The Bearfrau's Guide to Stabby Killers ( + Pumpkin-Spice Steel-Cut Oatmeal )

Well, not a guide to stabby killers.  This isn't a death-row walking tour.  It's more of a guide to surviving stabby killers - my valuable contribution to the Halloween season.

This whole story starts with a turtle.  It's hand-sized, brass, with a stained-glass shell and a teeny little lamp inside it.  So when your husband has gone out of town on business again and you're alone in the apartment in the dark and you're thirsty but won't get out of bed because that dark reflection in the dresser mirror might be your own, but it also might be Bloody Mary, and now that you've thought the words "Bloody Mary" it's definitely Bloody Mary, and you're pretty sure she's going to jump out of the mirror and scratch your eyes out, you can turn on the turtle and have a gently colorful glow on your nightstand and see that it's really just your own reflection and maybe actually get some sleep.

I'd like to emphasize that it's stained glass.  Which means it's Art.  Definitely not a nightlight.  Art.

The Best Apologies Come with Bacon (+ Quiche Lorraine)

Mr. Bear is basically a saint.  Especially in bed.

Wait, wait.  Don’t go.  This isn’t about to get inappropriate or weird.  Well, inappropriate anyway.  It’s pretty weird.  But just quirky-weird.  Not “I want to curl up like an armadillo and un-know all that stuff about your toe fetish” weird.  This isn’t about our attempt to act out 50 Shades of Grey with lunchmeat hand puppets, or anything.*  It’s about how I’m wired wrong.  I panic at bedtime.

The night always starts off perfectly normally: some halfhearted debate over what time to go to bed, then teethbrushing.  Jammers.  Pills taken.  Face washed - because, let’s face it, the days when I could expect to sleep in my makeup without waking up looking more or less like a moray eel are over.  Thermostat adjusted.  Doors and windows checked.  Decorative bed pillows banished.  I swear there was a time when I just went to bed when I was tired.  Now it seems like preparation for some Olympic sport.  Which is probably an apt comparison, because what's about to happen is like a triathlon of crazy.

*If someone were to do this and put it up on YouTube, I’m pretty sure we’d all become famous.  Just something to think about.

I Apologize for Your Lack of Ice Cream (+ Cherry Stracciatella Ice Cream)

They say that animals can tell when a really hard winter is coming.  Squirrels hoard acorns.  Chipmunks gather seeds.  Beavers store away…you know, whatever it is that beavers eat. 

We must have one doozy of a winter coming, because I’ve been stockpiling ice cream.

This week, while searching for a particularly elusive package of bacon, I discovered that my two freezers, combined, contain 6 pints of superpremium ice cream, four half-gallons of mediumpremium ice cream, about a quart’s worth of various homemade ice cream concoctions, and one sad quart of rainbow sherbet, about which Mr. Bear has been heard to say “All the flavors are good, but I like green the best.”  The fact that my husband thinks “green” is a flavor is so upsetting that we’re just going to move on until I can figure out how to discuss it calmly.

For those of you who are mathematically challenged (and don’t think that I didn’t have to resort to Google Measurements for this myself), that’s 26 pints of ice cream.

That’s approximately 26 POUNDS of ice cream.

That’s three babies worth of ice cream.

In the time it took you to read this, I probably ate your baby and those of both your neighbors.  Assuming they’re roughly newborn and made of ice cream, of course.  Don’t take it personally.  You just happen to make delicious offspring.  Really, you should be proud of yourself.  You could go into business.

Mr. Bear Wants to Move to Australia (+ Peach-Bourbon BBQ Shrimp)

I’m a curious gal.  I love to travel.  And under the right conditions, it might even be possible to persuade me to move overseas.  Imagine the adventures.  Imagine the food.  But in my imagination, there’s always air conditioning.  In Mr. Bear’s imagination, on the other hand, there’s usually a rainforest, a horde of vampire bats, a stolen idol and an appalling lack of turn-down service.

He’s never been able to give a satisfactory explanation of this phenomenon, but I’m willing to bet that if we could plumb the depths of his brain, the phrase “real men” might be floating around there somewhere.  As in “Real men can protect their families from man-eating lions” and “Real Men punch sharks.”  Not a lot of opportunities for that kind of thing at Colonial Williamsburg.  Given the choice, I’d rather go with fewer real men and fewer wild animals trying to eat me on my vacation, but that’s where we agree to disagree.

Now, some of the places that Mr. Bear habitually suggests for vacations are probably very nice places.  But since the only information he’s ever given me about them are phrases like “Did you know that there are over 40 kinds of scorpions there that can kill a man?” I tend to reject them outright whenever the subject comes up.  But I can compromise.  Here, for example, are a number of foreign countries in which I’d be very content to live, and some compelling reasons why:

  Italy.  Mmmm risotto.  

France.  Mmmm crepes.

Germany.  Mmmm wurst. 

Are you seeing what these places have in common?  That’s right.  None of them are Australia.