Some People Live in the Matrix. I Live in a Hadron Collider.

Posted in Astronomy, Communication, emotions, experiments, Humor, Physics, Science, Spring, Survival by Shelley Sackier

It has been a crummy month.

I have had more balls thrown at my head, more rugs pulled from beneath me, and more Charlie Brown and Lucy football moments in this short space of time than an Amazon warehouse has isles.

One wretched thing after another has befallen where I find myself looking up into the ether and wondering if it would be easier to find the nearest cliff to leap off, or if I should just become a comedian and work out all my trauma on stage like everybody else.

Also, my beautiful, newly installed woodstove has become a deathtrap for bluebirds. Countless feathered friends have been falling down the great length of pipe, fluttering for hours in the dark with no place to get a footing until, exhausted, and like Augustus Gloop, who fell into Willy Wonka’s chocolate pond and got sucked through a body-hugging pipe, the birds find a way to squeeze themselves through tiny crevices and make their way into the glass encased box of the wood stove itself. And there they sit. Panicked. Anxious. In wholly unfamiliar territory. And they have no idea how to escape.

I have called my woodstove company—these feeling, and oh-so-brilliant installers I have written about in the past—who have simply laughed at the number of phone calls they’ve gotten in just one week over this very same issue.

Why is there not some form of wiring around the cap of the chimney? I ask.

Well, cuz that’d be bad for the health of the chimney, they state.

And what of the health of the bluebirds? I add.

I can hear them tsk. Yer just gonna have to find a way to communicate to them that what they’re doing is stupid.

I sigh.

I count fifteen avian rescues I have made this week alone and reflect on how one of the main contributing factors to my terrible-horrible-very bad-no good month has been the inability to communicate some of the most basic, necessary, and essential needs I required.

If I couldn’t do it for myself, how would I presume to do it for others?

I marvel at the irony that my life’s work sits firmly beneath the umbrella of communications and yet my transmissions are received as garbled, twaddling claptrap. I am a writer, an educator, and an editor. I work with language all day long, and yet I have fallen flat on my face and repeatedly taste the same snoutful of dirt, always lifting my head, blinking around bewilderingly, wondering how the hell I’ve landed here again.

I reach carefully into the woodstove and put my hands around a tiny, terrified bundle of fluff. I feel it whiffling about between my enclosed fingers. I release it through an open window and say after it, Don’t make the same mistake twice. And then, moments later, there is another bird—surely not the same bird—flapping and frantic, coming down the pipe.

I go outside to look at the chimney.

Ye see, the indifferent installer lectures me on the phone, the idiot birds are damn straight positive they should be making a nest in that there tiny space up top. They think it’s the right thing to do.

All month long I had been positive I was doing the right thing too, but just like the bluebirds, I kept falling down the pipe.

What was it that made both the birds and me fail to see the futility of our actions and the physical and mental harm we were putting ourselves through?

Was it trusting our instinct? Allowing a bypass of brains to follow a simple responsive reflex? Was it relentless and unquestioning doggedness?

Maybe we were all testing Einstein’s famous quote describing insanity as “doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But lots of smart people do that. And they do that for their jobs. Because this is how the world actually works. Physicists smash the very same particles together repeatedly—trillions of times over—in a precisely repeated fashion, and guess what? The results are not the same. They are vastly different. Physicists are not insane.

I am not insane.

My bluebirds are not insane.

Perhaps, we all live in a giant collider, where in the world of quantum physics—the land where the bluebirds, the physicists, the particles, and I apparently live—we are playing under the rules that chaotic randomness and wild variability are the norm.

Maybe in this landscape, there is a chance that I will express a string of words that will deliver the exact meaning they are intended to present. Maybe in this realm, the bluebirds will discover that nestbuilding in a springtime chimney is a brilliant decision under certain realities.

In some scientific circles, the argument is not one defending the accusation of insanity, rather the complaint of not having full access to reality.

Suddenly, I am wrenched back to a very shrill state of consciousness where I see my cat, who I SWEAR I’d locked in another room, come dashing across my feet, a squeaking tweetstorm of flapping feathers in her mouth. A chase ensues up the stairs, under the bed, and into a corner, where I finally snatch the poor songbird from the literal jaws of death.

I soothe the tiny creature and take it outside where, waiting for it to catch its breath, I whisper, I’m sorry. For both of us. But this certainly sheds light on one bit of controversial science. Obviously, we did not prove Schrödinger’s alive or dead cat question, but I do feel we’ve cracked the back of existing parallel universes, as I swear that animal is still locked away in my office. So, there’s hope for us yet.

Which is when the bird turns to look me in the eye and say, They call ME crazy, but you’re the one holding out for a Netflix comedy special.

~Shelley

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Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

31Dec2022

The Wood Stove Chronicles – Part II

Posted in Humor, Maintenance, Men, Mountain life, Nature, Relationships, Survival, Weather, Winter by Shelley Sackier

Part 1 of The Wood Stove Chronicles can be found HERE.

I fussed. I fretted. And I fumed over the few “inconsequential details” I’d just been given—rather last minute—by my new woodstove manufacturer’s salesman.

Yes, of course, before we do the install, you must have an insurance approved, certified heat resistant hearth board for the stove to sit on.

Wait, you don’t supply that?

*Laughter.

Okay, fine, you don’t supply that. So, where do I find this?

Beats me. I just work here. And I don’t own a stove.

I am certainly not the first person to be on the receiving end of an exchange where people who have convinced you that you’re about to enter the easiest money-for-goods-trade only to discover that they assumed you could see into their brain and would immediately absorb the biblically thick amount of data that would make that trade a viable one.

I cannot channel such superpowers and, more oft than not, feel hampered when even trying to see into my own brain.

I began calling other stove companies, asking about hearth boards. Most offered some version of my own precious salesman’s response, but a fair number of them suggested I simply head to the nearest DIY hardware store and pick up sixteen handsome cinderblocks so that the stove would fit in with any trucks, trailers, or mobile homes I had scattered about the yard—also held up by attractive bricks of concrete.

I finally found one—the hearth board— and, after a dozen phone calls, I was assured that the requisite piece would arrive definitely, most likely, although it depends on supply chain strikes BEFORE the stove install.

Although with each successive update as to its whereabouts, I was hearing phrases more like:

No one knows where it is, but if you see a trucker, maybe flag him down, hehe.

Likely the railroads are shutting down this week, so don’t hold your breath.

And my favorite:

Pretty sure it’s coming from China, and they’re not working today cuz … Covid.

I looked at all the alternatives—delay the install (next available service slot was near close to Easter), find an alternative fire protectant (phone calls to stone fabricators ensued), or head to the Home Depot and select the prettiest chunks of masonry units for sale (nope, nope, nope).

I scheduled a visit to the nearest marble and granite supplier and took a tour through the slab-stoned graveyard with the owner, who immediately gave off the “I’m bored, I’ve been day drinking, and I’ve run out of porn to watch” vibe. When I finally found a piece I thought would suit and asked the price, the old lecher smiled wickedly and said, “What do you say I give it to you for free if you come on into my office so I can show you a real set of rocks?”

I will spare you the descriptive gesture but, obviously, I was now down to two options, and the cinder blocks were becoming more attractive by the moment.

Shortly thereafter, a new message on my phone revealed that the manufacturer had located my purchase but would only agree to releasing it in a timely manner if a) I paid extra for shipping—which was about the same cost as the object itself, and b) would pick it up where it was currently stored.

I know. I hear you. Clearly this company was being run by Mensa candidates.

Day before stove install, my hearth board arrives. Day of stove install, no stove installers arrive.

I call.

I leave a message.

I text.

I shout out threats, plan a seizure, cast a spell. I do everything and anything that will shift the winds in my favor, and at some point, realize that with all the energy I’ve put into acquiring this contraption, I may not actually need another source of heat for winter, as I am fully fueled by the blaze of anger.

Hours later, I receive a phone call:

“Hello?”

“Gate code.”

Ah, I can see the effort I spent making sure the salesman put it on the paperwork for the installers was for naught.

“0032,” I say cheerfully.

*click

Five minutes later, a white van pulls up and brings with it my new wood stove and two surly men who refuse to speak to me, as they catch a glimpse of a man in shadow on the porch. They shout to him instead.

“Where’s it goin?”

I am baffled. As I am outside. Standing in front of them both. Having literally just uttered the words, Good morning, and thanks for coming. Let me show you where it’s going.

I do not exist.

Dave, my partner, whom I asked to be present—in case there was an engineering issue not a gender one—steps outside and hooks a thumb my way. “Wherever she tells you to put it is my guess.”

I’d hug him on the spot, but wield my best matronly Nurse Ratched disposition and authoritatively point to a corner of the log cabin where the salesman and I had finally agreed upon.

“Not gonna fit,” one man says to Dave.

“I sent pictures,” I said.

Silence.

“She sent pictures,” Dave repeats.

The talker shrugs, and the silent one just shakes his head.

“What’s the problem?” Dave and I ask at the same time, but the response is directed at Dave.

“It’s a roof thing,” the talker says glancing up at my ceiling—a ceiling I mapped out from every angle, inside and out, and sent to the salesman. On two separate occasions because he refused to do a site visit.

“I sent pictures,” I said again to two men who surely were wondering why I was being allowed to talk, since they had not seen the big guy next to me nod my way with permission.

Dave held up a finger to the installers. “Give us a sec.” He gestured toward the kitchen, and I followed.

“Do you want your woodsy warm stove, honya? Or do you want to collect further proof that these two guys probably bellyache over the fact that women never have to take DNA tests to prove a baby is or isn’t theirs?

I looked at him. I tried not to laugh, and I also tried not to cry. But he was right. I left the room and went to my tiny office. I fussed. I fretted. And I fumed. But three hours later I beamed because I had a beautiful new wood stove.

I was reminded that sometimes you’re forced to choose your battles, but for now I think the only thing I’ll have to use my battle ax for is for chopping wood.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

26Oct2022

This Too Shall Pass–Maybe Like a Kidney Stone

Posted in food, Health, Humor, Medicine, Nutrition, Pain, Survival by Shelley Sackier

The moral of this story is that you should stop eating, and teeth are really just expensive chunks of enamel with an agenda of pure evil.

Or possibly it’s Go slowly.

Wait—no, it’s Research.

I don’t know. Maybe you can figure it out by the end. That all withstanding:

I love food.

Except when food doesn’t love me.

And except when food becomes a sharp and wicked thing that tries to eradicate pleasure, induces pain, and entertains eliminating the ability to draw breath altogether.

Every sip and each forkful begs the question Good? Bad? Russian Roulette?

I think my words are not hugely off the mark to a lot of people reading this essay, as most of us are likely aware of the relationship we have with sustenance. There are foods we are told to eat, many we’re warned to avoid, and some we’re scammed into giving over treasure troves of cold hard cash to with the promise that it is the answer to all that ails us and may even turn back time.

We scratch our heads in wonder at it all because the ground is always shifting. The data today is irrelevant tomorrow. The expert right now proves to be a charlatan in a week when we discover they’re funded by someone with a vested interest, or only attended half of medical school. The truth is ever evolving, and that evolutionary rotation is enough to make our heads spin and our stomachs swirl with nausea – which of course, requires some sort of comestible balm to repair it.

Recently, I made the switch from mostly vegetarian, to mostly vegan.

I did so for a variety of reasons; namely, I have a somewhat overzealous attraction (read addiction) to cheese (I believe this to be a spurious genetic mutation from being Wisconsin born), and because I want to eat less food that once had a face (or came from a source with a face). It’s complicated. And I think making that decision is a complex one for most people, as there is likely more than one reason to make these changes.

But the shift should not have gone as it did. The upgrade became problematic because of my all or nothing approach to life, and that “I can do it” attitude had me fall flat on my face and then kicked me in the butt to boot—er, maybe back (you’ll find out why in a sec).

As my life’s motto is CHANGE EQUALS DEATH, if I must make change, I do it swiftly, and wholly, and try to convince myself that I’ve always been in the boiling water—that there was no “dip in a toe and turn it up a notch bit by bit” type of scenario available. All or nothing.

Since I was in the middle of my second big bout with our planet’s plague, and couldn’t taste or smell a thing, I figured this was the perfect time to make that leap, as while food could not bring comfort, at least it might participate in restoring health.

I upped the ante on just how much kale and spinach, carrots and tofu I could muscle down my gullet. My meals were full of lentils and seeds, and broccoli and beans. Absent were all my friends from the dairy world—the melty, nutty, stinky cheeses, the shocking tang of sour cream, the soothing balm of silky gelatos. Bye-bye eggs. So long scrambles. Adieu my coddled, crepey, deviled friends.

I replaced them with versions that promised texture, that advertised congruence—we’re so alike you’ll never know! the packages of almond cheese or coconut yogurt, or cashew cream swore.

How would I know? I chewed, I swallowed, I sighed at the loss of sensory pleasure.

And the little pleasure I did possess was further lessoned because of the dastardly drilling from a wretched root canal. Make that TWO root canals. Masticate on one side, and don’t forget your meds!

Had I glanced across the landscape to view the turbulent churning clouds amassing, I may have given pause to question my participation in the rotation of said clusters.

Also, it would have been nice if someone told me about oxalate toxicity.

A weird little disorder I might not have ever uttered before had I continued on my merry veg and very lovely cheese routine, but apparently, I was untutored in the careful maneuvering many vegans must put into practice in order to retain renal health.

Mainly, make sure you have balance.

Many fruits and vegetables, nuts, and whole grains have high levels of oxalate acid within them—a naturally occurring compound within plants that use it to help protect themselves against predators—insects, grazing animals, and come to find out, vehement vegans. I think of it as seedling self-defense.

Humans are quite capable of eliminating the body of oxalates they ingest from their food, but these compounds are, in my mind, a little bit like having your errant 22-year-old son move back home and set up an apartment above your garage.

They contribute nothing, and they bleed you dry of essential elements.

They need something that will take them by the hand and lead them far away from that which houses your goods and assets—away from your bones, blood, muscles, and major necessary organs. They need a girlfriend. Let’s just call that girlfriend Calcium.

Calcium sees that your functionless freeloader is about to offer you the unreturnable gift of kidney stones. Not a particularly valuable set of gems, but I understand they’re still considered “collectibles.”

Sadly, I did not correctly appraise Calcium’s true value until it was too late, and she simply and casually gave me a shrug of, “He’s your problem now.”

Also, to ditch my allegory, it appears I set up my kidneys for a big one-two punch by utilizing the jumbo-sized container of Advil (as directed by my endodontist) to fist fight all the root canal carnage. It’s like I welcomed a battle with the bucket I was kicking. That offal feels awful if you pump it full of products that prove poisonous.

I just didn’t know.

Hours on the bathroom floor curled up in the fetal position, a costly trip to the clinic, a round of nausea-inducing antibiotics, and countless sympathetic conversations with nutritionists and vegan friends later I gleaned two things:

It might be time to donate to the National Kidney Foundation—maybe tip the karmic scale of good deeds in my favor.

And I do a piss-poor job of cleaning my bathroom floor—no pun intended.

Ultimately, kale and I have decided to go into therapy.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up

27Nov2021

Winter On … and On and On and On

Posted in Autumn, Fall, Humor, Mountain life, Nature, Survival, Virginia, Weather, Winter, Wisconsin by Shelley Sackier

I grew up in a house where the winters were long, the springs were greatly anticipated, and the summers were scheduled for one week somewhere around the middle of August. Fall was lovely, but it really was just “introductory winter,” if I’m speaking frankly.

Heat was a commodity no one took for granted. You needed it for a good solid nine months of the year, and it had to be reliable. The thermometer was a device you trusted not just to tell you how to dress for the day, rather we used it to determine whether you should even step outside the front door.

One January morning, when I was seven or eight years old, my family piled into the car to head to church services. It wasn’t an unusual day per se, as despite it being incredibly cold with a nose-numbing ice fog sparkling all around us, one was never encouraged to indulge with the obvious complaint existing within everyone’s head as to just how unhappy one was. My dad had drummed one phrase into us: Your being cold is not a personal experience, therefore, suck it up.

This particular morning, we arrived in the church parking lot and pulled a standard move—something that was considered fairly normal for this time of year—we kept the car running.

It was only once we’d finished the service and loaded back into that car that we heard the radio announcer report that as of today, our little town was the coldest one in America, registering a balmy sixty degrees below zero.

Apart from the obvious danger to skin, other more unusual things begin to happen at temperatures that frosty.

Cars’ tires will freeze to the road surface in a somewhat flattened shape, and now it will be like driving with square wheels.

Heating oil turns into jelly.

Storm windows shatter, and nails pop right out of house siding, whizzing like bullets.

And of course, there are a few extra children’s tongues tethered to flagpoles. *shrug*

For most of us, that was just another day growing up in Wisconsin. And those long, cold winters meant time to chop and haul wood. If you heated your house with a wood stove, like we did, it meant you’d be chopping and hauling at least four cords of timber. You take on a special appreciation for trees at the beginning of the season when you cast your eyes across the tremendous sacrifice they contribute toward one family’s wellbeing, or maybe more accurately, survival.

And although I no longer endure those formidable winters having moved to Virginia, I do currently live in a log cabin and rely upon a large fireplace for mostly the physical sound and visual tease of heat. My wood needs have shrunken considerably, but each year I dutifully have a cord of hard oak delivered, and I stack my treasured logs in a way so they will be seasoned, and I will have access.

Except this year I noticed I still had several layers of split logs filling the bottom third of my main wood rack. It was agreed by me and the well-seasoned logs that moving them to any other location would simply be an exothermic exercise and a waste of precious heat, therefore, the newly dumped truck full of split wood would have to find a home somewhere else.

I eyed available space and assessed my resources. Oftentimes, once you run out of room in your ideal location, you simply look for cooperating trees—solid trunks that will stand as sentries on either side of your neatly stacked row. But mine stood on hills and a good way from the house, and most folks tend to disappear when the general question of “who wants to fetch more wood” is asked, and they see it will require hiring a Sherpa for assistance.

Reaching back into my brain for any latent engineering skills that may have been deposited there via a freak of genetics, I remembered occasionally seeing an oddly-shaped wood pile during my youth in Wisconsin—a state liberally sprinkled with Scandinavians looking for weather just as cold, but a language less annoyingly mimicked.

With renewed vigor, I went about planning my new wood stacking design—the Norwegian Roundhouse. I know this sounds like some sort of kickboxing move, but in truth, if it’s made well, it looks a bit more like a giant wooden gumdrop. And no one has ever had to defend themselves against pectin.

I took apart an old whiskey barrel and used the metal rings as a base, then I placed a layer of thick metal lattice on top to create the “circulation” layer. If there is one thing I have gleaned from my youth, it is that being just cold is much more survivable than being both cold and wet. And everyone who has ever gone camping in the rain knows just how soul-satisfying cryogenically preserved baked beans eaten out of a tin can be.

Wood must not get wet and stay that way.

The whole point of the Norwegian Roundhouse is to build a wood stack that wind can whistle through, mice can scramble through, and no eight-year-old boy can kick down. Breezy, yet sturdy, like the Titanic if it simply encountered an eight-year-old boy.

Layering the wood is a process of intense focus with choice, placing every log facing inward in a large circle the size of a four-person hot tub—or an amateur Florida sinkhole. Each piece of wood is a puzzle that must fit perfectly into its slot. The sides, as you build, must never bulge, never move outward and overlap the piece beneath it. Instead, each one must lay the tiniest bit farther into the center, eventually creating the appearance of a beehive, or a gumdrop, or a pyramid built by a guy following directions provided by IKEA.

As I did not know these last bits of direction before getting about chest high, I spent the next several hours hammering pieces into place. After two full days of choosing the perfect logs, hammering them into their ideal spaces, wedging in supporting structures, and bandaging the hammered and wedged fingers that got in the way, I was finally finished.

It looked awesome. It looked perfect. It looked like a mix of true engineering and art. It looked like I was going to need to call the lumberjack back for another load of wood because ABSOLUTELY NO ONE WAS GOING TO BE ALLOWED TO TAKE WOOD FROM MY “ART IN PLACE” PROJECT.

And so it begins again. The constant pursuit of warmth … and perhaps a small dose of sanity.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.

28Nov2020

The Impossible Job of Thanking Your Barista

Posted in Books, Family, Health, Holidays, Humor, Relationships, Survival, traditions by Shelley Sackier

I’m sure you’re up to your earballs in leftover turkey right about now. That is, if you overestimated how much turkey only you and one other person plus your dog could wolf down in two days’ time. Or maybe you were like me and decided that come hell or high water, you were going to make five gallons of bone broth with that carcass, and needed all 14 pounds of the turkey you ordered last year—pre-Covid—when you found that super-duper farm that said they would raise the bird to your specifications.

For Pete’s sake, that farmer read Harry Potter to your poultry from the the end of June onward. And he played it Vivaldi before bedtime. And he regularly fed it a posh protein diet of sautéed shredded lizard sprinkled with dried grasshopper powder, delicately placed atop a bed of tender shaved young bulbs. On special occasions, old Tom got a soup pureed with snails, slugs, and worms, swirled with a small dusting of sand and gravel for grit to aid with his proper digestion.

Yeah, you really can’t go back on someone’s efforts like that.

So, a lot may have changed from last year’s big food festival, and this year’s attendance level might have been reduced to only those you regularly sneeze on and don’t apologize to. But the one thing that has remained a steady and dependable guest at all of our tables is the necessary presence of gratitude.

We are reminded of it everywhere. We may be feeling rather down in the dumps about not scarfing down half of Aunt Marge’s Rum Chiffon Pie this year, but all we need do is read the headlines to remind ourselves about how many Aunt Marge’s are no longer around to make such a treat.

It’s an effortless endeavor to see that we are not alone in our suffering or sadness, and there are countless others who may be experiencing greater loss than we are.

It reminds me a little bit of growing up in Wisconsin. One was not allowed to indulge in the wholly justifiable complaining about how cold one was. Because it was not a personal experience. Everyone was cold. Chin up. Shut up. Get up. And get on with it.

But back to the gratitude.

Typically, I am the type of person who nearly falls on my knees in appreciation for anyone who’s kind enough to even hold open a door for me, let alone ease some significant burden. And I’m annoyingly delighted to see every sunrise or sunset, every flower bloom, or bird in flight. I get an absolute thrill even hearing my dog belch as I’m confidently assured he loved the meal I prepared for him so much that he snarfed it down too quickly and ate a bucket of indigestible air.

Yeah, uber grateful person.

So, it came as a bit of a head-scratcher when I recently heard an interview with A.J. Jacobs, an author I adore, as he spoke about his latest book, Thanks a Thousand.

Knowing how seriously he plunged into his research when writing something new—like The Year of Living Biblically: One Man’s Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible, where he took it upon himself to obey the divine suggestions to “Love thy neighbor,” “Be fruitful and multiply,” and of course, “Stone adulterers,” I had no doubt his newest book would be as intricately studied.

Mr. Jacobs takes the elemental concept of exploring how gratitude can enrich our lives and produce countless experiences where we are more thoughtful and grounded by using his morning cup of coffee as the chosen object of his determined efforts to thank everyone who was a part of making it materialize before him.

Seems rather effortless really, but in truth … it is impossible.

From the clerk who rang up your bag of beans, one can move to the roaster, the trucker, the airline, the packagers, the bean harvester, the farmer, the mechanic who fixed the tractor the farmer needed to use to plant the beans. The manufacturer of the tractor, the countless companies that created the parts for that manufacturer, the construction workers who built those plants, the people who made lunch for those construction workers. I think you get my point. The list is exhaustive.

Jacobs speaks to and visits miners and biologists, goatherds and smugglers, and that travel required trucks and airplanes, boats and motorcycles. He realizes the myriad materials that went into the making of that sip—the rubber, wood, steel, and bat guano. His assessment is that it required thousands of human beings collaborating across dozens of countries.

To make one cup of coffee.

In an era when we feel so disconnected from one another, A.J. Jacobs illuminates the miracle of human cooperation. Togetherness. Relationships. Synergy. Support.

It is not unlike the super-human efforts that have gone into the research and development of one of many vaccines our planet is desperately and impatiently waiting upon. We have discovered that it takes the whole world to help the whole world.

And as the world and all its many inhabitants do what they can to heal our planet and our people, let’s take a moment to realize just how connected we really, truly are and need to be.

This year we may be apart. But it is so that next year and for countless years following we can be together, closer than we’ve ever been before, because gratitude became the cream in our coffee.

~Shelley

Don’t forget to check out what’s cookin’ in the Scullery and what we all gossiped about down in the pub. Or check out last month’s post and catch up.