Nature is Magic

Well more accurately mushrooms are magic, no not those magic mushrooms! Druggies!

Morels are magic!

They are the best tasting mushroom in the world in my opinion and I love all mushrooms, but there are by far the best and my favorite. 

What? You have never heard of morel mushrooms, well you are missing out my friend.

It is possible that many people will never know the joyous taste of a fresh, moist, soaked in saltwater, dipped in milk, lightly battered in flour, and finally fried morel mushroom. (This sentence makes my mouth water) Oh well, as we always say more for us. 

The reason these mushrooms are so good, is because they grow for a very limited time of year in very limited places and mostly you have to go foraging to find them. 

For as long as I can remember every year around April my family and I have gone mushroom hunting. We are lucky enough to have a good secret spot and this year we were also lucky enough for it to be a good year. Some years are better than others and this year they started early and are plentiful.

When I was really young I remember driving around to a bunch of different spots or maybe it was just one but I was little so it seemed different every time. Now we just go straight to our tried and true spot and find a few at least every time, I don't think we have ever came up empty handed there.

Now before we all go Dad goes and he usually finds a ton, he always finds the most anyways. There are bets made, but he will always find the most and almost always find the first one, both are a great honor. 

After Dad has confirmed the season has started we all start going to the spot. The season usually starts around April or when these little weed things called Mayapples start growing. I personally hate Mayapples, I always wished that morels grew like them because there are always tons of Mayapples, tons.

Fuck Mayapples.

You have to have a love/hate relationship with them though, they do signal the start of a beautiful thing. 

Spraying down with bug spray is always essential too. I always wear a t-shirt and shorts or capris and my Mom always yells at me every year and every year I still wear the same thing. She wants me out there in jeans and it is usually too hot to be traipsing about in the woods in jeans. For me it is anyways, that is why bugspray is oh so important.

Since I have moved out of my parent's house I haven't been able to go with them as often as I used to and I have only got to go once this year. (Hoping for at least one more time though) This time just my Dad and I went, and Mom stayed home and cooked the mushrooms they had found the previous days.

I never find the first mushroom, it is like I am completely blind to them until someone else, usually Dad, find one. We made a five dollar bet on who would find the first one, and of course he did. I never gave him the five bucks though, maybe he forgot. I wouldn't have given it to him anyhow, we didn't shake on it.  After he found the first mushroom of the day it was on, we found at least 35 and I would say we both found an about even amount of them.

While we were in the woods hunting he told me about how his back was hurting the week before and he decided to go hunt mushrooms to make himself feel better. And he found a ton the first day he went out, which didn't help his back but it did make him feel better.

If Mom would have went she would have talked to the morels and asked them to come out of their hiding places, and if Neil would have went he would have been mad until he found some or he would have been mad if I found more.

Oh and I got to keep all of the mushrooms we found that day, they were all super delicious.

Morels are awesome, delicious, fun to find and a family tradition.

The Next Few Weeks

I can't sleep and I don't know why.

Recently I have been in good spirits. But now it is almost 5 AM on a Saturday morning and here I sit: sober, awake and alone.

Now most of the time none of these things would bother me, as I am sober and awake most of the time and at 5 AM I am usually alone.

However last night was Friday and I decided to be responsible and stay in because I have to wake up at 7:30 to get ready by 8:30 and drive an hour to train for my new job. Yet had I known that I would be up all night anyways I may have went out and made a few mistakes, because I have no doubt that tomorrow while I am watching videos about folding clothes and reading just how this brand card is better than every other out there (which of course it is!) I will feel hungover or worse.

It would be really neat if my body would clue me in to it's decision not to sleep a bit earlier in the day, like say around 9PM, so I could take a sleeping pill, go pick a fight, stand on a corner so I can have a roll in the hay, just something to wear me out so I can go the fuck to sleep.

Or if it refused to sleep, like a screaming 5 year old, then it could let me know that too, then maybe I could go out and have fun, because it is going to be a while until I have fun again.

Not because I don't like fun, I love fun. But because I am a slave to the man the next 2 or 3 weeks. I have a new job, and I am really excited (I get paid more cash money), but I also still have one week left at my old job and unfortunately my new job is at a store that hasn't even opened yet. Hence I must drive to a different store in a different STATE 3 days this coming week to train and on the days I don't do that I work at my old job, and then alas God blesses me with Easter Sunday and gives me 2 whole days off! However those days will also be full of busy for me.

After the blessed 2 days off it is grand opening week, but thankfully I will be down to one job then! And then Grand Opening and who knows what the future holds!

I hope the title of my blog continues to inspire me. I put the word FEW in there on purpose, because it means not many.

Maybe my body is trying to prepare me for the lack of sleep I am about to endure the next FEW weeks, I hope that is not what it is doing because I really love sleep. Hopefully it is just chock full of excitement about this new job, it is probably more excited about me buying a tanning package though.

I will probably be posting a lot about this new job and my last week at my old job, however what I write may be indistinguishable to the human eye, it may be in sleep deprived -coffee junkie - zombie- language. That looks something like this:  7u8yr465tyer

I have no idea what I just wrote but it is undoubtedly inappropriate.

Soup of Show-tunes

Twice in the past week, musical music has saved my life....

Well not really my life, but my sanity at least. Let me start with the experience that allowed me to make the realization that show-tunes save me constantly and also explain my love of musicals.

My Love of Musicals

I love them because they make me happy, most are eternally hopeful and even if they aren't hopeful at least people still burst out into song and I love it, No no I fucking love it. I know they are unrealistic and silly, but I can't help it, they are always a nice break from real life.

Now to then...ya dig?

On the way home from a long way away from home tonight, I thought I had the perfect CD to listen to. Well it turns out this CD was not perfect for driving long distances, by yourself, at night, and so on.  I turn to the radio and listen to the YMCA and other such classic oldies,

THEN like a miracle from above I remember that I have my iPod in my purse from the next trip I will talk about. I plug in my iPod to the cassette player and the charger(because my iPod is old and doesn't stay charged), as I speed down the highway.(<-----Phrase added for dramatic effect)(MOM!)   I immediately go to my "Broadway Baby" playlist and I fucking turn that shit up! Then I realize for the 2nd time that night that my iPod sucks and I turn it back down so it doesn't sound so scratchy.

I sing my little heart out...and think back to all of the times show-tunes have gotten me through hard times....

Flashback to April 6th, 2011


On the way back from STL at around 10 O'clock at night, I instruct my co-pilot or my conductor to choose music from my 1985 Generation .0000000004 iPod to keep me awake!. He does so, first with music from GLEE and then with

show-tunes from Avenue Q
(A glorious musical with puppets!)
http://www.avenueq.com/ 


We sang, I sang badly and Phillip sang awesome, duh.


Flashback to sometime in the fall of 2008


Some friends and I agreed to help a friend move once, and a van broke down and we had to push it (well I didn't push it)  and I videoed people pushing the van, we took some pictures in an abandoned house and we got back really late and figured out that the apartment was probably haunted.

On the really late ride back we listened to show-tunes and I sounded awesome and everyone else just sucked! Wait no, reverse sucked and awesome and you have the correct version of events.

Final Flashback to late 2007/early 2008

So around this time I was breaking up with my high-school boyfriend, it sucked. It sucked a lot, and I broke up with him and it still sucked. Also around this time I was in a production of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I was super sad about this break-up we had been together for 4 years and I did not know how to be my own person, like at all. I was depressed and the only CD I listened to was the original cast recording of You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown. I of course skipped the sad or slow songs, but thankfully most were happy sounds of adults acting like children.

I didn't much sing to this, well actually I am sure I did, but I mostly drowned out my feelings in a soup of show-tunes.

Lying

"Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my soul for you to keep."

I never prayed like this. I remember the first time I heard someone say it was in the hallway of the Carrier Mills First Baptist Church just outside of the nursery. I thought about how I prayed.

Once in some bible class, I remember being told that I had to list each thing separately to thank God for all of them(This could have been imagined or misheard by my five year old mind). So my prayers I said when I crawled under covers at night sounded more like this:

Dear God, up above in heaven, 

thank you for mom and dad

 and neil and whisker and 

grady and food and 

our house and 

my friends…

I would sometimes list all of my family, but it was only usually on holidays or birthdays, while I had them all fresh behind my face and bundled as important in my brain. Next came my animals, yeah they are that important. Then came food, I always pictured a salad for some reason, and home. I would list things important to me that day.

I have to be cold to sleep, I feel more secure, I suffocate in heat.  Usually I don’t pray before I go to sleep now, but that doesn’t mean anything. I talk to someone, it is probably God. Only not all bearded and white, I like to imagine Whoopi Goldberg as what God would look like. How can one not love Whoopi?

It should be raining

You are lying on your stomach on a small table

Unable to move

Meanwhile I am leaving class to check my messages, walking to my car in the smirking sunshine

All the while thinking it should be raining

I don’t know why

I just think it would make me feel better

I wore black today

To mock the sun

I should have worn your or her favorite colors

I’m only scared when I think about it

I’ve got my lists made to keep me busy

All day and all night until you call

I’ll make something because it’s safe

I’ll do all the things I shouldn’t

I’ll do all the things I should

I realize things and create

Still I will have to lay down at night or early morning

And wonder if everything will ever dawn on us

All day we took memories from the surrounding areas

Sunlight or flash making us beautiful

Or hideous beasts worthy of villainy

That is what the garbage is for

Moving and unmoving

Ready slash candid

Blurry maybe lifelike

When the sunset, I saw the cityscape on the horizon
and far out the window of the ungilded palace.

At least at a palace you’ll be protected.

The dim slipped in and we slipped out
to begin the last legs of our adventure.

Frantically searching for the filmless machines,
it never dawns on me that it’s dark.

Finding them at the bottom of the pit,
and thank God for the ropes attached to them, found.

The pyramid steps lead us up a magical mountain
with a waiting monument atop it.

In the daylight its different, everything’s different, always.

It’s not day, its dark, but not scary.

One of us lays upon the pebble soaked concrete,
and the other falls into the fold after the first

I stand for a moment, then I too put my knees on the ground,

swing my legs out from under me and end up sitting

Slowly feeling the coldish stones beneath my palms I lean my
head and body back on to the ground

I felt the earth shake, yes of course it was unnatural.

A train beneath the streets ferrying lost souls
back and forth from land to land.

As people walked near I heard their steps, their stories,

my hands still outstretched at my sides,

I look towards the sky.

Above me is a smoggy sea of stars,     
                           
                                                     I want to be happy,

but its hard to be happy in a smoggy sea of stars.

I think over it all, how things work, all questions.

I like lying on my back looking up, I still see
the two figures at my sides.

I think of figures, how many actually lay
by my sides in some way.

There are so many of us and we’re all looking up
at the same stars smoggy or not and

I bet Whoopi is watching out

for all of us.