5 September 2010

Giant wasps make me happy. I mean, as long as they’re fictional giant wasps and not real ones. And this one, the wasp was a vicar. He wasn’t a wasp in vicar clothes; he looked like a normal vicar, but he was really half-human, half-wasp, an alien wasp, and he could turn into a wasp form. And it was on Doctor Who, but not the old show, where you’d expect such a thing. No, it was the new show, and there was a giant wasp attacking Agatha Christie. Hat’s off to the BBC for making my dreams look normal.

Velociraptors make me happy because the word is fun to say, and because they aren’t waiting outside of my house. Do you know where they are?

Making jelly makes me happy. I did that yesterday. I haven’t done that in years, decades. But there I was with friends, squashing strawberries with a potato-masher, and then taking turns stirring the berries over the stove and trying to keep them from spattering all over my clothes or my skin. Oh, the smell of cooking berries was so wonderful, filling the kitchen. And the rolling of the boiling liquid was almost like a dance, the bubbles turning over and over, the liquid almost like a never-ending wave. And after we added the sugar, the liquid got satin-glossy. And then we were spooning them into jars, laughing as we lifted the jars from their water-bath, laughing as we tried not to over-fill the jars, or drop the funnel somewhere we didn’t want it. And then there was the taste-testing, and the extra taste-testing, just in case the flavor changed while it cooled. The anticipation as we waited for the jelly to cool and set. And now I have a lovely jar of jelly in the refrigerator, and some lovely bagels to try it on. Yay.

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