BREAK

Christmas has a way of revealing all the disturbing realities of my extended family. I left my grandma's house christmas eve with a messy combination of guilt, fear, disgust and helplessness. I decided on the way home that I don't want to be a part of the anti-christmas any longer.

Not that I am a religious person. I am not. The holidays were always a time for family, for celebration of being a family. We would drive through the snow in our old 48 chevy to find the best charlie brown tree in the forest. My dad would wrestle the tree into the greenhouse and attempt to fit it into the stand. The snow would fall continuously as we lit the tree and filled the house with the best smell on earth: grand fir (well, this is a bit of an exaggeration, as we usually had a sad pine tree. I always felt compelled to protect the feelings of the tree that I was sure no one wanted). After the tree was lit and decorated, we would build bob sled runs in our front yard between the "big hill" and the driveway. Straw bales would be lined up in front of our potential targets: giant pine trees.

We would sled and crash and run back up the hill as long as we could before we were frozen to our gloves, and couldn't feel our feet. That's when we would go inside and drink hot cocoa in front of the fire before running back out with wet snow clothes to do it all again. I WILL be a professional sledder some day.

But it doesn't snow anymore. And our extended family has gone crazy. We all now refer to relatives as "your aunt ______" or "your cousin ______".

So, this year I look forward to finding snow and silly christmas trees and spending time with the few family members I'm still close to: my mom, dad, sister, nephew, and my aunt and uncle in Utah.

Food of the gods

Yesterday I got to step out of my life for a moment and into the world of my sister… this adventure resulted in a tour of THE chocolate factory. Now, this is not your ordinary chocolate factory, but one run by about 30 employees, that make organic, fair trade and fabulous chocolate, most of it DARK. I meet the owner, the owner's mom, sister, and all the other wonderful employees. the owner zips back and forth, singing and whistling and smiling.

I have always loved chocolate. I love the texture, the flavor, and the idea of chocolate. My first and only encounter with a chocolate tree (how wonderful is it that chocolate grows on trees!?!) was in Ecuador in 1998. we canoed and trekked through the jungle, my friend Sarah and I each with a stash of chocolate bars in our pockets. occasionally we would pull one of them out and say to ourselves with glee: "we are eating chocolate in the jungle!" we would dance around in a chocolate high and admire the giant leaves and enormous, glowing insects. and I dreamt of working in the jungle one day, ethnobotany? ethnobotany of chocolate? salsa dancing? Spanish? yeah.

Theobroma cacao is a tree species that will only grow within 20 degrees of the equator, and many varieties are going extinct. The cocoa pods grow directly off of the trunk, and do not fall to the ground, but are carried by the most adorable mammal in the world: the sloth. The sloth breaks open the pods, and eats only the white flesh surrounding the seeds. Within the seeds, the cocoa nibs, the base for all that is good, live.

Cocoa nibs are sent though Dr. Seuss –like machines, warmed and cooled and mixed and warmed again. The tempered chocolate is then poured into buckets (Poured!! Can you imagine!?! Vats of warm, gooey chocolate?) and the special ingredients are mixed in by hand: a syringe full of lavender oil, tiny blueberries from another bucket, etc. The family of employees in production work like part of the machine, anticipating every move. Mojo, the main production machine spits the hand - mixed chocolate into moulds, shakes them vigorously and sends them though its belly to cool them. The bars are then wrapped by Bessie, an ancient machine with endless rolls of gold foil and wrappers, levers and knobs and pinching parts.

As I live for a moment in my fantasy, my sister is tracking down a lost shipment of blueberries. I hang out in the tasting room, trying single-origin dark chocolate: chocolate from Ecuador, a drop from Costa Rica, a bite from Madagascar. I let it melt over my tongue. I learn all that I can about cocoa trees, dream about warm vats of chocolate, and read up on all the articles that have been published about dark chocolate and the creativity and ingenuity of the man that started it all.

winter squash

I would like to think that my life is fairly drama free. except when it isn't. I went to bed early last night thinking how nice it would be to snuggle with someone. I woke in the morning to 2 missed calls: two potentially snuggly friends. One with WAY too much history, we'll call him "gutless". We have been playing phone tag for months now. Maybe a year? There was (and still is) no doubt about our feelings towards one another. But for some odd reason, there is no potential for a relationship.

We went through a period of time when we agreed to avoid the distance relationship, and were both content with the freedom of where we were, and the comfort of the occasional visit and warm fuzzy phone call. A month or two ago, he stopped calling. He stopped answering his phone. Unless he had had a few drinks. I was aware that he had been dating, and was trying to "be good" and not "break rules" (rules that were set, not because he was meaningfully involved (which he wasn't), but because it made it 'easier' for him to get over us. (makes sense, aside from the fact that neither of us seemed to really want to get over the other... or maybe i've been fooled).

Why would either of us need to get over it if we only live two hours apart? Did I mention that I'm in Portland almost every other weekend? And that my study area for my masters project is in Portland? And that I will likely move there when I graduate? And that he always tells me "when you move to Portland we can be together again" "we can get married when you turn 32, or 30". Um WTF!?!?!?!

Obviously, he doesn't want to make it work NOW. He wants freedom, with some certainty that he can come back to us LATER. Ummm, doesn't everyone want that? When is later, because as far as I can tell, later is NEVER NOW! Maybe he just doesn't want to be 'mean' by telling the truth... though, i'm pretty sure my judgment isn't that bad.

I returned his phone call, hoping, (unwisely) for some change of heart. Nope... more of the same. "when you move to Portland".... blah blah blah. "too hard to do the distance thing"...

I've definitely been on the other side of this one, so I can't blame him for wanting EVERYTHING, but I do. I wanted an answer. His answer: "I want you there every night, I want you there everyday. I want to be able to call you up, and go to your place to watch a movie, or go to dinner... every other weekend isn't enough. Every weekend isn't enough"

Congratulations to me! Someone loves me, but I'm not worth the extra work, even when I'm the one driving to Portland.