When I hear programs about de-cluttering our lives I chuckle as I realize I would have to commit murder in order to be successful.  For example, I was just phoned by Nicky and told that he’s locked the keys in the car.  I’m now on standby, as if he can’t break in with a coat hanger he’s informed me I’ll have to drive to the campus with the spare keys.

Luke thought he’d lost his passport, so this engendered a week of searching (on my part).  Then, last night some nut in a stolen car careened into our rental house, so Denis says, “Phone the contractor.”  Not, “I’ll phone the contractor.”  If there are calls to be made or forms to fill out, I must do them.  What’s funny about it all is how much I fear and loathe this responsibility.  But, as the TV character Maude used to say to her husband, Arthur, “God’ll get you for that.”

As it’s fall, the catch phrase at the women-only gym is ‘setting fitness goals.’  I’d hate to tell them that mine are as simple as having the inner strength to continue going three or four times a week.  However, when you see how large they’re making wine glasses these days, I often say, “Thank God for my biceps.”

I had some marvelous news from Buy-Low Foods.  They’re going to carry my product!  They have a total of 16 stores, 14 in BC and two in Alberta.  The person with whom I spoke said he would let me know the numbers this week.  Of course I am ga ga with excitement about it, and lie on the bed, allowing numbers to roll around in my head.

But then I’m brought out of my fanciful reverie by someone’s cry of “Can you do my laundry?”  Nicky is particularly persnickety about grease stains on his polo shirts, so points them out so that I’ll be sure to apply stain remover prior to washing.  Once again, he doesn’t apply the stain remover, but directs me to do it.

It’s amazing how many things I have to do, whether I hate them or not.  Take my ad on google, for example.  It nearly killed me to go through the steps of writing the ad, then choosing the keywords.  However, I did it, and felt fantastic when I saw it posted.  If you google ‘fruitcake’, you’ll likely see it.

I have great hopes for this ad, as I would eventually like my business to be solely mail order.  As much as I adore begging store managers to buy my product, and as much as I love serving hundreds of dollars worth of samples to recalcitrant customers, I think it would be much easier to simply receive orders via my site.

I had better watch the time, as I must drive Arnie to and from the vet’s every two hours.  He’s having his blood sugar levels monitored due to his diabetes.  It’s funny how one becomes inured to tedious tasks.

Other than a couple of hot weeks in July, it hasn’t been much of a summer in the Okanagan.  This weekend was okay, around 27 degrees, so shorts and t shirts were fine, but it wasn’t as hot as it’s been in years past.  I remember August 31, 1997, when Prince Di was killed, as a very hot night.  We were watching a video, after having heard on the six o’clock news that the princess had been in an accident.  We thought it was minor, so after popping the movie out at 9:00 PM we were shocked to hear that she had died.

Today is Labour Day, and it’s a bit overcast.  I guess it’s probably better for the poor kids heading back to school.  I always felt sick inside on Labour Day, and would spend the day moping about, feeling gloomy.  It always marked the end of the two months of complete freedom I experienced at my grandparents’ house.  I could stay up as late as I liked, sleep in until noon, spread my Barbie, her house and clothing from one end of the house to the other, and order strange foods.

One of these foods was both peanut butter and strawberry jam in the same jar.  Do you remember that?  They would also buy chips, Pop Tarts, sugar-sweetened cereals and cookies.  None of this stuff ever appeared in our house.  As well, it could be eaten all evening long in the living room, in front of the T.V.

Yesterday I came home after a night in Osoyoos, and marveled at the beauty of the apples on the trees along the highway.  They were twice the size of tennis balls and very red.  Someday, when it’s all paved over and we’re buying apples from China, we’ll think back on the beauty of what was, and wonder what happened.

When I arrived home I decided that I’d better start to package some of the baked fruitcakes and make room on the shelves for more.  I made two cases of 24 each, and put them on the closet floor in the basement kitchen.  I sighed, and said to myself, “only 148 more cases to go.”  Should I just shoot myself now?

Have you ever tried to get blood out of a dachshund?  It’s very hard, in case you’re wondering.  The vet told me that Arnie would have to spend a day there so that they can draw blood every two hours and monitor his sugar levels (he has diabetes).  I told the vet that Arnie hates him and his clinic, and therefore I would have to drive Arnie back and forth every two hours.  The vet then suggested that I could it myself with a blood sugar monitor.  I thought this was a very cost-effective idea, so decided to try it.

Tomorrow I will be phoning the vet to book a day of blood sugar testing in his clinic.  I didn’t get one drop of blood out of the dog, but instead caused a terrible ruckus.  I have a strange feeling that the vet often suggests these types of things to owners, knowing that in the words of Arnold Schwarzenegger, “I’ll be back.”

It’s quite hard to imagine that one can actually forget how to make something they’ve made a thousand times, isn’t it?  However, on Saturday, I had one of those lapses.  I didn’t have time to prepare the fruit for Okanagan Harvest Cake, so decided that Marilyn and I should bake Totally Decadent Fruitcake instead.  I hadn’t made it since last November.

For some unknown reason, on the recipe, I had written baking soda.  However, it calls for baking powder!  Marilyn had no reason to question it, and merrily followed the new recipe.  We had two batches in the ovens, and one in the gigantic mixer.  I looked into the oven, and Mein Gott im Himmel, if there’s wasn’t dough burbling out of the pans, with handfuls of dough plopped over the oven floor!

It took me a moment, and then I realized what had happened.  We had to throw out three batches, but then all went beautifully after that.  At the end of the second arduous day of baking, I wearily came upstairs, and joy of joys, found my new leather Dockers chewed to bits by that little menace, Ricky!  ARGH!

I feel silly even writing this, but Luke has once again said he’s moving out.  He’s going to move in with a hoard of people, one of whom I know.  It sounds like a hell-hole of a house, but what do I care when you really get right down to it.  I’m quite sure that he’ll stop by here each day on his way to work to get his lunch.

The other day Nicky said that he wanted to get some new clothes for school.  I looked at him, and said, “Well, have at it.”  He wailed, “I’m not gonna waste all of my money on clothes!”  For some reason, I must present the image of a person who wants to waste her money on a kid’s wardrobe.  He said, “Let’s go to Tommy Hilfiger” to which I said, “Tommy Hilfiger?  I’ll give you $100 towards it and that’s it.”

He grudgingly had to accept that, and then suggested we go on the weekend.  I explained that I was baking, to which he said, “Well you don’t sound very enthusiastic about it.”  Very astute on his part, as I was openly balking.

Sadly, I don’t think much will change as we go into fall.  On Saturday when I was running up and down the stairs between baking batches of fruitcakes, I alternately saw Denis reading the paper or watching TV.  Nicky knocks off after a few hours of work, and as Luke works three long shifts, he has four days off.  I am surrounded by sleeping dogs and cats.  Everyone else’s life looks so leisurely.

No time for self-pity, however, as I rehearse the gloating I’m going to do when I’m the Fruitcake Queen.  I’ll pretend to feel terrible leaving the family behind as I board a plane to a balmy clime in mid-winter.

What a humungous Ten Days of Food it’s been!  It started last Monday with Alison here for dinner, at which time I made wild sockeye salmon and a cherry fool for dessert.  We then went to Osoyoos, where a guest of mom’s cooked a fab dinner on Tuesday night.  She made chicken piccata, linguine tossed with butter and olive oil, and roasted vegetables.  I vaguely remember a plum crisp for dessert, but there was a lot of wine, so that part is hazy.

Then on Wednesday I made the infamous seafood casserole, which contains shrimp, scallops, cod and salmon and topped with a pound of butter.  This was accompanied by rice and a tomato salad.  A friend of mom’s who’s a gourmet cook brought crepes for dessert.  She had filled them with cream cheese and hazelnuts, and topped them with peaches flambeed with Cointreau.

By Thursday I was dizzy with the sudden extra poundage around my girth, and had to drive home for Nicky’s birthday.  I arrived to tell the family that I was much too busy to cook, so we ordered three large pizzas.  As usual, there were at least four extra kids in the basement.  I had to re-pack as the next day we were off to Sechelt for a family wedding.

We left on Friday morning, and had a lovely pre-rehearsal dinner at an Indian restaurant in Sechelt.  On Saturday we had the most fabulous food at a great place called Spence’s.  Denis had the pistachio crusted French brie, which he said was very nice.  I had lamb skewers accompanied by fries (it said yam fries on the menu, but wouldn’t you know it, some kid got the last order).  Our young nephews-in-law were pouring back mixed drinks like there was no tomorrow.  Ah youth!

Speaking of strange places in which to reside, I always find it curious that one would want to be dependent on something like a ferry for getting to and from home.  Fortunately, we had reservations coming and going, so it was a smooth trip.  I’ve been stranded on that hot tarmac too many times to find the ferries any fun at all.

For the past two days our friends Mark and Gitte were here from Vancouver with two of their three girls.  For dinner I made a Tuscan chicken dish, accompanied by the ubiquitous roasted vegetables (all local) as well as rice and corn on the cob.  It’s always so sad when the last of the local produce is gone for another year.  We’re then forced to choke down Chilean vegetables and pretend the third eye sprouting on our foreheads has nothing to do with unregulated pesticide use.

Now that the eating spree is over, it’s time to settle down for some serious work.  I’m behind in marketing, baking, packaging and just about everything else you can think of for a seasonal fruitcake business.  I hate myself for it, but have still not found a cure for procrastination.  As with essays due in university, I seem to work best while weeping and praying, promising I will never, ever leave it this late again.

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?”