Tag Archive | Fruitcake

When Bots are Stupid

Oct30

Imagine my surprise to see that Amazon’s bots decided to write this about my book: “Customers find the content of the book wonderful and great for kids. They describe the writing style as delicious and unique. Generated from the text of customer reviews.” One reviewer had said they thought it was a kids’ book, then wrote NOT, as she read it and discovered it was for adults.

Though now I hope parents buy it for their kids because they need to learn the importance of cannabis and alcohol early in life. It’d be fun to give it to a twelve-year-old who then says to their mom, “Can we make cannabis cookies, too?” Or give it to a ten-year-old who can expand their vocabulary with four-letter words that mean ka ka.

As usual I panicked, and because the liquor stores were closed and it appeared no end was in sight, I stocked up on a lot of vodka, and some tequila. Of course, soon after the hoarding was complete, the strike was over and now I’m left with the most interesting assortment of brands. The small independent stores soon ran out of the normal stuff I buy (nice cheap Smirnoff) and so I had to take whatever was available. Fear not, it’ll get drunk. Or I will.

Great joy as I remembered my old pal Steve MacNaull from the Kelowna Daily Courier and decided to google him to see where he was. It turns out he’s now working for Now Media, and so I met him there today in their absolutely gorgeous office space on the 16th floor overlooking the lake and the autumn trees now changing colour within the neighbourhoods below.

We reminisced about the old days when he’d write articles about the government contracting business, Rucastle and Schiller Workskills. Then we talked about the fruitcake madness and how all of that went over the years. I gave him my memoir and told him to read it as I said, “you’re in it.” He immediately tried to look in the back and I said, “there’s no index, so you’ll have to read to find it.” Cagey, right?

I also baked fruitcakes a few days ago and brought him one of those. He very kindly got a knife and plate, and cut a piece then took a few photos of me holding my memoir in one hand and the cake in the other. When I saw the pictures, I was quite dismayed and said why oh why is my right eye so much smaller than my left? It’s not normal.

When I left, I asked about Now Media, and he said this story about my book will appear not just in Kelowna Now, but Prince George Now, Kamloops Now, and many other Nows. I don’t mind telling you I’m very excited about this as perhaps as we come up to fruitcake season, the article will arrive just in time to give people the nudge to buy the book as a gift for someone.

I’m off to Toronto tomorrow for a week of fun and am all packed and ready to go. Will just take a carryon for that amount of time. Actually, I took a carryon for my two weeks in Europe and when my male cousin arrived to drive me to the airport he looked at what I had and said “that’s it? For two weeks?”

Trevor and I are hoping today’s the final day of re-taping certain areas of the book that didn’t come out right. I’m willing to ignore all of the annoying swallowing just to get it over with, but there are some words that are just plain wrong and it has to be fixed.

Centenarian Tests Nerves

Oct3

Mom’s caregiver Karen who used to come for an hour a day, five days a week, has taken time off, likely with no hope of her returning. So now I have to find someone in a terrible hurry, and decided to just go with Interior Health, which we’d wanted to do originally. However when mom found out she’d get a different person each day she balked, and that’s why we went with Karen.

But now at 100.5 years of age, and with a very diminished mental capacity and zero physical stamina, I think she’ll just have to accept the revolving caregivers, right? It’ll be a lot of fun actually, because with just Karen and Jan mom couldn’t tell them apart or know which one was which. So add five care aides per week, and throw Jan in for fun in the afternoons, and look out.

I’m busy trying to market my memoir and am going to have to learn Instagram and use it. At first I thought I’d have to do it all on the teensy weensy cell phone, but luckily it can be done on my sainted laptop, where all creative things are made. Margaret set Instagram up for me on my phone, and the icons that came up were so small I needed not just glasses but a magnifying glass to see them. I realized this wasn’t going to work at all.

So now I’ll have to consult with my friend ChatGPT to figure out how to post on Instagram. I imagine myself as minor film director skulking around my house and yard for fitting reels. Then sneaking up on pets with my camera capturing them doing adorable things. Given my memoir is about food, I suppose the odd baking demo might be fun.

I’ve sold a dozen copies of my book, and am hoping this continues, reaching a crescendo in November when people shop for Christmas presents. The book is about fruitcake after all, so what could fit in better than that? I plan to make some of my Totally Decadent fruitcakes and pair those with a copy of the memoir for marketing purposes.

It’s still sunny and warm, blue sky without a hint of clouds and the garden is beautiful. I have to get outside and rake as living within a ponderosa pine forest one has a lot of needles to contend with. Nicky planted a chestnut 30 years ago and this tree’s now huge and sheds approximately one ton of chestnuts per year. All onto the driveway which has to be raked and swept for hours.

I spent $75 on very chi chi cheese at the Grate Cheesery here in Kelowna, as Margaret was coming and we were headed to Osoyoos for lunch with Denis, Luke and Mom. I made chicken souvlaki, Greek salad and roasted potatoes, so for dessert had the cheeses and grapes. I’ve never spent that much money on cheese in my life but it felt really good to do it. Freeing.

Yesterday I had some of this fancy cheese around, so I made a gourmet macaroni and cheese dish with them. I’ve never done this before, but you put the uncooked macaroni, cheese and whipping cream plus milk into the oven for 45 minutes and voila, very creamy baked mac and cheese. And then made with the decadent cheeses it was mighty good.

Trevor’s coming today to complete the re-recordings for the audiobook, and I’ll give him the leftovers because at around 1000 calories per serving a dish like that isn’t really good for me. It’s good for him, though, as he’s normal sized, actually quite thin.

Mom continues to eat at least three Ritter Sport chocolate bars a day and has no desire whatsoever to rein that in. And really, why would she when she’s in her 101st year?

The World Is Too Much with Us

Mar4

Do you know that poem by Wordsworth, one of my favourite poets? It seems appropriate now to say the world IS too much with us given we’re all addicted to YouTube suddenly and any bits of news from the maniac south of us. As a result, I woke up at 3:45 and decided at 5:00 AM to just get up as it became obvious, I wouldn’t be doing anymore sleeping. I wonder if billions of us are feeling the disruption.

I look southwest from my dining room window, so I guess I’ll have an excellent view of any mushroom clouds. It’s awful to think of that but with a dangerous moron leading the country that’s trying to take us over, all kinds of dark things come to mind. Thankfully I’m able to distract myself with practicalities such as dying my hair, which I’m doing as I type.

Mom’s 100th birthday went well, and she enjoyed all of the attention. I made her favourite rum cake into which I was able to get the entire 26er of booze this time. Sometimes I simply cannot get the cake to drink the entire bottle but this time, working slowly, I was able to coax it in. We like to eat it with lashings of whipped cream.

I picked our pal Jim up at the airport and he immediately had two dachshunds plopped on his lap. As I say to people if you don’t like that, just sit in the back seat. But he was fine with it, and we then stayed at mom’s for three nights and had a lot of fun with Luke and Jan.

Jim was on and on about how he needs to lose weight, despite being the size of a stick, and I said to him I weigh the same as I did when I was 18 and actually am five pounds lighter than when I got married. He said wow. I said yeah, wow, nothing. The secret is being quite heavy at 18 and even heavier when you marry, and then if you lose weight, you can parrot that line and make people mad.

I’m now enjoying the hell of trying to vote for the new Liberal leader. I say enjoy as I imagine other Liberal Boomers with no tenant in their basement who have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. I had to call Calvin up here just to do the very first step, and even our friend Jim who’s very computer savvy was freaking out as he wasn’t able to do it but then figured it out. Can’t wait to see of the 400,000 Liberals, how many were able to crack the code and managed to vote.

I completed the draft of my memoir and sent the 49,700 word document to my beleaguered editor, Judith. It’s quite a lazy thing to do, which is to pay the poor woman to read this and then I’ll work on the edits she suggests. I could’ve done much more of that prior to sending it but trust me when I say one can only re-read a fruitcake memoir so many times, and no one is paying me to do that.

Bored? Watch the Honeymoon Crasher on Netflix, it’s very funny. Just 90 minutes and so easy to watch and doesn’t require a lot of thought. As you know I’m not normal when it comes to Love is Blind, so am now waiting for the wedding show which is on Friday. Who will say I do? Who will have their little heart broken?

And speaking of which, I guess instead of being heartsick over the world going to hell in a handbasket, one should probably try to find the silver lining in all of it. To whit: Canadians have never been more patriotic, and I certainly have no intentions of travelling south any time soon.