omg my hands hurt. ouch. don’t even know why i am typing this. so delirious, still on a high, and probably will fall asleep in the next half hour but before i do, i must must must tell you… omg we did it! the hubby and i have been trying to get this one achievement in Halo 3:ODST for-e-ver. and tonight was the night!

Firefight: Crater… is ours.

it earned us a measly 10 gamer points for the two and a half hours of full-on teamwork, combat and fighting over the gravity hammers, but it feels like i climbed a mountain. there was this one hunter towards the end that i successfully evaded for what felt like ten minutes because all i had left to get him was a pistol and was aiming carefully from behind. and the bugs! and the invisible brutes! brutal but wow, what a rush. i don’t always feel like playing games, but when i do, this is why they are so different from reading books.

achy sore hands
but will never ever forget
that we did it
you and me
bugs be damned
we are legendary

More podcast fun! This time from the Guardian Books podcast…

The title of this one is a little deceiving: author Tracy Chevalier [think The Girl with the Pearl Earring] talks about library loans. Isn’t that nice?! But is she just talking about how wonderful libraries are, how important literacy is? Nope. Way better and more unexpected. Get this, libraries in Britain actually PAY authors a little something when their books are borrowed from a library.

Seriously!

See, I told you you’d be surprised.

How civilized and forward thinking of the British .. I like it! Why don’t we have one, I thought? Turns out that Canada does participate in this program, it’s called The Public Lending Right Commission, or rather has a version of the program running here. The US however does not.

From their international website, “Public Lending Right is the right of authors to receive payment for free public use of their works in libraries.”

If you are an author in the US, get on the bandwagon man. Call your senator or representative. Wow, call someone. This just seems like an all around wonderful solution, one that acknowledges the rights and needs of everyone: the importance of literacy, the need to support writers who maintain and extend our literacy through their work while maintaining that iconic institution we know and love as the library.

p.s. a friend gave me a set of not-so-old-to-be-useless encyclopedias that i was very happy and thankful to receive. ya think I can find a shelf for them? Nope. Gah, I’m tired of seeing them lying around in grocery bags but don’t have the hutzpah yet to do the reorganization of bookshelves required to fit them. The list of things left undone because we hope to move this year is getting biggggger. Scary.

That knowing feeling.

That indescribable assurance that what you are doing or about to do is the right decision.

Where does yours come from?

What faith calms your twittering heart when on the verge of a yes or a no?

I used to rely on my religious faith, based in Roman Catholicism. But – as long time readers know – I don’t find much comfort there these days.

Knowing that God loved me, knowing that I had followed all the rules, knowing that I had been taken care of many times before lent a certain credibility to walking into darkness. I could do it.

See, I think with religion, answers were easy. Or rather I thought that with religion answers *should* be easy. Like, if you are X, then Y is the decision you make. But even that is not right and not good. I threw out that book long ago. Cookie cutters I called them. Bah. Boring. Restrictive. Let me out! I screamed without knowing I screamed it. And when I finally heard myself, it all went… kaboom!!!

Kaboom was fun and freeing and all, but now I feel flag-less. Who am I cheering for? Me? Wow, that seems vain. And yet, who else will do it and who else deserves it?

I’m on the verge of making a decision. I’m scared. I can’t depend on religion to offer solace, I can’t depend on someone agreeing with me, it’s just me. Yet I want so desperately to know that I am doing the right thing. I need the security of being sure.

I have always always wanted to be the good girl. I try to blame my mom for that. Certainly she didn’t make the sentiment any easier. But that idea seems so seminal to who I am and has sprouted again in another generation that it starts me wondering that maybe it is simply who I am.

What a boring life, eh? To always want to be good. What IS good? For you it is surely different than for I. And yet both good.

Wow, to even acknowledge that enough to write it threatens the borders of my mind. And yet life will not let those borders be, events constantly acting as waves against the fences built so high by some strange combination of genetics and environment.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

Maybe all those years, I gave religion the credit where it ought to have been my own back getting the pat.

But if that is true, why does knowing now still seem so frightening? Why do I need someone to tell me its OK? How many books have I read in so many different genres by widely different authors who teach the same lesson over and over? How many blog posts must I write? (Yes, even my little blog is a humble acting out of what seems to be my life lesson.) How many times do I need to hear it before patterns and anxiety dissolve?

I must beat this out of myself. For I must foster a new person, let her grow up without this hindrance, for she is a radiant beautiful thing. And I want her to know it.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
— Henry David Thoreau

she told me to…

To Mother

I hope that soon, dear mother,
You and I may be
In the quiet room my fancy
Has so often made for thee, –

The pleasant, sunny chamber,
The cushioned easy-chair
The book laid for your reading,
The vase of flowers fair;

The desk beside the window
Where the sun shines warm and bright;
And there in ease and quiet
The promised book you write;

While I sit close beside you,
Content at last to see
That you can rest, dear mother,
And I can cherish thee.

Louisa May Alcott

I had a vision and have seen it through to completion. Canada wins Hockey Gold. I win a personal victory.

Go Canada! Go me!

It all began at my bridal shower. As a new bride, I would be moving to another country taking very little with me. Instead of gifts, I was offered love in the form of cookbooks and precious family recipes. They were a responsibility and a treasure. I took them in all earnest and with much joy.

Over the years as I’ve searched the net, poured over cookbooks and written out weekly menus, there have been many failures and burnt offerings from my kitchen. But there have also been aromas to draw you inside from all the way down the block. I didn’t want to lose any of those. I wanted to pass on my successes. I wanted to create a legacy.

But where to put them? I looked and searched for the best answer. I started my recipe blog called Mere Recipes but didn’t find enough time to keep up with those posts and – very surprisingly – ran into copyright issues with some chefs even when I was giving full credit and disclosure. So, I kept looking, sometimes despairing, finally rejoicing when I found Living Cookbook.

It’s a personal recipe archive, menu planner, will print cookbooks for you, everything. I don’t know what it doesn’t do. It’s still, after many months using it, surprising me. But most important of all to me, it allowed me the awesome power of capturing recipes from anywhere – friends, online, cookbooks, magazines – and putting them in ONE place.

The only snag was that it wasn’t portable. And I wanted it portable. Especially since Santa brought me an ipod Touch this year. I LOVE my touch! But that’s another post…

Again, I was in search of a solution. I found it in Evernote which – hurray! – does have an ipod app and would let me keep notes offline, meaning I can access them even when not in wifi. (Small warning: You have to pay for the premium service.) Would it be worth it? Could I get everything out of Living Cookbook and into Evernote? Yes, I could. LC let me export every recipe as an HTML file, and Evernote has this neat web clipper that allows me to clip any webpage and save it in a notebook.

Voila! Open recipe as HTML, clip, tag and save to Mere Recipes notebook. 230 notes later, I have a public and portable version of my favourite recipes from ten years of blood sweat and tears in the kitchen.

I share it with you today.

I will continue to post recipes here on the blog when inspiration strikes, but this notebook is my database. Everything is in there, posted or not. And it’s guaranteed to be kept up to date with any new gems that I find.

I’m giddy. Absolutely glowing.

Now I can plan menus when I’m bored and waiting in the dentist’s office. Well, unlikely, but I could… if I wanted! I can search them when I forget an ingredient while I’m shopping. If I want to change my menu, I can. I will never ever print another recipe. My ipod will always be in the kitchen with me, out of spill range of course. My children will know how to cook cornbread without relying on a box of pre-made mix. My grandchildren will know how to cook gumbo, two generations removed from Louisiana as well as know the name of their great-great grandfather who passed on the wisdom of it.

“Gather up the fragments that remain, lest they be lost.”

The Madonna House Community impressed me deeply with this lesson. I’ve never forgotten.

Father, nothing will be lost.