The other day Nicky and some of his friends went to get take-out ‘food’ from A & W.  Apparently Luke had given Nicky $3.00 and asked him to bring him an order of onion rings.  When they arrived back here they discovered that the person at A & W had forgotten to put them in the bag.  Luke was heartbroken, but undaunted.

He came upstairs with a hand written recipe for onion rings, which he’d found on the net.  I informed him that for someone who doesn’t cook at all, making a batter for deep frying might be hard, so I volunteered to do it.  I had some nice Walla Walla sweets in the house, so he and I made the batter and sliced one onion.  I fried the onion rings in oil, and they actually looked really good.

Denis had left his computer gaming for a few moments, probably due to needing a beer, so sauntered into the kitchen just as we were putting the rings onto paper towels on a plate.  He took one, and went, “mmmm.”  So, of course, being the idiot that I am, I asked if he wanted an order for himself.  He did.  So, I fried up the second onion.

While frying the second batch, Nicky came upstairs breathlessly as he had seen Luke’s plate of homemade onion rings.  He said he wanted a batch, too.  I said, “Oh for the love of God!” but of course went ahead and made the third batch.  I had even had to make more batter by this point.  I realized that Nicky had eaten the take-out, and was now adding the onion rings, just for fun.

At the end of all the frying, the oil was black.  Time to throw it out, so I took a sturdy plastic bag and poured it in.  Then I tied a knot in the bag and placed it into the garbage.  Once that garbage was full, I threw it out into the trash can.

The next morning I awoke to Mojo being paralyzed on the bed.  I figured it was her back, so forced anti-inflammatory down her throat.  After a while, I went outside, and I saw that the garbage had been tipped and that there was a great trail of oil in the carport and onto the driveway.  I skillfully put two and two together and figured out that Mojo was probably sick from all of the oil.

Later that day, one of the dogs vomited on the bed.  I mopped it up, as usual, but the mattress refused to dry.  I felt it with my hand, which was slick with oil!  The little monster had hurled blackened oil onto my bed, thereby causing the mattress to have to be turned.  Imagine how filthy it is under there now.

Oh well.  My dear friend Alison is on her way here for a visti, so I have to concentrate on what’s important: dinner.  I have a wild sockeye salmon which I want to stuff with lemon slices, garlic and herbs from my garden.  I also have nice local eggplant for eggplant Parmesan, and the usual local potatoes, roasted.  It will end with a cherry fool.  And yes, there probably will be garbage.  Tomorrow is therefore another big day for Mojo, the gourmand.

I remember when I was about 10 or 11 Mad Magazine was still popular, and each edition came with detachable stickers that you could put on your wall.  I found these little witticisms (such as Rat Fink) amusing.  So one day I made a sign of my own, which I posted on my bedroom door.  I thought I had written Keep Out – Genius at Work, however, once it was up my mom popped her head in and said, “By the way, you misspelled genius.  You forgot the ‘i’.”  Doh!

Nicky and his friends like to amuse themselves with Jaegermeister mixed with Red Bull.  Either one smells like gasoline on its own, so when you mix them I can only imagine how disgusting it tastes.  On Friday I asked him if he wanted dinner, as Denis was away and Luke was working.  He said, “No, we ordered in.”  When it arrived, I saw that the four of them had ordered two platters from the local Greek restaurant.  I asked, “How much was that?” to which Nicky replied, “It wasn’t expensive, only a hundred bucks.”  I was horrified and told them so, but they  just laughed and shook their heads at the silly old woman.

One of Nicky’s friends said he once saw Nicky eat 20 chicken McNuggets and 3 Big Macs.  That’s quite a lot of food and fat, isn’t it?  No wonder people at the grocery store look at my cart and grow pale.  Sure enough, the other day I once again bought so much food that I got $30.00 off.  I guess gluttony does have some rewards.

The weekend was mad and wonderful, as Marilyn and I managed to pump out 280 fruitcakes.  My feet were pinging when I put them up on Saturday night.  However, it is wonderfully honest work, and as I appear to continue to be compelled to do it, luckily I enjoy it.  I find that the fruitcakes are actually made with a lot of love, so maybe the karma of that will help them sell.

I had the great pleasure of getting together with several of the friends that I’ve known since the days of primary and elementary school.  It’s weird, but we all still look the same!  Spooky, really, when you think of it.  Other women in their 50’s look like middle-aged women, yet we remain 18 years of age forever.  Why?

Today appears to be another comical ‘work-from-home’ day.  What have I done? Nada.  The other day I said to Denis, “The windows are filthy.  You can hardly see out of them.  I want you to clean them.” To which he gave the old Doyle reply, “But as soon as they’re done, they get dirty again.”  I said, “Yes, much the same as the dishes I do every day, the dinner I make, etc.  Why do it, when I know I’ll just have to do it all over again tomorrow?”

This cunning piece of logic gave Denis pause for thought, and he conceded that he would actually clean the windows.  Sure enough, yesterday there he was, pail in hand.  So, that proves that I’m a genius after all.

An atmosphere of quiet acceptance appears to have descended upon the home.  Luke is working hard at his new job as an entry-level welder.  He comes home filthy and shows me the blisters on his hands where the skin is rubbed off due to the excessive sweat inside his gloves.  When he does that, I say, “I told you to go to BCIT and take robotics.”

Nicky appears to be enjoying his job, as anyone would, and is now Big Man Around Town with his own debit card.  He’s been pigging out at McDonald’s, and I’m sorry to have to say, it shows.  The other day I pointed out his protuberant belly to him and he had to admit he is getting a bit porcine.

Denis has decided to grow a beard for some insane reason, so looks older than Medusa as his hair is still dark, but the beard is grey.  It’s strange how men do things to make themselves look worse, whereas women always seem to be trying to better their appearance.  Speaking of which, I got the most fab pair of Liz Claiborne pants at the Bay on Friday.

I have flipped into straight fear mode at this point, as I count the number of days until Christmas and feel sick.  Next year could someone please remind me that these fruitcakes need to be chipped away at, and not all baked in a ball of tears every fall?  I’m currently cooking fruit like there’s no tomorrow for the Okanagan Harvest Cake, and also have a blister due to all the damn cutting.

I remember when the kids were small how grateful I was that they loved TV.  They could be left there for hours, and I could actually get some stuff done.  I find I now get the same relief from the frozen food section at Costco.  I buy boxes of popcorn chicken, quesadillas, Taquitos, spring rolls and samosas and put them in the freezer.  Then at dinner time I ask them, “Do you want me to make a meatloaf, or would you rather heat up something from the freezer?”

It’s mean, I know, but gives me an extra hour or two to do something for the fruitcake business.  Right now I’m trying to write an ad to submit to google, but instead find that I need to dust the top shelf of knick knacks in the kitchen.  It’s strange how I can find so many things to do to avoid something that appears the least bit hard.

Aside from baking, I’m also plagued with technical difficulties such as renewing the domain name (can’t remember the password) and ordering letterhead and business cards (can’t fill out and attach the file electronically).  So, in the end, I just decide to sip a nice sauvignon blanc, eat a decent dinner and then placate myself with an entire angel food cake with butter icing.  Kidding.

I spent a couple of hours vacuum sealing fruitcakes this afternoon, and it was a gratifying feeling.  I now have 500 fruitcakes ready to go for the coming season.  God knows I didn’t vacuum seal that many in one afternoon – it literally takes hours to do that.  Why I chose a fruitcake business I’ll never know.

I’ve started sending samples out again, and it’s nerve wracking trying to guess how many stores one needs so that it’s just enough.  Too few, and it’s annoying.  Too many, and it’s scarier than seeing Nicky behind the wheel of a car.

I suppose I shouldn’t talk as when I first started to drive I was a menace on the road.  I failed the driving test the first time, and barely passed the second time, at age 19.  The only reason I passed was because I told them I’d taken a few driving lessons from a school.  Prior to that, for my attempt at age 16, I had been ‘taught’ to drive by my mom.

It was quite a nerve-shattering experience for both of us.  We had a red volkswagen and so it was a stick shift.  Here’s how you learned to drive in Osoyoos.  You get in the car, start it, and your mom says, “Okay, go.”  I’m not sure if all that lurching is good for either the people or the vehicle.  There was also a lot of screaming like, “Stop! Stop!” followed by a tongue-lashing.  So much to learn, so little time.

My mom learned to drive from my dad, who got his driver’s license by mailing away $5.00 to Penticton.  The license arrived a couple of weeks later in the mail.  Nowadays they seem to make quite a lot of hoo ha about teaching the young to drive.  Fortunately for us, we were able to save the cost of lessons as Denis (the former policeman) taught them.  They’re actually both not that bad.

It’s quite interesting the types of things one learns about oneself when working from home.  I have learned that I am very, very lazy and could win a prize for procrastination.  This year my goal is to sell 3000 fruitcakes, so I think of the 2500 I’ve yet to make, and decide it’s much better to go outside and do a bit of weeding.  After all, we had lashings of rain last week, and God knows the garden needs it.

I then come in and decide a pep talk is in order.  “Rome wasn’t built in a day.  The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” etc.  None of it helps, however, so I finally realized I must hire someone, as if I know an assistant is arriving then I have to be ready to spend the day baking.  Glorious luck! My friend Marilyn, also a trained chef, is willing to do the grueling task with me every weekend for the next two months!  What a strange way to spend a summer.

Once the Mercury retrograde was over last week, I felt an immediate sense of relief.  I actually felt the first stirrings of motivation after a long dry spell.  I noticed I was low on boxes, so ordered a couple of thousand. Then, I phoned and visited some of my stores, and got some orders.  I made deliveries to The Bench in Penticton and Tin Horn Creek Winery in Oliver.

Emboldened, I decided to try again for a distributor.  I remembered that the nice woman at Caper’s in Vancouver had told me the name of two distributors.  I had contacted one, and the very sadly unimaginative people there had said no to my lovely products.  So, I looked through old e mails, and found the name of the other distributor.  I blithely sent off an e mail, and got a reply saying “please phone at your earliest convenience.”

 So today I phoned and talked to a dear man, and he was a bit stymied at the premise.  He brought up my website (he’s in Ontario) and as we were talking he said, “Right now I’m meeting the baker.”  Thank goodness I had on a pink top and pearls for that shot.  In any case, he asked what sort of volume I am capable of producing, and I said something lame like 500 per month.  He went, “Oh……. we’re actually very high volume here but…..” His voice trailed off, and then he said, “But please send us a sample and we’ll see what we can do.”

At the same time of the fruitcake deliveries I went into the Buy-Low in Oliver and asked the manager for the name of the person I should be talking to about my products.  He gave me the name of the man in Vancouver, and this morning I phoned him.  I had to do the whole funny, “Now please keep an open mind” when he asked me what it is that I make.  Luckily, he said that his mother-in-law is an aficionado, so he could totally relate.  He also asked me to send him a sample!

Can you imagine if I get both a distributor and Buy-Low Foods Foods??  I will be crazy with excitement, then scared out of my wits.  The yin and yang of life is so interesting!

It also helps to take my mind off the immediacy of the hell in which I reside.  The kitchen tap broke, so now dishes have to be rinsed in the bathroom sink, then placed (dripping all the way) into the dishwasher.  It’s nice the way the kids bring their dirty stuff upstairs and set it  beside the sink.  Why don’t they just wash it downstairs when they know the sink up here isn’t working?

Oh well.  A nice thing to do in the Okanagan is to make cherry shortcake, rather than strawberry.  I made some the other day, and so we ate lashings of sponge cakes filled with lightly cooked cherries and topped with mounds of whipped cream.  For a lunch this coming weekend, I’m making an apricot sauce from our lovely, sweet ripe apricots, and spooning this over a home made New York style cheesecake.  That should help keep any nasty negative energy away.

I remember when I was growing up we had a large plastic handled, serrated-edge knife on which my dad had written ‘hara-kiri knife.’  Apparently, hara-kiri is a Japanese term that describes a method of killing oneself by sticking a sharp knife into your stomach.  I vaguely wished for one on Friday when I arrived home from a happy hour of shopping only to find Luke’s car back in the yard!  As the kid from Poltergeist said, “He’s baaaaaaaaack.”

My dad always kept a coaster on top of his beer glass, not underneath.  The reason for this was to keep insects and other dirt out.  It wasn’t a real coaster, actually.  I think it was an old lid from a plastic container.  One day I was sitting in my dad’s chair, and just for fun, I wrote around the rim, “Dad’s a cuter, not a neuter.”  I remember him being very amused by that, and he kept that lid until the day he died.

My friend of 29 years, Bev, was here for the weekend.  We met as young teachers of the deaf in Prince George in 1978.  She loved my flowers, and it was great to have someone look at them who appreciates gardening.  She adored the tall magenta and red holly hocks, and I told her that the seeds originally came from a woman named Dolores Reventlow who grew them in Osoyoos 50 years ago.

I now have two huge sweetly-scented mauve phlox stands, thanks to a small container I took home from my sister-in-law Wendy’s garden ten years ago.  Now I have a bit of her in my yard as well.  In my ‘secret garden’ I have nasturtiums which are a remindeer of Phyllis Vincent’s which I fell in love with over 40 years ago.  One of my loveliest plants is a giant mauve perennial sweet pea, which came from Pauline Smith, Alley Cat’s mom.

So, it’s back to the four of us slugging it out in the house.  Luke went to Alberta, drove around for a week dropping off resumes, didn’t find a job, so came home.  I told him I am back in my office, and he’s not to go anywhere near it.  He has to sleep on the hide-a-bed in the living room downstairs, so hopefully eventually he will be worn down by that and move out.  I’ve taken to wearing only underwear on hot days, as someone told me that’s one of the best ways to get kids to leave home.  We’ll see.

On very hot days in Osoyoos, my dad would often be in only his boxer shorts, and sometimes he would be sitting at the kitchen table wearing nothing at all!  He wasn’t trying to be lewd, or even to drive anyone out of the home, he was just hot.  So, I try to assume the same completely innocent “What?” when the boys are giving me that horrified look that asks, “What in the name of God in Heaven is she up to now?”

I’m now back in my ‘office’ and it’s wonderful.  The desk is under an east-facing window so in the morning I’m bathed in happy sunlight as I type.  Luke left for Calgary on Thursday night, even though I was screaming at him not to leave at night when it’s easy to fall asleep while driving.  Kids just seem to want to worry their mothers to death, no matter how old they get.

Denis had eight brothers (now six remain) and two sisters, Margaret and Monica.  Monica lives in San Diego and arrived on Thursday as there’s a mini Doyle version of the movie, “Wild Hogs” taking place over the next week.  Four of them are riding on motorcycles up to Bella Coola, then taking the ferry to Port Hardy to meet up more Doyles. Denis and Monica are two of the motorcyclists, and I must admit I had to smile and thank God that I don’t do that kind of thing as they drove off yesterday morning in a steady drizzle.

The weather was nice the night before, when Monica arrived, so we ate el fresco.  My favourite produce stand is open again, and so I got an assortment of local veggies for our repast.  I made eggplant parmesan with extra garlic, and bruschetta with Walla Walla onions, tomatoes, basil from my herb garden and tons of garlic.  Green beans are now in abundance, so I steamed some of those.  The tiny new potatoes are ready, so I fried those in butter and served them with sour cream.  Denis barbecued steaks to go with it all.

So here I am.  Only Nicky to torture me, as Denis is off on the Doyle-O-Rama, and Luke is God Knows Where.  The house is very clean, and very quiet.  To treat myself, I went to Winners for a bit of R & R.  As a result, I can say I have pulled off a feat of sheer genius – I concocted something that can be worn as a bathing suit, but isn’t one.  You know how when you wear a bathing suit it outlines every row of fat in your back and makes for a tummy so round and shiny you want to bounce quarters off it?

Here is what I consider Nobel Prize-worthy.  I looked through tank tops until found some made with polyester and spandex, hence bathing suit material.  I then found a plain black bathing suit bottom.  I tried on tops with the bottom until I found one that is fantastic.  Loose in the back and front, looks just like a bathing suit, except NO FAT is outlined anywhere!  If you’re weeping as you read this, just know that it is possible to wear a ‘bathing suit’ again.

Isn’t the labour shortage making for interesting times?  Out of the blue, a person from Telus phoned Nicky, and offered him a job at $24/hr!  Denis and I agreed that the environment there will probably be more conducive to his strict adherence to Labour Standards when it comes to taking breaks.  In German, there’s a saying that means, “a blind pig found an acorn!”  It is said whenever an idiot stumbles onto something good.  I told Nicky, and he loved it!

Word of mouth is the slowest way to grow a business, but I’ve read it’s really the best.  So, I was quite happy to get a phone call this week from a woman in Vancouver who had bought my fruitcakes several months ago at the Osoyoos Home Hardware.  She had gone ga ga over the Totally Decadent, so was ordering a few for her 50th wedding anniversary.

Then, I got a call from a woman who’d tried it a couple of years ago at Christmas, and who wanted some for her wedding.  Luckily, I was able to convince the bride that cutting and wrapping the individual pieces herself was really the economical way to go.  Probably a far better approach than telling the bride that I am just too easily pushed into insanity if I have to cut and wrap the 102 pieces myself.

Which reminds me of the shock I fell at people not being able to make very simple foods themselves.  Why in the name of God in Heaven would one buy a prepared Alfredo sauce?  I made a beautiful trotolle and Alfredo sauce for the kids the other day, and it was so easy, even Luke thought he could master it.  If you have butter, whipping cream and parmesan cheese in the house, you can have an Alfredo sauce in a few minutes.  Why would you buy it?

But then, I suppose few people keep cream cheese, sour cream and whipping cream as routinely as they would keep bread and milk.  I just always think of these types of foods as staples.  There are always pounds of butter in the downstairs fridge, as few dishes I serve are made without it.  Really, life is just too short to skimp on these things!

Here’s a new angle for Okanagan Harvest Cake.  My mom’s boyfriend’s son, Gerry Jr., lives in Manhattan and thinks he can sell the product there.  I find the idea adorable, and hope that he can pull a rabbit out of a hat.  You never know, though, stranger things have occurred.

Luke finished his welding course on Friday, so I tentatively asked him when he thought he might be leaving.  He announced that he and his new friend from welding class, Foley, are off to Calgary on Thursday!  Foley is the dear kid who, after awakening from a wild party out in the bush, found two of his front teeth missing.  One can only hope that the two of them are able to find their way in the world.  “Luke and Foley’s Excellent Adventure” coming up!

Now that Luke’s departure is imminent, I had him help me move the furniture around in the room he was in, as it will be my office once again.  I had to move some art around, which always involves large hunks of paint being removed along with the nail.  Not sure how to avoid that, and am certainly not about to ask Denis, as whenever we do any of these ‘projects’ together it ends badly.  Better to just daub felt pen into the holes and say nothing.

I can’t say a word when Nicky comes home filthy from work, as I know I should just be glad that he’s actually working.  He was fired from the nursery where he was working, apparently due to a highly unnecessary union mind-set.  I told him I was shocked and appalled by his behaviour, because when I worked in the fruit stand, you worked whenever you had to, not around a schedule.  He said words to the effect of ‘too bad’, albeit not quite that nicely.

So today when he arrived home black from head to toe from construction labouring, I kept my lip zipped.  As much as possible, that is.  I had to squeak out a “don’t touch the shower curtain, I just washed it.”  I suppose few people would bother with a snow white fabric shower curtain with accompanying white plastic curtain, but there it is.

It must be that I decided that though surrounded by filthy males, I would pretend that I was alone in a cottage in the forest.  I bought only pure-white linens, and decorated with floral wallpaper.  A neighbour marveled at my perseverance even as the old tarped flatbed truck distracted the eye from my nearby container of annuals.  A pile of garbage is always lovingly kept by Denis beside a small garden of hostas.

In the spring, Denis likes to rake into my beds, tearing out tender perennials.  I’ve begged him to stop ‘helping’ me.  Last week he chopped down so much shrubbery in front of the living room window that I now look down onto the ugly road.  While he was doing it, I casually sauntered over, and asked what in the name of God in Heaven he was doing.  However, by then it was too late, and he was saying something about getting light into that corner, to which I replied, “I wonder how my shade plants are going to like it?

Luke will have his Level C welding ticket next Friday, his last day of class.  He has to find a job out of it, but plans to go to Calgary to seek his fame and fortune.  Is this too obvious?  I asked him, “Do you want me to buy you a suitcase?”  It seems horrible, after having given birth to them and all, but at some point the mother animal actually sometimes has to chase the offspring away.

Along with the suitcase, I also have a rosebush on my shopping list.  I finally gave up on a large poppy and am digging it out.  It blooms so briefly, then the plant is cut right down to the ground, exposing huge bare areas.  Some gardeners actually seem to be able to tolerate bare ground, but that’s the one thing I won’t put up with.

So aside from weeping as I re-wash the white shower curtain due to the humungous muddy handprint on it, I focus on the fact that I may actually have one of them launched fairly soon.  I’m not going to celebrate yet, though, as I’ve been burned by that before.

It’s been unseasonably hot, so the roses have been blooming away very happily.  I have one bush that blooms in June, and it’s full of buds as well as mature blooms.  Two days ago we had one of those bouts of heavy rain, and now half of the branches are hanging on the ground, and many of the petals are scattered underneath.  It’s quite wonderful to see a sea of pink petals, as I’m irrational about pink.

I inherited a pink and green Chinese dish from my pal Alison’s mom, and decorated our bathroom around it.  The walls are covered in beautiful pink and green floral designer wallpaper and the back of the door is painted a shell pink.  I went with white for the soaker tub, sinks and toilet, so it looks ultra Victorian.  It’s quite a lot of fun to light all the candles around the tub, fill it with lavender salts and hot water, and just lie there thinking.

 I’ve noticed that working from home has caused a good ten pound weight gain.  You know how when you get home from work and you walk around opening cupboard doors and look into the fridge?  Now imagine doing this 24/7 and you can understand the problem.  When I worked outside the home I would make a healthy salad, eat that at lunch, and be happy until I ate dinner at home.  Now, I see last night’s leftovers, and think, “Why not eat two dinners per day, instead of the silly old one?”

Out of the blue a bride phoned from San Francisco inquiring about wedding favours.  I told her that I was actually trying to get out of the wedding favour business, and she asked why. I explained that cutting up pieces of cake, then cutting little squares of saran wrap, cutting lengths of ribbon, wrapping the cake, and then wrapping it in ribbon makes me crazy. She understood completely, but nonetheless wants her favours.  So, I’m mailing her a sample tomorrow, and then we’ll see if I survive it, as at the end of the call she mentioned that there are 200 guests……

Our niece, Gen, was married last Saturday at a place on the west side of the lake, between Kelowna and Vernon, called Fintry.  It used to be where the steamships docked.  It was unseasonably hot for early June, and the ceremony was held out in the sun.  The chairs were so hot that when we sat, a few people gasped.  It was quite adorable, though, as they had their dog, Riley, as the ring bearer.  When it was time for the ring, they called, “Here boy!” and he bounded over with the rings.

So, this morning when I dumped what looked like leftover milk into the sink from a glass I had found downstairs and discovered that it was solid, I sighed.  It looks like it’ll be years before I go downstairs and no longer find that kind of thing.  Even as I type this Nicky and his friend Jordan are off to register for four long years at UBC Okanagan.