Showing posts with label dancing hot dogs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dancing hot dogs. Show all posts

Sunday, November 13, 2011

21,263 words and I'm freakin' hungry!


I'm having a colonoscopy tomorrow afternoon (YES, ANOTHER ONE) so I haven't been able to eat anything all day. Worse, the stupid procedure isn't booked until 3:30 p.m. so that's almost another whole day where I can't eat anything.

HELLLLOOOOOOOOOO????? Doesn't my doctor realize how much I have to EAT? That if I didn't love food so much I wouldn't be going to Weight Watchers?

I think I'm going to die if I don't eat soon.

And – gak – as soon as I finish writing this I have to take the purgative that will ship everything I've eaten for the last week fleeing from my loins like it's hopped up on nitrous.

Feck, feck, feck I hate colonoscopies.

I just had one in the spring and all was FINE. I was FINE. But then I went and got sick a few weeks ago and now the doc wants to have another look. What does he think my colon is, anyway? A movie? With polyps as the starring role? With him as the director? And his probe-thing as, I don't know, Godzilla?

It doesn't help that I just wrote a chapter about corn roasts. Mother of all that is holy, I was drooling as I wrote this:


"Grandpa Bean set up several enormous pots over raging bonfires. They boiled hundreds of cobs of corn, picked fresh that day from his fields and husked by the entire family. They cooked hot dogs, too, big steaming vats of wieners bursting their skins. Grandpa Bean used a hay wagon as a giant table and it was loaded with plates of butter, buns for the weenies, all manner of condiments and bowl after bowl of homemade potato and macaroni salads, coleslaw and baked beans. Weezie loved all of it. She could eat six or seven cobs of corn at a sitting, on top of a couple of hot dogs and a can of orange pop. The butter and salt would drip down her elbows and smear all over her cheeks and she’d care not one whit. And despite being full to bursting she’d find room in the bottom of her hollow leg for a slice or two of homemade pie. Grandma Bean and her daughters and sisters all made pies for the corn roast. The hay wagon groaned with pie. Apple, lemon meringue, raisin, cherry. Just thinking about those pies was enough to provoke drooling in Weezie some 30 years later. "

 Yep, let's write about hot dogs and corn on the cob when you're eating nothing but popsicles and ginger ale.

Those of you who know me will realize that I was using my grandparents' famous corn roasts as inspiration. Hazel and Charles Hooper farmed in Buttonville, Ontario, where Grandpa was the Reeve of Markham and had a lot of friends in political circles. Every year they hosted a corn roast to thank their friends and colleagues and these parties were one of the highlights of my kid year, right up there with Christmas and birthdays. It was the best corn, the best hot dogs, the best everything. It was such a pleasure to remember it today, even though I'd give my left nut right now for even a slice of dry bread.

(No, I don't actually have nuts. That is just an EXPRESSION. Gawd, sometimes people take things so literally!)

The writing, as you can see, is ROUGH. I'm just laying it down, trying to meet my daily word count and not bothering about grammar or spelling or how many freaking times I used the word "big." Just getting the words down, at this point, is good enough for me. The last few days I've been in a bit of a funk. One day I didn't write anything at all and yesterday I only pumped out a few hundred words. Thank goodness I was able to crank out 2,000 or so today. I feel like I'm back in the game.

Still, the halfway mark is coming up tomorrow and, by rights, I should have 25,000 words under my belt. That's 3,737 words by tomorrow night if I want to stay on par.

Is that possible? When my arse end has a date with Dr. Prong? We'll see. Or he'll see... he's the one with the scope.

Gotta go... have to go drink some really disgusting crap now.

(I hate my life sometimes.)

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Secret to Happiness

I should be in bed. Dave's there already, watching Hang 'Em High on the Drive-In channel. Every Wednesday night is Western Night on this station. Yee haw. He likes Squint McClint. I like the dancing hot dogs leading into commercial breaks. They remind me of the Midland drive-in my parents took me to when I was young. I loved the dancing hot dogs. I'm hungry just thinking about them. I still don't know what they have to be so darn happy about. They're about to be eaten, for god's sake. Still, they're happy.
Why are the hot dogs so happy?
What is the secret to all this happiness crap anyway?
Dr. Oz ... (oh please, please don't mistake me for someone who watches Oprah's latest protege. He drives me crazy. He comes across so PERFECT but he's obsessed with eating nuts and goat cheese products and his ears remind me of Spock and he always makes me feel GUILTY for not being more like him. Just the mere sight of him drives me to the kitchen cupboard to open up a bag of Old Dutch.) 
... Dr. Oz says people's happiness is largely genetic, which means, I guess, that you're hardwired to either be deliriously happy or hooked on Prozac. Or something in between. 
I don't want to believe that.
I don't think we're hardwired for anything. Although my late father's favourite expression was, "Are you wired up right, or what?" And I think that is a very, very good expression.
I find myself wondering if my father had a happy life.
I don't know.
He never talked about stuff like that.
He never talked much at all, come to think of it. Not to me, anyway.
I regret many things in life ... one of those things is not knowing my father better.
A month or so ago I was painting the entryway into the log cabin on the Muskoka River Dave and bought this summer. I was painting and listening to music and suddenly I had a vision of my father coming through the front door. He was wearing a navy blue sweater and walking with a cane, but he looked healthier than he was in the last year of his life. He walked in and looked at the paint job and said, "That looks good, Cath." 
I start to cry again just thinking about it. But hey, I'm 49 years old, mired deeply in peri-menopause, and I cry at the drop of a hat. 
Anyway, this is my first blog.
Like I said, I should be in bed. I could hardly get up this morning. But I felt an overwhelming urge to write something.
Somehow, I think "writing something" could be key to my own happiness. Oh, and doesn't that sound like complete baloney?
OK, so maybe it won't make me happy.  Can't hurt, though.
And its gotta be better than watching Dr. Oz.