Back from Northern Idaho. 

CORRECTION on Jello Salad Ingredient:  Trix was incensed that I'd accuse her of putting mayonnaise in her thanksgiving jello salads.

"That's not MAYONNAISE…that is CREAM CHEESE! Or COTTAGE CHEESE! I FORGET….look in the refrigerator, judy!"

That, my friend, is a scary invitation.  My mother's refrigerator is spotless on first glance.  Glistening, even.  Everything placed just so.  Orderly.  Like little soldiers marching to their long past expiration dates.   Open the cheese drawer and find the green green hills of home.  Lush valleys of cheddar circa 1998.  Craggy black peaks of forested Brie (last Christmas!) Swiss cheese whose holes have closed. The meat.  shudder. Did it once truly walk the earth? 

"Is that …bacon?" I asked, waving a thick yet flaccid slab of something seemingly from the ham family.

"What? Oh! No! That's …oh….that's fresh pasta!"

I just stared at her and this brown slimy packet.  "Are you CERTAIN of this?" I ask.

"Oh for heaven's sake! OF COURSE IT IS! I'm OLD I'm NOT STUPID!"

Fresh. Pasta. Yes.  Fresh is a relative term.  If you compared it to some of the salad dressings, it barely had its eye's open.

Anyway. We're back.  Only to return in 3 weeks for Christmas. And the annual changing of the Dairy Drawer.

This week Cienna is here, with Rio (Scout's sister) and Wyatt. We plan to put Rio on sheep again, for the first time in months, since she lived at Jodi's.  Wednesday we go out to Dianne's for lessons. 

PS: There was neither cottage nor cream cheese in my mother's refrigerator.  Nor mayonnaise. Making the dairy component to my mother's holiday jello salads either an Immaculate Conception or so beyond gruesome it defies even my ability to process.  Either way, I'm tempted to put them on Ebay. Along with pictures of my colon.  There's a miracle in there somewhere.