My friend and baking assistant, Marilyn, and I went out for lunch the other day.  I ordered a double vodka martini, and she ordered a Manhattan, which wasn’t on the menu.  The young gal waiting on us took the order and left.  When she returned with the drinks she was positively ga ga with excitement after knowing what went into them.  On the menu they have the usual frou frou drinks made with half a dozen liqueurs and juices, but our drinks eschewed any additional mixes.

She came up with the drinks, and set them down saying, “Wow!  When the bartender told me what was in each of your drinks, I thought I couldn’t drink that!!”  We said, “Just wait.  In 25 years you’ll be sluggin’ back straight booze and thinking nothing of it.  Then you’ll think about us.”  Really, the young are so much weaker than we are.

And it’s a good thing to have health and strength given the myriad challenges with which one is presented.  When Denis and I arrived home after leaving Nicky here for 48 hours, the kitchen counters were covered from one end to the other with dirty dishes.  The gate to the yard was slightly open, and the sliding door ajar!  I said to Denis, “I just hope the dogs survived.”  Fortunately, they had, so Denis and I, like beaten mules, just got busy and cleaned up this sty.

I left a message for Monda Rosenberg, Food Editor for Chatelaine Magazine, but of course, no reply.  So I have had to go into my list of contacts to try and find someone who might know her and who would suggest to her that she should try my fruitcakes.  It is maddening, but I know it is for the woman’s, as well as the entire country’s own good to find out about my product.

Other than that, I have done absolutely nothing to attempt to market my fruitcakes.  I’m going to make 5000 this year, and that is it.  I doubt that I could ever force myself to exceed that number, so maybe deep down inside I know that mass marketing is just plain crazy.  However, anyone reading this who has ever sold anything knows the insane thrill of the sale, and how it becomes addictive.

And speaking of addictive, today I was at one of my favourite stores.  Yes, I was in Value Village browsing the aisles, when lo and behold, there was a sweet little stainless steel flask!  When I got to the till I said to the girl, “This’ll be fantastic if I ever find myself at an event where drinking would seem inappropriate.”

As usual, this was another of the earth’s younglings, so I received one of those, “heh, heh, heh” nervous laughs, as she was hoping that I would just shut up and move along.  Really, it does remind me of that age-old song, “What’s the matter with kids today?”  Remember that?  “Why can’t they be like we were, perfect in every way?  What’s the matter with kids today?”

You know my penchant for breaking into song at any given moment, and often I sing songs from my youth.  In grade three, at Osoyoos Elementary Junior Secondary School, I remember happy music classes in which all 30 of us would sing.  Mrs. Kretz would lead us along in a merry song, such as Little Brown Jug.  You know the one:

“My wife and I live all alone in a little log hut we call our own.

She loves gin, and I love rum, I tell you what we’ve lots of fun

Ha ha ha, you and me, little brown jug don’t I love thee?

Ha ha ha, you and me, little brown jug don’t I love thee!”

The beloved and feared principal, Mr. McLeod would walk by, beaming at the sound of our eight-year-old voices belting out someone’s joy for booze.  It could now become a scene out of a Simpson’s episode, but songs like that were totally normal in the 60’s.  I miss the heady and wonderful days before politcal correctness killed all of our fun!

And speaking of having fun killed, a couple of days ago I was racing around the neighbourhood like a crazed cow.  We spent thousands of dollars to have a fence installed so that the dogs would be safe.  However, for some reason, Nicky isn’t able to close the gate behind himself whenever he leaves.  So, the other day I was doing something when it hit me: the tiny dog hadn’t been around in ages.

 Arnie, being 13 years old, blind and deaf, and partially senile, doesn’t leave the yard.  However, whenever they get the chance, Mojo and Ricky like to run down to Hall Road, where they like to play chicken with trucks and other large vehicles.  I raced out whistling and calling, and seeing the gate open, feared the worst.

I then ran down to Hall Road, whistling and calling, looking into the ditch for the corpse.  Nothing!  Our neighbour was outside, and I said to him that our tiny dog was missing.  He suspected that the dog was probably in the yard, avoiding me.  I went back home, and finally the stupid dog came when I called.  By this time, I had spent 20 minutes searching for the animal, which I now wanted to beat.

But then I realized that the being deserving the beating was Nicky, who won’t close the gate.  I suppose I should be thankful, as running up and down our driveway with high adrenalin levels is probably a good way to lose a bit of weight.

And now Easter looms, with its reams of chocolate.  I’ve spent the past week trying hard not to eat nasty foods, so not sure what will happen, though I’m suspecting it won’t be good.  I’m something like the guy from the Little Brown Jug song, though subsitute white wine and chocolate for the rum and it’s about right.  Now to purchase the proper little jug and we’re all set!

The consultation for the lower yard was both exhilarating and frightening.  By the time it’s as I envision it, I will be very poor, weathered and old.  However, I’m undaunted,  so I’m pumped for it all to begin, regardless of how calloused I will end up.  That’s what the rasp for my feet is for, isn’t it?  If I want to make Denis’ forehead move back an inch I sit on the couch and start working on my heels.  He beats it out of there pretty quickly.

I finally weighed myself the other day and so am putting it out there publicly that I am now officially on a diet.  I just can’t take it anymore, as I’ve noticed that the Michelin Man and I have quite a lot of rings in common.  The most offensive of them being right under my rib cage, as every top I wear skims this area and makes it even more noticeable.  I could have lived with the big butt and thighs, but this stomach fat is just too hard to conceal any longer.  So, off it will have to come!

Discontinuing the food experiments is Step #1, and this is easy to do as I have decided against trying to introduce a third product.  You may recall I was mulling over the idea of various chocolate pates, but after careful self-examination, have rejected it.  For one, as the company’s sole purpose is to convert fruitcake haters into fruitcake lovers, to veer off into another product seems like folly.  For another, I am the laziest human on earth, and cannot even bake fruitcakes, so why would I think I would actually do something more?

If I did want to experiment, which I don’t, then I would take mom’s boyfriend Gerry’s advice and do more research around the mini fruitcakes I made for Nokia Canada.  Of all the people who give me advice, Gerry actually knows what he’s talking about, having been a tycoon for the majority of his 93 remarkable years.  Actually, he just turned 93 and I was at his birthday party in Osoyoos.

Luke is now driving Denis’ old flatbed truck and has parked his little Neon here as he said he’s going to replace the motor.  So, in the lower yard we have a defunct green van, the Neon (which will soon be put up on blocks and beneath a tarp) and Denis’ work vehicle.  Beside this is a giant pile of yard waste.  This is where I’m going to have a beautiful arbour, covered in pink roses.  There is serious incongruity in our lives.

Another example of this incongruity is the other day I said to Denis how sad it is now that the place is empty of louts, due to Nicky having found his first girlfriend.  Denis said, “It’s not sad to no longer have to deal with smashed rakes, lost tools, damaged furniture, vomit, broken dishes and loud music.”  Oh, sure, when you put it that way, it’s not sad.

Local gardening guru, Don Burnett, is scheduled to come next week to help me with my major garden project.  So, in preparation, I decided I’d better get out in the yard and try to spruce it up a bit.  I was thinking that if he arrives and the yard is a hell hole, he will discourage me as he’ll think if I can’t even keep the yard clean, then how can I do a whole vegetable garden?

Yesterday, I took five wheelbarrows full of pine needles out of the lower yard, which is the designated new vegetable garden area.  However, that is a drop in the bucket, as I can see each pine tree has about 25 wheelbarrows of pine needles underneath it.  Doing this also helped me see that the project is likely doomed without some kind of decent path.  Right now one has to follow the dogs’ trail up the hill, pushing a laden wheelbarrow over bunch grass and uneven ground.

Oh well.  Once a few thousand dollars have been spent on earth-moving equipment, I’m sure all will be well.  In the meantime, I bought bags of dahlia bulbs at Costco.  God knows one can’t have just vegetables in the lower yard as that would be much too drab.  What a waste of good soil and water as well!  This way I’ll have vegetables decorated by colourful blooms.  So much better.

I’ve had the headiest week for the fruitcake business.  I contacted some more store managers to get feedback on how my product had done.  The nice man at Pepper’s Foods in Victoria, the woman at Cookbook Cooks in Calgary, and the manager of the Osoyoos Buy-Low all reported good sales and said they were certainly going to be ordering again.  I now have a nice tidy little base of stores, and if I can grow the on-line sales, I will be all set.

Miraculously, I’ve found that I’m able to force myself to do preparatory work for the baking.  I’ve been chopping chocolate and putting it into baggies, cutting up pears and apples, cutting parchment paper for the bottom of the tins, and ordering labels and bags.  When I see any of my ingredients on sale I buy them, and I’ll continue this throughout the year.  Despite all of this, however, I remain unable to force myself to bake.

This list of things I refuse to do grows large – baking, cleaning, writing my novel.  The things I continue to do maniacally remain the same – shopping, going to the gym, gardening.  If only one could make money from the latter.  Who knows, maybe the grand gardening project will flourish into something and I’ll become the Arugula Queen.

The dogs and I are completely exhausted from five hours of gardening.  As Luke was here I had him help me haul even more wheelbarrows full of pine needles up from the lower yard.  I then dug around in some of my beds, and generally worked until my back gave out entirely.  Quite a lot of fun, when you think of Ontario and Quebec, which are currently receiving 30 to 50 cm of snow!