mostly for my brain.

I have a wedding to go to in May. Yay. Free cake!
So I need to find a dress to wear to this shindig. It is in England (so yeah there will be hats) and my sister inlaw is leaning toward a lot of blue and sweet peas for her wedding colors and all that jazz. There will be the ceremony and then a tea party thingie afterward (cakes, small sandwiches, champagne) and then that evening there is the hog roast and band and drunk people of North Devon and Cornwall. (you know, people who say, mah lovah without irony.) I may just change into something slightly more appropriate for eating pig and spilling beer when it is nighttime. Plus it is next to the ocean -so it gets cold.

I am looking at dresses.
There is this dress which screams, "I am going to a wedding in England. I better wear a hat." It is rather feminine and I kind of dig the print. If you look closely it looks sort of water-colory and there are splatters of paint. Which would be good for hiding crumbs.

This is kind of neat but doesn't wow me. It looks as if it is veering into Lily Pulitzer territory.

This dress looks like something my Mom wore back in the 70s. She will probably comment, "OMG I made that dress." The upside -I wouldn't have to shave my legs. I could just throw a cardigan over it or something.

I dig the serious color of this one. HELLO IT IS BRIGHT. It will definitely say, "Why look there is the uppity American that married into the family.

Hey it is the fifties.

Anyhow these are mostly here to remind me of what to sort of aim for. I know what I want something with some sleeves or straps. I am not interested in hiking up my dress all day long. I need to be able to wrangle children and yet look nice.
I may have to kidnap a friend to go dress shopping.

there is a point in all of this. See if you can find it.

There is a line in Cold Comfort Farm that I always liked. When Flora is asked what she plans on doing with herself, she says something about wanting to write a novel as good as Persuasion (but with a modern setting) when she is fifty and in the mean time she is collecting research.

I sort of like to employ that line when people ask me what I want to do with myself. Only it would be a cook book. My great worry is to be a blogger with a book. The other issue is that the cookbook market is so bloated as it is that it makes me hesitate. One wants to make a very definite presence and not be quickly resigned to the remaindered section. Nice for the pocket-book but lousy for the writer.

Anyway... let me first go off on a brief tangent. Tonight I read This totally awesome blog/comic. You can start at the beginning to get the full story. It is about how she has spent the past year sorting through a lot of body issues, the whole big hairy thing with weight (initially she is interested in some weight-loss but it becomes less of the goal in the grand scheme of things and more about recognizing the wonderful things about her body and herself.) She also talks a lot about what she eats and drinks. She has good taste in food. I love her illustrations/drawings of what she is eating on a daily basis. The bigger thing is her dealing with her personal demons, how she deals with stress and over time how she slowly grows more comfortable with herself, not hating on herself so much and accentuating the positive. (amazing what a good bra fitting can do for yourself) The journey is rather neat and there are times when I just want to hug her and say, "YOU ARE DOING IT!" I sort of want to press this blog on a couple of my friends who have serious issues with self-loathing and say, "DAMMIT, you need to look at this. You need to stop eating up that shit sandwich of hate. It isn't good for you." Plus it is such a dull way to live your life.

Anyhow, there is your reading for the day. As I was reading her comics it sort of came to me that one thing I would like to do is maybe a short comic book that have recipes and stories. I am not sure if this is going to be filed under the heading of "someday" but I suspect it could be something interesting. I wouldn't be the first person to do something like that but I think it has potential. I just need to figure out what I want the story or recipes to be. It also kind of made me think that if I ever sat down and wrote a proper cookbook I wouldn't want it to be the usual set of glossy food porn pictures and the cheesecake shots of the author. (besides, Nigella you own that niche) I think I would want a combination of photos, some comics, interesting illustrations and have it mixed with essay/recipes. I think I would want to avoid the traditional formula of "here are the ingredients and this is how you cook it" and make it seem more like a conversation with me and other amusing tidbits.

This is a direction for my "research".