Lusciousity

It’s Halloween, so when the whole world wants to tell you boo! I am going to tell you luscious! instead. There are many luscious aspects concerning Halloween. Pumpkins, pumpkin flavored things, brave costume wearing in grocery stores and college cafeterias, remembering reading Ray Bradbury stories late at night, the way I just remembered that mom let us eat all the candy we could in one sitting the Saturday after Halloween and then took the rest away (for herself! I found out later, but one year I got wise and defeated her by wearing a long sleeved shirt with really baggy sleeves and tight wrists so I could slip extra candy into the sleeves when she wasn’t looking and every so often excuse myself to “go to the bathroom” and assemble a stash under the covers of my bed large enough to see me through the long Halloween-less months to come). I’m also thinking about a NY Times editorial today by Neil Gaiman, in which he talks about why we like to scare ourselves and why the best ghost stories are always about being alive instead of dead. And so tonight, since that’s what I am, I’m raising a glass and wishing that I’d gotten home from school in time to give away some candy to trick-or-treaters.

This game is the latest rage of friends and family. I’m doing homework, so I’m not even touching this thing. I don’t know what it is or how it works, but they say it is addictive, so I’m staying away from it. Like I stay away from oxycontin.

I’m pretty sure you don’t read this blog, but if you do, happy birthday! I bought the tickets, I’ll be seeing you in December. Hope my black peacoat didn’t get eaten by a poodle yet.

But according to the email I just received, his “minicrisis” has turned my upcoming Moby Dick exam into a take-home rather than a three hour no book, no notes little blue book marathon. Hereby vindicating my luscious spending of the day on jotting down a few recollections of northeastern Brazil for Creative Nonfiction rather than studying for that exam. Not to mention chowing down on Pumpkin Spice KK donuts. As a Brazilian would say, que legal.

A need to pick up a couple of zuchinni’s (courgettes for you Anglophiles out there) took Daniel and I to Whole Foods this evening, and our trip happened to coincide with their Halloween tasting event. I saw the signs for it last weekend, but I had forgotten about it until we went back today and saw Pinnochio, a maximum security prison escapee, and a bordello broad all within a minute of walking in. And not all of those were employees. So some people actually dressed up to go to Whole Foods on a Friday night. This might make a more normal blogger a little scared, but I declare it luscious. What better way to defeat the elementary school costume hater demons than to get wild and crazy for a trip to the grocery store in your late-twenties and early thirties? Even better than the plentitude of costumes was all the free grub. I think we hit up about four wine stations, each with 4-6 wines to sample (I usually settled for two, much to Daniel’s chagrins), a cheese station, and a chocolate truffle station. I am not really surprised that I now have no appetite for the dinner we were planning on cooking, but get back to me one Netflix DVD from now and I might be feeling a bit differently.

(PS Maybe I’ve just got this on the brain, but I was also delighted to see lots of kids, costumed and not costumed, at the WF tonight. I loved watching the young moms gleefully sip their wine, because I know they earned it, and I cracked up when I saw a two year old reaching for his mom’s little plastic cup of merlot, as if to say “me too!), and whenever I saw a daddy toting around a little curly haired daughter I pulled a Snickerdoodle and exclaimed “oh, my ovaries.” Hopefully no one heard me. Still, the prevalence of children at Whole Foods makes this lushyte a little more hopeful for the future of humanity.)

Vote early. Give the poll workers some practice before November 7th, and save yourself a lot of time.

- Daniel

Love the fall colors that are available as computer wallpaper online. I found this collection on the Leelanau County (in the gobsmackingly gorgeous Traverse Bay area on Lake Michigan) website. Not all of them are that wonderful, but I am partial to this one and have set it as my work background to bring a little extra aestethic and seasonal joy to my mornings. This way I get all of the foliage with none of the snow.

I can almost taste the apple cider right now.

This morning, as I gleefully shivered my way from the parking garage to the library, one of the homemade, computer print-out signs taped to the stairway door caught my eye. At the top in bold lettering it said “I Sell Tickets, Not Tragedies” and proceeded to explain that the poster had two floor level tickets to sell to the upcoming Panic! At the Disco concert, helpfully including that if you logged on to Ticketmaster right now the best you could do  is somewhere in the fifth balcony for twice the poster’s asking price. Although I would describe myself as only a mild fan of P!ATD, the fact that this person took the time to create a pithily worded sign brought a wide smile to my face. In the barren imagination wilderness of Large Third Tier State University, this counts as sheer brilliance. Adroitly integrating the title of the band in question’s hit song into the headline of their poster made it seem like a personal effort, not just one more bland roommate request poster or frat party come-on. This was an example of using a little creativity where resignation to misspelled normalcy would have been adequate, and that is luscious in this overly attentive poster reader’s book.

My sister has always insisted that one of the great pleasures in a woman’s life is the simultaneous experience of a hot bath, glass of wine, bar of chocolate, and a good book, but I never believed her until last night. Strangely enough, it was Daniel that finally convinced me, nay, coerced me into giving it the first try of my quarter century-long life. A friend had given me lovely smelling bathing salts for my birthday, and we had just the bottle of red waiting to be opened. At first, I resisted mightily. No, I said, I’ve got homework. No, I said, it would take too much time and besides our dinky little bathroom would only depress me. And the lighting in there gives me the creeps. Daniel overcame every objection and took matters into his own hands, starting the hot water running and pouring my glass of wine at the first sign of my assent. He even unplugged my favorite little lamp from the living room and transported it to the bathroom to make the sure lit candles’ warm ambience would be supplemented enough for me to read. All I can say is, wow I cannot believe I have never tried this before. Wine alone has proved an excellent evening therapy for the accumulated stress of the day, but wine plus bath on a regular basis, and I think I might actually start feeling sane again. And it was a gift that kept on giving, as I slept better than I have in ages. I thought this had something to do with having a clean apartment, but now that I think about it I’m pretty it was the bath. I’m definitely adding this to my list of luscious-pick me-up’s.

To round off a weekend of birthday celebrations, I put the English tea kit that Snickerdoodle sent me earlier this month to good use in an Anne of Green Gables tea party this Sunday. The menu was complete with small sandwiches (tuna mayonnaise, egg mayonnaise, and cucumber); fresh scones, still warm from the oven; several types of jam, lemon curd, and genuine Devon clotted cream to put on the scones; two kinds of cake; and of course, English tea (brewed with boiling water from a v. British electric kettle). Several hours of eating, conversing, and speculating about what the year ahead might bring commenced. Our plans to finish watching the Anne of Green Gables movie were foiled by a freak power outage, but nobody minded too much as life without the omnipresent hum of air condition and various appliances proved much more relaxing and conversation inducing. Oh so civilized were we, not to mention luscious.