Contraband

I heard a story the other day that I thought was pretty funny--though probably not for the people who lived it. Nevertheless, I am prepared to laugh at their expense. This concerns a group of guys who do an annual fishing trip to Canada--rent a cabin, stay a few days, drink a lot of beer and commune with nature. At the border crossing, they were asked if they had any produce. Well, knowing full well there would be no problem (and probably to divert attention from the amount of alcohol they were bringing along) they declared the potatoes destined for the steak dinner on the first night at the cabin.

Oops.

The potatoes were enough of a red flag that the Canadians ran checks on all of them for prior vegetable smuggling convictions. It turned out they were first-timers with the vegetables, but one of the guys had a prior DUI--an automatic felony in Canada. And this from a country that shares a border with Wisconsin--they must be more foreign then they seem. Anyway, they would not admit the poor sap into the country and in a three musketeers gesture, his companions refused to proceed without him.

So they turned back, only to find that their nongrata status in Canada had all the alarms ringing on the US side of the border. In short, the US border patrol couldn't say exactly why, but they really didn't want them back. Not if Canada didn't want them. Caught in no-man's land with a sniper pacing the roof between the two borders, they spent an additional few miserable hours trying to smuggle their potatoes back into the land of their births.

And as I listened to this story, I couldn't help thinking about how times have changed. I remembered the time we crossed from Canada into the US with a car full of chaotic and muddy camping gear and the guy asked us if we had any guns. We invited him to check for himself, and though he didn't laugh as much as we thought he might, he didn't arrest us either.

And the sniffer dog who went into high alert over my carry-on bag which contained a large sheep's cheese from Italy--well I lied to the dog as well as his handler and they looked at me and my two young nervous cheese-smuggling children and let us all walk.

Would that happen now? I am not so sure. A kilo of declared Italian dried herbs (and yes, a kilo of dried herbs does connote a certain something, as well as being a really impressive amount of herbage) did walk through Chicago customs a few years ago, but the reindeer jerky from Norway did not. Apparently there is a ruminant virus in Scandinavia and we don't want to catch it. No, we would rather hold the fort at chronic wasting disease, a prion disorder that I prefer to call mad deer disease. I explained that I had no intention of eating the reindeer jerky or feeding it to other deer, but only wanted it to stuff the Christmas stockings of my (adult) children and claim it came from Rudolph. Maybe I got what I deserved...or maybe the customs guy thought that was an excellent idea and confiscated my jerky to distribute himself.

Either way, the fun is certainly going out of crossing international borders with food, one of my favorite souvenirs. And don't even think of taking anything with dirt on it into New Zealand. Kiwis may seem very happy-go-lucky, but those customs people can be quite severe. Trust me, I know.

I think it is only a matter of time before we are dumping not only our shoes, but all of clothes, into those little gray bins. Then naked through the showers before seeing the sidewalks of any other country. Mark my words.

Compulsion

No, not that depressing French movie--I am referring to behavior that began last Friday when I discovered Bejeweled Blitz, one of the applications on Facebook. Henceforth, I will refer to it as the Devil B, so as not to add to the allure.

Not since Tetris was new have I wasted so much time. My friend Mary warned me, but I see she is posting a score of over 59,000 points in the current tournament, so clearly she is not taking her own advice.

I have been playing Lexulous for a few weeks now and it is fairly sedate. Much like Scrabble, the game it imitates, there is a board, there are letters, and everyone takes turns. Sometimes several days go by between turns, unless you have three players on three computers in the same house. Then it gets raucous with much yelling and thundering up and down the stairs and the neighbors might complain. In short, everyone's idea of good family fun.

The Devil B is a totally different animal. This is the kind of game that causes eye strain, weight loss (or gain) and repetitive stress syndrome in the mouse hand. And all since last Friday. It has all of the ingredients of a good game: it takes less than a minute to learn, but I am still working out the strategy. My scores keep going up, but it feeds me just enough stratospheric success that I want more. The shapes, colors, and sound effects provide enough multisensory cues that I know when I am doing well, and I always want to do better. I thrive on the sound of jewels glissading into patterns of 3, 4, and 5, exploding into thousands of points.

I was talking to some friends recently about keeping the brain active--the goal, apparently, is to keep laying down neural pathways. I am sure I have, but all of my new pathways are causing me to see pink triangles and discs that look like Werther's Original Toffees whenever I close my eyes. I am not at all sure this will protect me from dementia. In fact, could this be causing dementia. At the very least, I am short on sleep.

It has also occurred to me (as I am sure it has to you) that this may be one of the alien plots to subjugate the human race. The first step, after making everyone play this game compulsively, is to withdraw the game. I am getting an error message as we speak. Although my friend Mary is merrily ramping up her scores, I CAN'T GET IN!!!!

I think may need a Devil B exorcist. Either that, or a flight to New Zealand where the jewels cascade, free of error messages.

Currency

Last fall I was out to dinner with a friend. In the usual settling up of the bill afterwards, she gave me a dollar with a stamp on it, directing me to www.wheresgeorge.com. I might not have even noticed, but she told me I should check this out--it was an interesting site. I actually meant to tuck it into a Christmas stocking as a novel (and cheap), activity, but I forgot. Then, afraid I would accidentally spend it before logging on (a shrewd move as it turns out), I stashed it in a galaxy far far away in my purse. There it sat.

A couple of weeks ago I got a second bill with a similar stamp. This caused me to remember the first one, but in the meantime I was craving popcorn, so I noted the serial number and fed it into the snack machine at work. Then I logged on to the wheresgeorge site and my eyes were opened.

I found out that the site is supposed to track the natural life of the currency. I think it is a bit ironic that the natural life of the currency was interrupted by my curiosity about the site itself. Nothing else would have made me hoard a dollar bill for 8 or 9 months. In addition, it turns out that this is a major hobby for some people, like scrapbooking or gambling. There are people who have set loose $20,000 or more in currency, just to see where it goes. There are blogs, chats, opinions. etc. There is also vocabulary. What I had in my possession was a "Wild" and it has a "parent" named Denny. I don't feel as special about it since discovering that Denny has a lot of Wilds out there. Does this suggest anything to you? Or is it just me who feels like I just became a stepmother while wondering about all of Denny's other offspring? Denny must be feeling disappointed about this particular offspring since it was last seen at a Walgreen's in 2008 and hasn't done much with its life. Never fear, Denny, as of yesterday, this dollar bought a cookie and is on the move again.

And the other dollar? I honestly answered the question "Is this note now in your possession?" with a "no"and I got a lecture. Apparently that is a very big rule violation because it might lead to notes being entered out of order. I figured with the Swanson's vending machine company I had a few days of grace, but wheresgeorge did not agree. And this from a site that tracks dollar bills into and out of all sorts of places I would rather not know about. If you happen to see me about town receiving change in my surgical gloves, cut me a little slack. I may know more than you want to about where your money has been.

Cheese of the Goat

They say the best classroom is life itself, and I have to agree. For example, we have all learned a lot about economics in the past few years, especially the economics of oil. We used to think that prices were set at the pump, and having gas stations on four corners of an intersection was bad because it drove gas prices to unreasonably low levels. We now know that gas prices respond to major economic factors such as a hurricane, a leak in an oil refinery tank, or Labor Day weekend.

So you can imagine how alarmed I was to read that, in the past week alone, over 100 goats were stolen from area farms. The response has been a big snicker--from lardhappus: "That'll make a lot of gyros" and abcd: "I'll bet that really got his goat." They are missing the point. We are about the see an unprecedented rise is the price of goat cheese. Based on what I have seen in the oil arena, I would say that it will happen immediately, never mind that not all of these goats were producing milk yet. They represent goat milk futures--so cheese prices will rise today, tomorrow, next weekend.

Being the prudent consumer that I am, I stocked up on goat cheese as soon as I heard the news. But being a consumer, I am sorry to report that the goat cheese has itself been consumed. It was delicious. I am now left at the mercy of rising goat cheese prices just like the rest of you---but don't say you weren't warned.

Children

I was in the grocery store a few weeks ago and a little girl looked at my cart and declared in amazement "Mommy, that lady has a LOT of yoghurt." Her mother looked a little embarrassed--well, it wasn't like they were bottles of bourbon (different aisle), so why the reaction? It made me think about all of the times I tried to stifle my children's opinions, at least in public. While it is true that children can say the darndest (and most mortifying) things, it is usually the truth, and nothing more.

And if actions speak louder than words, children are the living proof. Bored? They will let you know. Wanting your undivided attention? They have their little ways. So as a parent, taking children out in public is always fraught with danger. We don't necessarily want those truths let loose willy nilly. Lately though, I am finding it delightful to be around other people's children, at the grocery store, in their party clothes running rampant at weddings, or simply finding new uses for the flower-girl basket.

Lighten up parents--at least until one of your cherubs crawls under my table at a restaurant, double-dips at the buffet with a finger, or makes a loud and truthful comment about my person. I have my limits.

Chili

I was feeling inspired last night, so I cooked two batches of chili: one for my mother-in-law and one for us. Here are the ingredients for the one we ate. Some of the ingredients are very local, but substitutions are always possible.

Brown:

3 lbs ground chuck
1 onion

Add:

2 large cloves garlic mashed with sea salt
1 yellow pepper, chopped
2 fire-roasted red peppers, chopped
2 serranos, seeded and minced
Medium chili powder from Penzey's
ground chipotle peppers
Adobo seasoning
Chicago steak seasoning (Penzey's again)
dried epazote

Stir a bit and add:

1 large can Rotel (tomatoes and green chilis)
1 large can hominy, drained
a Tupperware container of red beans with liquid, cooked Salvadoran style by daughter Emily

Cook until it looks like a whole rather than the sum of the parts.

Serve with grated cheese and steamed zucchini.

Cairn II

It is instinct that causes us to find partners and breed (or not), but a driving force is certainly the inclusion of our DNA in future generations. I am not sure what it is that causes us to befriend other species and make them part of our families. It does not seem to favor our chances of survival, so I have to conclude that there is a human need to love, whether it be our own kind or others.

Take dogs, for instance. Or one particular dog--the hearth, the pivot point of our family for 15 years. How does this happen? One day you are bringing home a puppy with large uncertainties and no manners, who is basking in the wind of the car vent, and the next, you are curled around the bed of a very sick dog, with the fan trained right on his face, because he always liked it. Is that a suitable final hour of his life? I would like to think so.

His last week was spent in a place he loved, with our undivided attention, because we did not have to be at work. Within eight hours of our arrival home, he was too sick to stand and the prognosis was grim. We could find out exactly why he was sick, but we would not be able to do much to make him better. We made the hardest decision of our lives, and yet it felt right.

We will miss you Bailey--we signed on voluntarily for this sorrow but that does not make it any easier to bear right now.