"Yesterday" had to make up somehow for the night I spent before "yesterday" broke... To put it nicely, I barfed up undigested goobs of lamb from dinner and was convinced that on of those globules would somehow lodge it self in my throat causing me to asphixiate, fall to the ground and die. Did I mention the fact that I am a professional hypochondriac? Talent all over the place! To give myself some semblance of credit, I really only turn in to a rabid hypochondriac when someone I know gets terminally ill and/or dies. I'd like to end this paragraph asking for a prayer for Kabir Hussain and his family and friends.
To add insult to the injury of the reappearance of my dinner, I chose the night before "yesterday' as the night I'd start on a new book. And which book did I chose? I needed a book that would pacify my panic over our present situation, a book that would make me kick myself in the ass for ever complaining about said present situation, a book that would remind me that no matter how dispearing our situation maybe, there are millions of people in desperate throws of cruel realities. I needed a book that would slap me in the face really. I scoured my Aunt's rather impressive library and chose... the most depressing, gut wrenching, HORRIFYING(!!!) book on the shelves... "Not Without My Daughter". I'd seen the movie and really didn't think it could be much worse than that. I seem to have developed a habit for being wrong somewhere along the journey of my life. Jesus Christ! It is single handedly the most disturbing book I've ever read! But that didn't stop me from devouring it between the bouts of barf and I put away two hundred and sixty (260) pages that night alone, keeping myself awake with tears and revultion until 4.30am.
So yesterday started much like any other... I woke up and had a little "what the fuck will this day bring" moment in my bed while Wee B got in her summer-time extra hour of sleep beside me. I fixed breakfast for myself and chatted with my Aunty A and then my blackberry rang and it was S.I.L Tanya calling me from Barbados! It was so good to hear her voice that I nearly cried when I heard her on the other line! We spoke for nearly forty (40) minutes, I chatted a bit with Miniature Carrie Bradshaw, caught up on live in Cotton Bay and how much I wasn't missing by being away. It was a wonderful way to start the day and I felt a tiny bit closer to the prize.
After Tan-Tan's call I called my horrible sister Evil who hadn't called me since she arrived last Friday and had Wee B and I wondering if we'd done something to vex her. She came over in the afternoon to take us to lime at her in-law's house and we spent the rest of the afternoon loving C-Boy up so much that I was sure he'd be happy when we left. While we were there Evil forked over THE SHOES and I fell head first in to love with them! Then she gave me the four accidental mini squeeze bottles that magically made their way from my "save for later" list in to my shopping cart (naughty Amazon!) and on a plane to Bim. I was going to sell them but I'm having an affair with them behind THE SHOES' back and I can't let them go! Trumping both THE SHOES and mini squeeze bottles came my old faithful soul mate, the one I'd even dump THE SHOES for...
When I was fifteen (15) my daddy spoiled me thusly... I'd been working in the kitchen of a restaurant he'd designed and droolled over my Chef's knives... They were Henkles of Germany, the blade was rivited in to the handles and they were engraved with his name on them... If knives can be sensual then these should have their own chapter in the Kama Sutra! My big brother John had sent me a kitchen catalog and I poured over this thing, repeatedly, every single night. I made notes in the margins and filled out two of the order forms (this was before the days of online shopping) and day dreamed about faxing through my request and getting a big ol' package in the mail. My list consisted of a starter block of the same knives my chef worked with... A 9" chef's knife, a 9" carver, a 6" serated and a 2 1/2" pairing knife. Also on the list was the item that has remaind my most prized material possesion EVER! A beautiful, gleaming, powerful, LIMITED EDITION(!!!) Kitchen Aid crank bowl mixer! I will never forget the day my daddy came in to my room to ask me if I was ready to fax threw my order! I nearly fainted!
To put it mildly, the THREE (3) months that I waited, impatiently as hell, for my precious knives and mixer to arrive felt like torture! My dad had arranged for them to be delivered to one of his client's homes in Miami so that said client could ship it with the shipment he was bringing in for the opening of his restaurant (that my dad designed also). In a taunting stroke of coincidence, the restaurant I worked in belonged to the nephew of my dad's client who was shipping my precious goods and it just so happened that the two restaurants were on side by side lots and when I was assembling desserts in my kitchen I could look straight in to their kitchen AND their delivery bay. I swear I ruined a number of required presentation thanks to the distraction of next door. I begged my chef to let me work the dessert station and even promised him the recipe for my cheese cake (which I never gave him) if he'd let me stay there. Thanks to that empty promise I watched three forty foot containers of industrial kitchen stuff offload in to the bay next door and saw the exact moment that my two large boxes technically landed in Trinidad.
I won't bore y'all with the details of my love for my Kitchen Aid mixer but I will tell you this... When I touched down in Trinidad on the 1st of July my very first thought was about the fact that I was in the same country as my Kitchen Aid mixer. I hadn't laid eyes on it in the four years its been since I've lived in Barbados. During all of our time apart my beautiful mixer has been, or so I thought, on Evil's mother-in-law's brother's (yup!) kitchen counter out in St. Augustine (East Trinidad). When I knew we'd be spending the afternoon in St. Augustine my heart started to feel like it was filling up with the same impatient excitment I remember from childhood Christmases. And when I asked Evil's mother-in-law if we could take a drive to her brother's house to get it she said we didn't need to because it was under the sink of her own kitchen!
I felt drunk with this heady excitment and I literally ran to the kitchen and pulled it out from under the sink with the same measure of joy that brave fathers who help deliver their babies feel! I couldn't believe I was seeing it, touching it even. It brought back such happy memories of my dad, cooking and youth to me! It may be silly to feel like this over an inanimate object but it means so much to me from a nostalgic stand point but for because I have had to beat EVERYTHING I bake by hand and that slows me down so much... I'll be a much happier MasterBaker with it back in my life again.
I love days like yesterday. Small things make me so happy! Merry Not-Exactly-Christmas everyone!
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