When I think of heaven, I think of dying. Lay me down in a field of flame and heather, Render up my body into the burning heart of God.

Quoting Forrest Gump: My momma always said, "Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get."

Maybe so Forrest, but have you ever sampled a chocolate that was so pleasant, exotic and delicious that even discarding the wrapper that it came in seemed extremely distressful? The next thing you know, what should have been a simple trip to the wastebasket has become a full-blown graveside service hosted by the best funeral home in town and you are way too sad to be dancing the second line because that wonderful treat that you delighted is now destined to your lower bowels for a crappy reincaration.

What in the hell do you do then, Forrest?!...





SIGH!

And that's where I'm at today, boys and girls.

There's a bathroom on the right.

I certainly needed the long weekend, but honestly, I really could use another couple of days off. I actually got up and went to Sunday school, sort of. In lieu of Sunday school the church had an Easter breakfast. I’m not sure who showed up with cheese grits, but I think they spiked them with a tranquilizer because I kept nodding off during the service.

I made bread for the brunch. Once again, thank you, thank you Renae for sharing that awesome no-knead recipe. There wasn’t a crumb of that bread left. Everyone raved about it and I tried to explain how incredibly easy that recipe is and even offered to share the recipe, but I had no takers. I think most people believe that making bread is some laborious time-consuming process, but with that recipe, it’s really not. Man, that recipe is so great. Most of the time I forget all about the step where you let the dough rest on the counter, covered in cling wrap for 15 minutes and instead dump the dough out, fold it once or twice before wrapping it in a tea towel for the final rise. It turns out fine. I really do not believe anybody could mess that recipe up, unless they forgot completely that they were making bread or did something really stupid, like forget to add the water.

Jean’s mom, Rosie arrived from Minnesota yesterday for her yearly visit and somehow somebody (ahem, JEAN…) got the impression that it should be a tradition that I bake lots of bread when Rosie is here. I think that maybe last spring, when Rosie was visiting, I was trying out a lot of different bread recipes and Jean had a new loaf of fresh, hot, homemade bread at her house every other day, because there was no way I could eat all that stuff. It looks like I need to produce a couple of loaves this week in celebration of Rosie. I just wish I could find a use for that buckwheat flour, or perhaps I could use some very sparingly in the bread that I make this week, but I’m afraid it will not rise to the occasion. Har. Har.

You can hear three young men screaming. You can hear one old man laughing.

For some uncertain reason, I have been thinking fondly of ghost stories this morning. WHen I would sleep over at my grandmother's, my youngest Aunt (who is a year and a half older than me) and I would get under a blanket and she would illuminate her face with a flashlight. She would tell me such "gotcha" classics where some disgruntled spirit would haunt their wrongdoers with such chants as "Bloody Bones and Dirty Diapers" and my personal favorite "Where's my Golden Arm?". Along with those she would tell those very questionable true fable stories as "The Crossett Light" and things that happen at The Myrtles.

Even though it was good clean scary fun, I find it strange that my family had this tradition of telling ghost stories. When my grandmother's kids were constipated, she would often sit in the doorway of the outhouse and tell ghost stories to her kids. Was she trying to literary scare the shit out of them? Maybe it was her version of reading the newspaper to them, since there wasn't a light in the outhouse and once the sun went down, it was pitch black out there.

My god, I forgot how dark it was out there. When I was little I was so scared of the dark and scared of my grandmother's Pekingese which looked like snorting ball of tangles with bugged eyes. Thankfully, I didn't spend the night at my grandparent's house that was way out in the country very often and they moved to town to a house with a real bathroom when I was about 4 or 5. I was getting too old to be too scared to get out the bed in that deep darkness and worrying about that stupid dog getting me or falling into outhouse pit. It was very deep hole, or just seemed really so at the time. I was young enough to get away with wetting the bed when my grandparents lived in that house that was located on what seemed like the edge of the earth. The same place where my uncle told me not to go out into the woods because there was savage Indians that lived out there that liked to boil little girls alive and eat them for supper. Heck yeah, I was going to wet the bed. Savage Indians and scary dogs lurcking in the shadows of the blacker than black night. I remember feeling comforted when I get did the occasional sight of my grandmother's apache nose when she lit a cigarette while laying in bed.

I'm so weird.

The way you eat that oatmeal pie makes me wanna DIE!

A friend recently refered me to this Become an M&M site. I don't know if he was requesting a picture of me in M&M form or even if he reads this blog. Anyway this is what I came up with, so take a good laugh at M&M Nikki! Honestly, I think my Yahoo! avitar was much cooler. Too bad I can't remember my username.

Edit: After much thought I found that Yahoo! avitar, and it's not as cool as I remember either. I think that is because Oscar seems to be missing in these pictures. Let's face it, I'm only a pawn to be used in Oscar's plot for world domination, because Oscar rules!

You know you're much much prettier when you're all dressed up in black.

Today, Jean and I traveled to Baton Rouge for some sort of state rally with our Interfaith group. We had just gotten out of Natchez, Mississippi when she annouced to me that she needed to go to the bathroom. Who knows as to why she needed to go so suddenly after we left town, instead as we were going through. On the road that runs south from Natchez to Baton Rouge, there is's much of anything except a Mammy of Amazon preportions standing out among woods and farms.

http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/MSNATmammy.html

We finally approached a tiny town called Sibley that was a gas station, post office and restaurant all in little wood frame building. They were open so we stopped. While Jean was getting relief, I mosied about and checked out lots of very ugly (but charming) merchandise that would fit right in at Gramdma's house. I do believe that the whole town was gathered around at small card tables, seated in folding chairs as they caught up on all the local gossip over coffee cups. Jean got finished and I decided to take a rest stop since I had stopped on her behalf and found that the bathroom was lit by a shadeless table lamp that sat on the floor in the corner. There was an extension cord that ran underneath the bathroom door that supplied electricity to said lamp. In attempt to wash my hands afterwards, the hot water faucet came off the sink in my hands. That didn't to seem to be much of a problem to any of the locals because the water line was turned off. So, when in Rome, as the old saying goes and I placed the faucet back in the hole on the rear of the basin where I found it. Even though this place seemed to be broken down, the reception was warm, our business was welcomed and a local woman showed us her new craft idea, which was a pansy planted in a goldfish bowl which was filled with blue irredescent marbles. A thoughtful gift to bring to someone in the hospital, I thought.

So we got to Baton Rouge and did our rally thing, then headed over to the Whole Foods Market. Jean had never experienced such, and even though I had been to the one in Baltimore twice, I didn't feel that I got the opportunity to soak everything in, so it just seemed like the thing to do. She was just expecting an ordinary supermarket but she gawked in disbelief while perusing the aisles and aisles of the good for you goodies and was totally blown away by the wine selection. She was so blown away in fact, that she admitted her confusion and I waved to one of the wine wardens to come help her out. I secretly wanted to take one of the wine wardens home. I was calling him my boyfriend before we left the wine department. I also got very excited about purchasing a tube of myrrh toothpaste, so now my mouth will be a suitable gift for the Baby Jesus! How great is that?! We also noshed on gelato by the chocolate fountain. And then we rode the go-carts! No I'm just kidding about the go-carts but this story is starting to sound like a date or something. All in all, we had fun and I think we definitely need a Whole Foods Market here although, I'm am sure it will be a very long time before we see such. I am officially spoiled by Whole Foods, now but Brookshire's will just have to suffice.

We decided to bring the Pastor (who wasn't able to make it, he had a severe case of the trots) a mug of sorts as a souvenier. He collect coffee mugs, but I found a very cool shaving mug offered in a line of men's products whose name (Herban Cowboy) is a play on words of a phase in pop culture (Urban Cowboy) that he unfortunately missed out on, especially since he is a native Texan, but he was just too busy being in a New York State Of Mind with Billy Joel (gag) and wearing a Member's Only jacket (umm... yeah, that's real cool, dude).

Renae would approve of Herban Cowboy products since they are sweatshop and creulty-free, vegan and organic, so any may be a future good gift idea for Mr. Forterino, since we both know how he likes to try new grooming and hygiene items. Besides, I think he would have fun lathering up shaving soap on his face with a brush.

My baby's just like a train, he always gives some tramp a ride.

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is I just scored a Garrison Kellior hardback book for $3! Hooray for the Dollah-dollah General YO! The main character is one of these love column advice guys who receives all kinds of letters about predicaments of misunderstood spousal vocabulary and the over-reacting results. There are other letters adressed to this "Mr. Blue" from mythical figures describing their legends of that to be confused with an episode of the Jerry Springer show. How great is that? This should be funny, and I need a laugh.

Why? Well, here comes the bad news. It is not really bad news, but this is something I am doing because I need to do and not because I really want to. I am in the process of writing a letter to my mother. We still have not spoken, since I told her I was making an offer on the house. It's been nearly a year. You know, life is just too damn short to be in conflict about essentially nothing. I am attempting to write this letter as truthful, unconditional and forgiving as possible. I am finding that it is very difficult to express truth with emotion. Truth just... IS! The only one I know of that could speak truth with emotion was that Jesus. And boy howdy, that Jesus did do some talking in riddles.

So, now I have successfully composed two paragraphs of apparent riddles that will be addressed and mailed to mother whenever I complete this dang masterpiece. I did mention a couple of somewhat life experiences to make this letter seem less impersonal, but honestly I really want to scratch them because I want to seem fair. (Have I mentioned that this is a reason as to why it really sucks being a Libra?) I do not know if it proper to mention the fact that it was a black woman that was in the delivery room with her, holding her hand while she was giving birth to me, so I should be basically disowned now because I presently have black neighbors. Secondly, I am not certain that I should mention the fact that I feel my efforts are pretty much inferior in comparison to a stack of dishes and a few pieces of furniture. I sure would LOVE a little advice conerning this... Mr. Blue? Anybody?

Last weekend I attempted to grocery shop at Wal~Mart. What a bust! I bet that I didn't leave with 10 items. I also noticed that the clientelle was pretty sad looking. I talking about pajama panted, shower shod people walking about. The whole scene of customers and along with a general lack of nutrition was just a total drag. I hopefully will not be back over there anytime soon.

Oh, I almost forgot some other cool thing that is going on. I have a flying squirrel residing in the tree in my front yard. He is quite wee and not to mention a very cute critter. All the other regular squirrels just sit on the little ledge of the feeder and poke their heads inside to get the sunflower seeds and then eat. The flying squirrel is so tiny, he actually climbs inside the feeder, itself to dine. It's pretty funny when I bust him inside my squirrel feeder and he just freezes in half escape. We have a little stare-off, with me on the porch and the little guy staring back at me with those big beady black eyes, being totally still until I leave. I really shouldn't torture the poor thing like that.

Anyway that's about all that has been happening around here. Later folks.

A cow don't make ham.

I just participated in a Mensa workout, and the results stated that I had a very good chance of passing the Mensa qualifying exam. HAHAHAHAHA! Snort. Yeah, right....