Won’t you take me down…to WooWoo Town

“Are you here for the reading?”

After a particularly odd* dining experience, I had strolled down the street into a cute little shop, half antiques and half bookstore, to clear my thoughts and try and salvage the rest of the evening. The store was mostly empty, and I heard a woman talking softly when the proprietor approached me and half-whispered the question.

I had to blink a few times before I stammered, “N-n-no. Like a book reading?” I will mention right here that I have a strange and strong penchant for being present in awkward moments. I’m the wrong person appearing at the wrong time in the wrong place. Had I walked right into an author’s live book reading? What if you were supposed to sign up for this? Was there a room full of people staring at me for sashaying right into their sacred moment alone with an author? Even worse, was this a paid for event that you had to register for???

The owner smiled and replied, “Oh no! Not a book reading; we have someone reading tarot cards for customers. If you’d like, I’ll add you to the list. I think she’s almost finished with this client.”

Well leave it to me to find the unexpected on a Friday evening. I had to consider the offer for a few moments. I am officially in the “Why The Hell Not” phase of life and decided I shouldn’t pass up such an opportunity. Jason was waiting in the car and I called him to let him know I’d be a few minutes. He’s already used to me making new acquaintances wherever we go, talking far too long, and getting into weird situations.

The lady finished her reading and I was ushered to her table, set up behind a rack of t-shirts. She had a pleasant and approachable manner and honestly looked like anyone else. In other words, contrary to what I learned about tarot readers/fortune tellers on Scooby-Doo, she was not wearing a headscarf, big gold hoop earrings, and layers of silk shawls. Nor did she have a crystal ball, which was only a slight disappointment.

She asked me to choose a deck and there were several to select from. I picked one with Art Nouveau images and gilded edges. She then asked me to shuffle the deck as many times as I wanted to. Three is my favorite number, so that’s what I went with. Next, she asked if there was any issue or area I wanted to focus on, or just do a general reading. I stayed with the general category. After a brief pause, she dealt the cards in a spread called Celtic Cross. Some of the cards were reversed (upside down), but most were right side up. She was quick to explain what each card position meant and also that readings only offer insight and can help you make decisions in life. There was no “You will win the lotto on April 5th, 2045” or “You should avoid eating rainbow sprinkled donuts while riding on a scooter on September 15th, 2031” or anything like that.

As she touched the cards, she talked about the symbolism of the image on the card and how it might relate to my life. Then she made comments or suggestions to deepen the meanings, such as: “When you make a decision, even if it’s coming from a difficult place, always be sure to come at it with a positive energy.” and “I can see you are focusing on your health, and it’s very important to you.” A couple of cards needed further explanation, so she asked if I was okay to draw additional cards. This led to drawing four more cards surrounding the card in question. Two were reversed and two were upright. This was interesting to watch and I wish I had the photographic memory like my husband and daughter have, but I do not. I only remember bits and pieces. When we came to the future part of the spread, she said she tells people this is for the next couple of years only, it isn’t written in stone, and it’s only meant as suggestions/guidance you can take, if you so choose.

However, this section of the reading led to a funny (to me) ending and I’m glad I did it. Would I do it again? Sure. I feel like I’m set for a couple of years after that read, though. The entire experience was positive and uplifting. I would say that it was very accurate for my life and it was fun and insightful to do. I walked away from it feeling better and pleasantly optimistic, too.

You never know what will happen on a random Friday in March at a bookstore! Just another tale to add to my ever-growing collection.

*I want to say “particularly peculiar” because of my love of alliteration, but we’ll go with “odd”.

Recipe Novels Need to Die

Several years ago, I wrote about a very first world problem that has, sadly, only grown far, far worse.

Let’s see if any of this sounds familiar. It’s late afternoon and after a long day of spinning plates, juggling chainsaws and running your own personal mini-circus, you realize that you’d better figure out something to eat before you start gnawing on your own hands, faint with hunger.

Let’s say you want to make lentil soup, so you type “Lentil soup” into the search bar and up pops several beautiful soup pictures accompanied by hundreds of five star reviews. You click on the best looking one and here it comes.

First, there’s a catchy title like: “The Very Best Super Easy Amazingly Delicious Lentil Soup”. Great, that’s fine. That’s followed by a paragraph about how delicious and amazing and easy this soup is. One would assume the recipe would follow.

No. You’d think, but no.

The introductory paragraph is followed by a lengthy and personal story on the origins of said recipe or perhaps how the author feels about this particular lentil recipe. This is followed by more paragraphs on what exactly a lentil IS, where they are grown, when they were domesticated, lentil varieties, the full nutritional profile of a lentil, how lentils can be prepared, where to buy lentils, variations on the ingredients, variations on how to cook the soup, what an Instant Pot is, the best pot to prepare the soup in….you get the idea. Then you get a fully photographed series on each and every step of making the soup, and then…only THEN do you reach the actual recipe. Thank God for the “Jump to Recipe” button. Whoever invented that should be sainted.

This reminds me of the Alamo scene in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure where Pee-Wee finally makes it to the Alamo to look for his beloved stolen bicycle. He was told that his bike is in the basement of the Alamo, so he buys a ticket for the tour. The effervescent and irrepressible tour guide, Tina, (played by Jan Hooks) goes into a description of the Alamo as a visibly impatient Pee-Wee attempts to contain his anxiety as they view different rooms. But the gem…the ABSOLUTE GEM of a line is when they make it to the kitchen where Tina begins to talk about corn. The line is “There are thousands and THOUSANDS of uses for corn, all of which I will tell you about right now!”

And here is where Pee-Wee Herman and I merge into one being. The absolute annoyance, irritation, and dare I say disgust at having to wait for what we came for is very real. Pee-Wee just wanted to see the freaking basement. He didn’t want to hear twenty thousand ways to prepare corn. I just want to see a recipe before I give up and decide to eat a stale bag of Cheerios that have somehow been around, opened, since Halloween. (It’s March.)

I honestly thought this trend would slowly fade away but it’s only gotten much worse, especially with the rise of AI use in blogging. Am I the only one who can sniff out an AI written/assisted blog? It’s like that robotic woman’s voice that was so popular on memes a few years back. It’s human-esque, but creepy and…insincere.

I want to start a trend. Let’s get back to online recipe simplicity. Post a nice picture or two, a few sentences, and get that recipe back to the top, where it belongs!

I hereby declare war on the recipe novels!

End note: Many, many thanks to the awesome soul who created the above image!

Caterpillar Village

(Note: I began this post in 2021. For some reason, I never finished it. Well, caterpillar season is almost here, so I thought it would be a great time to get this thing published. -A., March 2024)

Today was a banner day for finding caterpillars. It was overcast all day today so the ‘pillars were easy to spot and also pretty darn active.

The first one I saw was big! It was over three inches long. After looking online, I believe it’s the caterpillar of the White Lined Sphinx moth, Hyles lineata. At this size, they are ready to burrow underground to pupate. Interestingly, there are many different color morphs of these caterpillars, so my caterpillar may not look like yours at all, colorwise. They can also be quite black.

The next caterpillar was found on my toadflax plants. They are wildflowers here and one year I discovered that there were all of these little caterpillars munching away on them. I had to identify them and found they the Common Buckeye, Junonia coenia, a truly beautiful butterfly.

As I was looking at the Buckeyes, I found another caterpillar I hadn’t seen before. This was a Tobacco Budworm, Heliothis virescens. True to its name, it was eating the buds of a toadflax. I think I’ll go pick him off later. I don’t need anything eating my buds or flowers. At least not this one. These caterpillars tend to take on the color of the plant they are eating on, so again, this one may look different from one you find.

Next we move onto some more annoying agricultural pests. These feed on cole crops, like broccoli, cabbage, kale, bok choi, etc. First up, the Cabbage Looper, Trichoplusia ni . Ugh. They have tiny little heads but eat like they are the size of an elephant. Gahhhhhh, these drive me crazy. Please note the tiny, wasp-like thing. I have no idea what it is but 3 years after taking this picture, I just now noticed it!

Now let’s go to my other enemy, the Cross-Striped Cabbageworm, Evergestis rimosalis…This one is just as destructive and there are usually far more of them found together than the Looper. They are the worst! However, I use a Bt (Bacillus thuringiensis) spray by Monterey that works wonders. You can also use a spray containing spinosad, but I haven’t tried this. The absolute SECOND you see holes in your crops, spray it down! You’ll be able to keep things like kale even throughout our horrible Texas summers if you do (unless the drought gets them of course. At least it won’t be caterpillars!).

Now the next one is what I’m pretty sure is a Saltmarsh moth (Estigmene acrea) but I’m not positive. That year, we have a ton of them crawling all over the roads. They come in just about every color, so it makes it harder for me to identify.

Last of all, we have a freshly molted mystery caterpillar. I think it may be a Yellow Bear AKA Virginian Tiger Moth (Spilosoma virginica). What do you think?

Thanks for taking the 2021 tour of the Caterpillar Village with me! I hope it helps you to identify some of your caterpillars this year. If you are a book-a-holic like me and you need more caterpillar ID in your life, I can’t recommend the book Caterpillars of Eastern North America by David L. Wagner enough. I use this guide every single year. It is for species east of the 100th meridian (see below):

Otherwise, I use Google Lens through my camera app on my phone, but it’s iffy in some cases so I just go home and refer to my book. That’s Gen X for ya!

Now to see what the 2024 ‘pillar season will bring!