AMAZING PUMPKIN PUDDING

I know you're rolling your eyes. Because I'm all of a sudden the lame girl who posts recipes. This is what I've got to say to you - #1 - I was never cool anyway, so why not post whatever the hell I want. And #2 - This is a really freaking amazing recipe and I wouldn't tell you about it if I wasn't 100% sure that your life will improve if you make it. So make it, make it now.

1 cup cool whip
1 package of vanilla pudding mix
1 can of pumpkin goo
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tbsp cinnamon
splash of vanilla
2/3 c. milk

mix goo, pudding mix, and milk together. add the vanilla, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg. mix again. THEN (and this is the part that makes it good)... fold in the cool whip.

so what was that? ten minutes and about $3.20. Happy Turkey Day. Aren't ya thankful for me? thought so ;)

love this...

FOR STRONG WOMEN
by marge piercy

A strong woman is a woman who is straining
A strong woman is a woman standing
on tiptoe and lifting a barbell
while trying to sing "Boris Godunov."
A strong woman is a woman at work
cleaning out the cesspool of the ages,
and while she shovels, she talks about
how she doesn't mind crying, it opens
the ducts of the eyes, and throwing up
develops the stomach muscles, and
she goes on shoveling with tears in her nose.
A strong woman is a woman in whose head
a voice is repeating, I told you so,
ugly, bad girl, bitch, nag, shrill, witch,
ballbuster, nobody will ever love you back,
why aren't you feminine, why aren't
you soft, why aren't you quiet, why aren't you dead?
A strong woman is a woman determined
to do somehing others are determined
not be done. She is pushing up on the bottom
of a lead coffin lid. She is trying to raise
a manhole cover with her head, she is trying
to butt her way through a steel wall.
Her head hurts. People waiting for the hole
to be made say, hurry, you're so strong.
A strong woman is a woman bleeding
inside. A strong woman is a woman making
herself strong every morning while her teeth
loosen and her back throbs. Every baby,
a tooth, midwives used to say, and now
every battle a scar. A strong woman
is a mass of scar tissue that aches
when it rains and wounds that bleed
when you bump them and memories that get up
in the night and pace in boots to and fro.
A strong woman is a woman who craves love
like oxygen or she turns blue choking.
A strong woman is a woman who loves
strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly
terrified and has strong needs. A strong woman is strong
in words, in action, in connection, in feeling;
she is not strong as a stone but as a wolf
suckling her young. Strength is not in her, but she
enacts it as the wind fills a sail.
What comforts her is others loving
her equally for the strength and for the weakness
from which it issues, lightning from a cloud.
Lightning stuns. In rain, the clouds disperse.
Only water of connection remains,
flowing through us. Strong is what we make
each other. Until we are all strong together,
a strong woman is a woman strongly afraid.

Bill Pullman, man of my dreams

I sometimes have terrible dreams about performing. Once I had to fill in for a 12 year old girl in our Christmas show and I kept forgetting lines - and every time I forgot a line, I'd have to climb a ladder to the booth and look at the stage manager's prompt book, then climb back down and continue. This happened close to ten times. In an hour long show. Once I found myself onstage for Cherry Orchard, but once I was there I realized I had rehearsed the wrong play - while everyone else had been rehearsing Cherry Orchard, I had been rehearsing Our Town - and I stumbled around talking about school books and strawberry sodas while everyone laughed at me.

Recently, I dreamed that I was a dancer and actor in a play that Bill Pullman was directing. We were at that rehearsal when you're figuring out the math of the play - how the teacup gets onstage, where you walk during a blackout, and how to exit without running into anyone. I was dancing from one end of the stage to the other - and had to get across very quickly. I had JUST enough time to get from one wing to the other, and Bill shouts "LIZ! YOU MUST TURN OFF THE BANNER BEFORE YOU EXIT!" And I think - there's no way I'll have the time! But I try it anyway. I'm dancing onstage right, then I have to climb to the top of the stage. You see, we are dancing inside a Microsoft Word Document and the page border was up for the first dance, and I have to go up to the menu, click on "Format" "Page Borders" and turn it off. Then I have to climb down from the top of the stage/page, finish my dance across the stage and exit left. Completely unreasonable, don't you think?

Community Arts Center

My Dream Community Arts Center...

*a theater (of course) that produces plays based on local stories. all performances followed by talk backs, panel discussions, and interesting ways of communicating.
*a radio station
*galleries filled with artwork from local artists
*classes - public speaking, how to write a memoir, scrapbooking, guitar, tap dancing.
*a movie theater with special matinees for moms with loud babies
*pottery wheels
*book clubs
*free access internet stations
*a library of donated books
*meeting rooms for anyone who needs them
*a haunted house at halloween
*tutors
*Saturday night cabaret acts
*street musicians in the parking lot
*summer camp
*ridiculous, over the top holiday decorations
*rehearsal rooms for high school garage bands
*fair trade coffee house
*lots of bulletin boards
*venues for touring theatre groups
*tons of patio furniture
*barbeques
*weekly open mic nights
*therapeutic movement classes
*a giant easter egg hunt
*organized town wide scavenger hunts
*a community garden where everyone can have a plot
*a publishing system - so that anyone can make their writing into a bound book

Reasons to be a Stereotypical Hobo at the Turn of the Century if it were Then, I was a Guy, and if they were actually as Rad as I imagine...


Beans. Whiskey. Sky. Spontaneity. Being an amazing storyteller. Being mysteriously sad and lost in thought. Sleeping to the rhythm of trains. Open air. Open roads. Jobs you leave in six months and don't care about. Not having a cell phone. Wearing overalls. Stroking my beard when I'm thinking. Knowing how to play the harmonica. Smelling like campfire smoke. Traveling light. Running from the law. The music. The parties. New people. That totally amazing feeling you get when hopping aboard a moving train. Banjos. Rabbits on sticks. Being paid in cash. The ability to use my pocketknife to do anything in any situation. Finding myself in situations. Doing anything.

Things I often forget...

All anniversaries, most birthdays, and where Easter and Thanksgiving are supposed to fall. The number of days in each month. Most of the names of kids who were younger than me. But none of the names of the kids who were older. I forget which people are from Danville and which are from Drew. Which are from Philly and which from New Jersey. Middle names of everyone. Most of the nice things people have said, none of the mean things. I forget all the small lies I've told, so I am always getting caught. Phone extensions. Cross-streets. That I'm lucky. Or loved. Anything that has an 8 or a 6 in it. Where the subway goes and if I fed the cat. My parents' ages. My parents' friends. To charge my phone. The names of the shows my friends are working on. What time I'm supposed to be somewhere. And where it is. Never who I'm meeting, but sometimes why. And definitely how to get there.