PRETTY BITS OF FOIL DISTRACT ME

My blog is an exercise in surrealist temporality. I've got photos and stories from Italy in December I've still yet to pull out. Not to mention the promised saga of last summer's backpacking and the Czech hospital story conclusion. Chances are they'll pop up at some random time. For now, I'll just tell you about some pleasant distractions I've had over the past two or three weeks.

Last week I was heading to school to hunt down library books and walking down a fairly standard street of charity shops, video stores and takeaways when I heard a clip-clop sound behind me. I turned to see a glass carriage drawn by four white horses with white plumes on their heads and a silver and white coffin inside and "Mum" spelled out in white flowers on the top. It was preceded by a cream-colored '40s style hearse full of flowers, some spelling "Mum" and "Old Ma". Following the carriage were four more '40s style cream limos with what seemed to be an inordinate number of children in them, all dressed in their finest. Everyone on this tired little street stopped to stare, and I heard some older lady breathlessly say, "That woman was loved." (Not that I think fancy funerals necessarily equal love, but it was beautiful and she probably was.) I quick called my friend Oci and told her to look out her window, as it was heading down her street. Alas, she was at the computer room and would miss it. But it made my day. I really, really wish I had some photos to show you, but I'd had this weird idea to pick up my camera on the way out the door that day, and said to myself, "Nah, what would I possibly see to take pictures of?" Silly me.

And a couple weeks before that, Jason and I wandered the parks and neighborhood picking blackberries in alleys and then came home and made a huge gooey delicious cobbler. When I looked up in my world cookbook* to remind myself of how to make it, I realized they call it "Appalachian Mountain Pudding"--I never realized or thought of it as a specifically Appalachian thing, but it is practically the first thing I ever learned to make by myself in good ole' Sugar Grove, so maybe it is. Anyway, my English friends had never heard of one, and I think they enjoyed it.

Now. Enough distractions. Back to work.

*World Cookbook = "Extending the Table ...A World Community Cookbook" put out by the Mennonites, who travel the world doing humanitarian projects and learning to cook ethnic food right. I love this cookbook.