I’ve been making pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving for the past 14 years.  It was something my Grandmother use to do but passed on to me when she hit her mid-80s and moved to an assisted living facility where she could no longer cook.  For the first few years I was deathly afraid of making pie crusts and would spend at least an hour on the phone on Thanksgiving Eve getting a pep talk from Grandma.

Grandma has since passed on and while I miss the pep talks I still heed her number one piece of advice which was “just relax and do it.”   In light of this here are the two key ingredients in my pie crust recipe:

It’s not what you’re thinking.  OK, the drinking wine part is true.  But I don’t call slapping a store bought crust into a pan “baking a pie.”  As I feel compelled to tell the checkout clerks in Safeway each year when I’m purchasing said crust, I really do make my own pie crusts!  I just keep the store brought crust on the counter where I can see it.  It reminds me that I’ll still have something to fall back on just in case I screw up the homemade crust.  Knowing I have that back up crust I can sip my wine while I “just relax and do it.”

Otherwise my pie crust recipe is nothing special.  I just use whatever they recipe they put on the Crisco package.  Except I only use half the amount of Crisco and substitute the rest with butter.  That was Grandma’s trick.  It not only gives the crust a nice butter flavor but I think it also makes it easier to handle.  A pure Crisco pie crust is too delicate I think.

As for the pumpkin part, after years of following what I thought was Grandma’s sacred recipe scrawled on a sheet of yellow notebook paper I was shocked to discover that it was the same one Libby puts on the label of their canned pumpkin.  The only difference is that Grandma uses two cups of half and half instead of evaporated milk, which I must say makes it.  Grandma also always told me to throw in a couple tablespoons of molasses “to give the custard a nice brown color.”

The most important element of Grandma’s pumpkin pies is the care that goes into making them.  I know that sounds sappy but it’s true.  The thing that made my grandmother’s pumpkin pies most special for me growing up is that every year she made three miniature pies, one each for me and my brothers.  So even though I may have years when I screw up the crust and need to use my back up or I forget to throw in a couple of tablespoons of molasses, I never forgo making a miniature pie for each kid at Thanksgiving dinner.

In spite of all the cool electronic equipment Jerry gives me, for which I am incredibly grateful and in fact am using this very moment, I must admit that I am still old school and often find comfort in pen and paper.  Blue ballpoint gel ink pen and college ruled 100 page spiral notebooks are my materials of choice for my “morning pages.”  (And while I have been keeping journals since I was 10 years old, Julia Cameron still gets a lot of the credit for my continued interest.) 

The thing I like about using pen and paper is the sense of accomplishment I get when I fill a notebook or empty a pen.  (I used to think this was weird until I discovered that many of my friends feel the same way.)  I’ve been pondering this concept a lot lately and realized the other day that what would be really cool would be to write in the last page of a filled up spiral notebook while at time empty a ballpoint pen.  I considered how this would feel like the ultimate in accomplishments until I realized it would be something that could only happen by chance and luck is not something you can take credit for. 

Then I started to think about this filling a notebook/empty a pen phenomenon in a really creepy way.  What if on December 21, 2012 writers all over the globe fill notebooks and empty pens at the same time and POOF there will suddenly be a spiral notebook/ballpoint pen rapture and we will be reduced to composing prose on computers all the time.  I suppose there are worse things that could happen on this date but I don’t think Julia Cameron would be too happy about it. 

Um, I think this NaNoWriMo thing is making me crazy. 

For those of you who think that being a cat mom means I don’t have to deal with all the neighbor kids, you’re wrong!  Mrs. B has a very active social life which includes a long line of boyfriends.

Her first and our favorite was Momo, a very sweet red head. 

He was a younger man who swept Mrs. B off her feet when he was a mere six months old.  Despite the fact that it was a May/December romance Jerry and I approved.  We loved Momo and he loved us, although Momo’s attachment to us probably had a lot to do with the abundance of treats he received from the Jessopland lauder. 

Then there was the charcoal grey hunk that had a keen resemblance to many of Mrs. B’s kittens.  Like his illegitimate children he has a fear of humans, so no picture.  He was also kind of a jerk so I can understand why Mrs. B didn’t keep him around long. 

Lately Mrs. B’s recent squeeze is a cat we have named Poindexter. 

Don’t let the picture fool you.  He may look cute here but Poindexter is just very photogenic.  He’s actually rather unattractive in person.  He has an oversized head that does not go well with his super skinny body.  He also does not make a very good first impression.  The first night we met him we made the mistake of inviting him in the house and he promptly peed on the dining room floor.  As you can imagine that did not go over well.  There is only one furry faced male who pees in this house and even he would not consider doing so on the dining room floor.  (Also he’s not a feline.) 

Peeing episode aside we have come to like Poindexter almost as much as Mrs. B who is quite smitten with him and always makes sure she looks her best before she goes out to see him.  Seriously!  A few months ago Mrs. B begged to be brushed and when I was done she went straight to the back door to go outside.  When I let her out I saw Poindexter sitting there ready for their date. 

I’m telling you, parenting a cat with an active dating life is tough! 

Oh god, where do I begin?  I suppose that little statement reveals quite a bit there making me wonder if I should go all deep and talk about my low self-esteem and how it plagues everything I do and blah, blah, blah….

But seriously do you even care about that?  Probably not and just thinking about how people don’t even care is enough to send me to the therapist’s couch.  So instead why not go easy and reveal something else I hate about myself that you probably care even less about but for me is easier to write about, at least in an interesting manner I hope. And the big reveal, something I hate about myself?

My hair. 

I know.  All of you who know me in real life are probably thinking “Is she kidding? I’d kill for her hair!” I’ll admit that I do like the fact that I have lovely thick hair.  Look at these locks:

I hate them.  Yes it’s thick but do you see the lovely color?  It’s not natural.  Underneath the golden blond lurks horrid, wiry grey hair.  Yes, grey.  I am 44 years old and my hair is completely grey.  All of it.  I hate it. 

Unfortunately grey hair runs in my family.  My mom had solid grey hair by age 40 as did both grandmothers.  My mom and grandmothers simply accepted it, but I’ve been fighting it ever since I found my first grey hair at the age of 14.  Yes, 14!!!  I spent my teenage years yanking the occasional white hair and thanking god I had plenty of heavy brown hair to spare.  By the time I hit 20 I started dying it.  Luckily for my bank account my mom is a hairdresser.  I spent the 80s and 90s with a rainbow of hair colors: blond, brown, burgundy, red and every possible color combination minked in as well.  By 2000 (what do we call that, the 00s?) I settled on one color and have been blond for the past 10 years.

When I was younger I used to think that all the coloring would be temporary.  “I won’t do this forever” I’d think staring at myself in the mirror looking like a cheesy 50s style space alien with a billion pieces of foil sticking out of my head.  “I’ll go natural  when I hit 40.  That’s old enough to be grey.”  But by the time I hit 40 it was too late.  I was sucked in and couldn’t bear to be anything but a blond.  It was no longer a desire but a need.  And oh, my mom retired years ago so now I have to pay to get this shit done, $140 a pop (that includes tip).  Every 4th Saturday is spent with my hairdresser Marian getting my roots touched up.  It’s a huge pain in the ass that dictates my life.  Last minute social events are major sources of anxiety as I obsess over the white strip on my scalp (like a backwards skunk) which won’t get covered for another 3 days.  And god forbid Marian gets sick on the day I’m supposed to go in.  I have been known to miss work in order to go to a rescheduled hair appointment.  Since I come back the next day with freshly touched up roots I can’t even get away with blaming my absence on dental work or menstrual cramps.  It’s humiliating. 

Going natural at this point would be painful.  First of all I’d have to break the news to Marian.  That alone would be traumatizing since at this point she knows me better than my own family and not seeing her every week, sitting in that chair telling her about the past month would be like a giant void.  Not only that but she needs me too!  She depends on that $140 each month!

In short, I’m addicted and Marian is my dealer. 

If I were brave enough to breach the subject of going natural Marian and I would have about a year to get used to things.  I’d have to go through a year long ordeal where I’d have to get gradual shades of blond streaks which I would eventually have to grow out.  Basically it would be a detox program with Marian as my therapist, which she kind of already is so it might work.  But I can’t even think about that now.  Maybe when I’m 50.