because I can always find a way to blame everything on my mother

I was at the Gourmet Warehouse on Friday, picking up a few things for my brother-in-law for Christmas.  And since I was there, I picked up a few things for me, too.  Because it’s the Gourmet Warehouse and it’s evil like that.

I ended up looking at butter dishes.

I hardly ever eat butter and only buy it once or twice a year for special baking.  For others.  Having a lactose intolerant husband has made the purchase of real butter rather irrelevant.

And that has been my argument for years.  Lactose intolerant husbands negates butter.  That’s why I have to eat emulsified edible oil products with a “buttery” taste.  Really.

But that hasn’t stopped me from having my own bottle of milk.  Or my own cheese(s).  Or yogurt.  Or cottage cheese.  And his fruit allergies haven’t stopped me from eating apples, pears, peaches and kiwis right in front of him.

So what’s up with the butter?  It’s better in every way.  Why am I not eating it?

Oh yeah.  Because I’ve never eaten butter.  Ever.  Butter was the essence of evil fat and cholesterol and was never in my childhood home.  Neither was regular (full-fat) cheese, full fat yoghurt or homogenized milk.  We even went through a period of fake egg whites.  All in the name of health.  And that’s what it was then.  Butter was bad and margarine was by far better.

Yet I’ve happily adapted to eating ridiculously rich bries and yoghurt you can stand a spoon in.

I still feel vaguely naughty when swiping real, honest-to-gods butter on my bread.  Like the cholesterol karma gods are going to sneak up behind me and smack me upside an artery any second.  And the fact that I’m feeding it to my daughter?  Sign me up for the gluttonous third level of hell.

Yet I still found myself looking longingly at the butter dishes.  And then I realised some were a touch different from the others (mine aren’t as nice as these lovely creations!).  They had instructions to cram the butter into the lid.  The lid.  And then stick it back onto the base.  In water.

In water.

Apparently, the French figured this out eons ago to keep butter fresh.

It seems rather sketchy to me, particularly in light of the offhand note to change the water every “couple of days”.

But, what the hell.  I’ve already condemned myself with my rebellious choice of real dairy blocks over manufactured margarine that’s made of the same stuff as the tub its packed in.  Why not float it in water and store it at room temperature?

beverage of choice

Make mine a coffee.  Or tea.

Aside from my recent rediscovery of beer, I prefer my drinks with a bit of caffeine over alcohol.

The Magpie, though, has already made her opinions clear:

• coffee, bad
• tea, good
• bath water, worth investigating further.

I’m torn.  She’s never been a water baby [yes, my fault for not dragging her to the chlorine soaked, brat infested community pools on a regular basis], but she’s now thinking about putting her face underwater.

For fun, I guess.

So I don’t want to discourage that.  But still.

Ew.

Is this my hang up?  Have I inherited something that has no basis in reality? Is sticking your face in bath water really any worse – or better – than a public pool on a Saturday afternoon?

I clearly remember having the conversation with my own mother that water coming out of the bathtub tab was no different from water out of any other tap.  I’d apparently decided to stop fighting about the water in the bathtub, but was damn well determined to make my case about the water-spout.

I also never set foot in a public pool until a few years ago [the rare hotel pool not-with-standing,] having grown up swimming in glacially fed lakes and rivers in the more northern parts of the province.

So, yes, I am loath to have the Magpie drink bath water.  Accidentally or otherwise.  I’m not very keen on her getting a face full of pool water.  But I do want her to be comfortable in water in general so I guess that leaves the local lakes and ocean beaches.

You know, when there are no health warnings posted.

we have fire. as long as we have gas.

In the event of some sort of real emergency, I’m not sure that our gas fireplace will actually come in handy for, say, surviving but, in the mean time, we can feel all proud and productive-like that we (Mr.Q) managed to ignite the pilot light.

Without blowing up the complex, I might add.

The Magpie loves it.  The dog doesn’t hate it (and he hates real fire).  It keeps the upper floors toasty warm.  We haven’t had it on in a few years because we keep threatening to get the glass front installed, but we never have.  (I doubt that would count as a reno…)  We finally figured that we should at least slay the dust bunnies that had colonized under the fake logs and appeared to be developing into an agrarian society.

That lead to the rediscovery of gas pipes and valves, one thing led to another and we have fire.

 

beer. oh, yeah. beer.

Tonight, at supper, I had a beer.

Hardly revolutionary, but it was the first beer I’ve had in months. The first real beer I’ve had in years.

Yes, years.

I had one home brew over the summer, but it just wasn’t quite the same.

I’d forgotten that I rather like beer.  It’s tasty.  Smooth and tasty.

I was off alcohol for nearly five years, between trying to get pregnant, being pregnant and breastfeeding.  That all ended nearly a year ago and, since then, I’ve indulged in the occasional glass of wine, fruity martini but no beer.  It seemed that, if I were going to drink, I should drink real drinks pressed from local (organic) grapes or concocted from multiple (organic) fruits.  Beer seemed second class.

Seems I was so missing out.

I managed to convince the Magpie that she wasn’t missing out though, and that she would really prefer some of her father’s iced tea.  Today, it worked.

passing

In obvious follow-up to the last post, we said goodbye to our cat this past Tuesday.

She was ridiculously stoic to the end, eating when she never should have wanted to and trying to walk around when she was almost entirely unable. After spending 13 of her 19 or 20 years with us, she left us as calmly as she did everything else.

We’re starting to do okay.  Our dog is feeling better than he did before his illness began and we’re in the final stages of sorting his diet and medications out.  Mr. Q and I are stopping short of asking each other if we’ve fed the cat or given her meds, but it’s difficult to go into certain rooms or past the scratch posts that are still around.  The Magpie knows that her kitty is not here and knows that she “left her body”.  But she now gets very worried that anyone leaving the house might not come back.  This only happens when she’s over tired (and that happens a little more often now that the Magpie is back to refusing naps and has caught a cold).   We’re a little apprehensive to ask our baby sitter over for a while, but we know at some point, we must.

She’s had a confusing couple of weeks and she’s held out remarkably well.  Far better than her parents, on several occasions.  She’s had to deal with so much more and she’s gotten away with so much more.  And now we have to ask her to get back to the regular old routine – the one with left over Hallowe’en candy and the impending doom loom of Christmas.

We need a few weeks of nothing.  Normal.  No illness.  No crisis.  I need sleep.  Mr.Q needs sleep.  The Magpie needs to see us take the dog for his nightly walk and come back.  Every time.