… and that’s another ‘nother story). But there was a gap of approximately half an inch under each door.

Some enterprising person (no, not I) devised a nasty and elegantly simple practical joke. The only materials required were a sturdy 8×10 manila envelope and a can of shaving cream (or semi-liquid sheep shit, depending on how nasty you wanted to get).

Once the envelope was filled with the substance of choice, one had only to slide the open end of the envelope under the gap in the victim’s door and then jump on the envelope. The resulting high-velocity splatter would reach nearly every part of the tiny room. Bonus points were awarded if the occupant was present at the time.

Another favourite prank was the shit-shower, in which the prankster lurked in a toilet stall bearing a bucket of ice water mixed with shredded toilet paper. When an unsuspecting victim entered the adjacent cubicle and sat down, the prankster would dump the bucket over the cubicle wall, dousing the victim and escaping before he/she could pull his/her pants up and pursue.

(Note: I swear I never did these things. I was only an innocent bystander.)

It’s amazing how one crêpe can bring back so many happy memories…

* * *

P.S. I’ve finished the next cover update: Tell Me No Spies. Slowly but surely, I’m getting them done…