I plan on making something halloweenish for the kids to take to their various halloween celebrations tonight. I hope they come out too! As for the above dish I made it last night. It’s called a clafoutis and is usually made with cherries but I’m using blueberries here. You can see the step by step instructions of a larger batch I made a couple years ago. It’s simple to make too.

Serves 4

3 tbsp castor sugar
3 tbsp flour
3/4 c milk or light cream
2 eggs
1/4 tsp vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Butter an 11 inch oval gratin dish. Sift flour into bowl, add sugar and slowly whisk in milk until blended. Add eggs and vanilla extract and whisk well combined and smooth. Scatter blueberries in dish, pour batter over and bake for 45mins. (I doubled the recipe and used 5 medium size ramekins.)

I just finished reading Corrie’s post about how gifted she is at swinging an accent and picking up foreign languages. It’s definitely halloween time otherwise why is she thinking about her epitath! Too funny. Her post reminded me of my older sister and I when we were in intermediate school (and god forbid, high school too). Like Corrie, my sister and I use to practice speaking different accents. My first tongue to imitate was Maori. A cinch if one is Maori. But to imitate the welcomings like those performed by the elderly ladies using a wail like sound was no easy matter. I practiced so hard to get that sound too. And I use to practice it religiously all. the. time. Until Dad yelled at me to shut-up. Which was the cue to stop wailing in Maori and look for another tongue.

It was during berry picking season when that inspiration would come again. While picking berries my sister and I would pass the time by going through different parts of the movie Grease; an American accent for Danny and an Aussie one for Sandy. We even sang the songs in those accents too. We use to also pick up the accents of the German backpackers speaking in English. We would make people believe that we were German. Of course none believed that two maori looking girls could be German but we certainly did our best to convince them. Another memory is of my sister and I again. We use to get on the phone at the Dinsdale chapel in Hamilton and ring random numbers. We tried Scottish and Irish accents but I think our favourite phone accent was Indian. That way no-one could see our heads moving the way Indians moved theirs. We were so good.

This month Olivier and I celebrated 15 years of marriage and something like 18 years of mooshing. We don’t usually do anything on this day and some anniversary dates have gone by in a state of total oblivion. Lucky we’re not the sort to cry over our forgetfulness. Having said that however, this might be one year I might never forget.

The day before our anniversary we held a noisy rendition of stairway to hell for all the world to hear. Apparently because I did the unthinkable again. I went on a decluttering rampage; this time emptying Pascale’s bedroom of all her doll houses, barbie dolls, doll furniture etc. She had shoved them at the bottom of her wardrobe to replace them with her newly acquired makeup collection. I thought I was doing her a service by packing them away into storage but when she returned home from school she screamed at me for my transgression.

Of course I screamed back at her which then turned into a ping pong tournament of high pitched volumes and when Olivier came home and heard the commotion, he joined in too only he screamed at me in her defense because apparently I did the decluttering thing to him a couple days ago with his model airplanes and warships (I never knew how much my family hated my cleansing habit). Then Françoise started crying like a baby which gave Christian the permission to turn the television on full blast to block us all out and what a show we put on for our quiet little neighbourhood.

I have heard my husband raise his voice at the children but this was the first time he had ever raised his voice at me and I was stunned. I was so stunned I threw his pillow out our bedroom door that night and made him sleep on the lounge knowing full well that the mattress on the sofa bed would send him to the chiropractor to fix his already bad back. Secretly though, I was hoping he would “pretty baby open the door” to me and make up, but when I heard his snores echoing in the next room it only made me furious. “Take that!” I wallowed in my misery, “No one yells at me and gets away with it and you’re going to pay for it with your back!”

The next morning I forgot that I needed to get Françoise to seminary and when I looked at the clock it was well past 8 o’clock. Olivier had gotten the children off to school and left me with a parcel of sheets and pillows at the foot of my door. I searched through the sheets and pillows for a “I’m sorry” note but when I couldn’t find one I cried. We have never gone a day without saying sorry to each other before going to bed after a fight and I was miserable. Over and over the scene from the previous evening kept burning in my mind. I tried to shake it from my head but each time I tried it hurt. I tried to wash it from my face and when I looked at my swollen eyeballs in the mirror I cried even more because it stood to remind me of what I had done: purge our home of its clutter. Poor miserable pity me.

Around ten o’clock my computer dinged. Someone had sent me an email. I walked to my laptop to look who had sent it and would you know? It was from the man with the bad back. I walked away from the screen then came back, then walked away again biting my nails. Sometime later I returned and opened the email. He said he was sorry for yelling at me.

That evening when he got home from work I met him at the door with my hands on my hips. He looked up at me and asked if I had gotten his email and when I said that I did he looked worried. He stood there yelping like a puppy dog crying in pain which was too hard to resist but was just the signal to relieve the frown lines from my forehead, and his, and give him a forgiving smile. That was all that was needed to know that we were both sorry. We gave each other a hug and then the kids joined in with promises from their mother that she would never declutter anyone’s belongings without asking permission first (which might not last very long).

Talk about celebrating over burned potatoes. That night Olivier held me in his arms and reminded me that it was our anniversary. Or maybe I reminded him. Either way all I can remember is him sighing “Thank God” and me saying “You better.” and when he asked why I responded, “Your bad back. Another night on the sofa and you’ld be dead meat.” :)

At this time of year, before the sun goes down, the landscape turns a golden brown; a tapestry of beiges and creams mixed with whisps of cherry against a cornflower blue backdrop. Light reflects from the very tip of each and every stem; weighing on them, causing them to sway in the breeze; like little girls giggling under their blankets at bedtime. Or something like that. :)

Pascale is reading The Outsiders for her English class. I remember watching the movie when it first came out and liking it. Mostly I think because I liked looking at the guys. Who didn’t. I picked up the book yesterday and then ended up reading the whole thing. It was good to read a different style of writing and S.E. Hinton’s was a nice change. It felt like I was participating in a conversation rather than taken to another world where I could escape doing the laundry. I liked that she wrote stories she felt were important to her too which is a good way to look at one’s own writing. I look at my own writing and think, what crap! then put it away and write some more crap. Maybe rather than push them aside I should work on crafting it into something readable seeing that it’s so important to me too. Writing is so much harder than photography. It’s so much cheaper too. Did I tell you I wanted to upgrade my camera? And that I wanted more lenses? It will be the new story of my life.