Allow me to explain to you the series of events that lead to me being out in the below-freezing landscape of my frosted backyard at some unholy morning-ish hour, in my pajamas and muddy slippers, stoking a fire made almost entirely of fizzled matchsticks, and roasting a charred lump of mystery substance embedded with wood and ash.
The night before, I had been sitting in a crowded theater watching
Mockingjay: Part Two of the
Hunger Games series, with my sister, boyfriend, and dad. The show (which was to be amazing) hadn't even started yet, though there was a considerable dent in our tub of popcorn, when the trailer for
Gods of Egypt came on
. I don't really need to explain this. The title is much like that of
Spy Kids-- it is largely self-explanatory and leaves little room for actually watching the movie. There are gods, and they are of Egypt. That's it. Cue tension and CGI and cinematic music. The important thing about this trailer actually has to do with a book I had when I was 8, or something. It was thin and outrageously pink. In it were various articles such as how to make homemade lip gloss or acorn boats or successful attempts at flirting (I never got the hang of that one). If variety is the spice of life, this book was that Taco Bell tamale that clings to your intestines until it erupts in a fiery inferno of agony.
One of these articles was titled "How to be an Egyptian Goddess". I think you know where this goes.
What I didn't understand, at the time, was that the page on being Cleopatra incarnate was utter satire. It was as if the adults writing the book were simply experimenting with what unsavory activities they could inveigle small children into. I was too busy worrying about how to procure gold and slaves for my pyramid production. Additionally, bat feces, for the signature swoop of mascara-- I was a little less enthusiastic about that one, but you know, whatever it takes. Anyways, after many, many,
many failed attempts to cajole my sisters into fanning me with palm leaves and feeding me grapes (somehow, they were a little less than thrilled at this idea), I finally conceded and let my dreams of glorious queenship die.
Or so I thought.
Watching this commercial in the theater, my mind started to do this weird scheming thing that I don't know quite how to explain, besides the fact that it's completely illogical and often concludes with me doing something completely ridiculous, like pouring glitter on my head.
See what I mean? It doesn't follow any rational pattern, and it doesn't make sense to anyone else. But I realized, in that most vital moment, that to fulfill my wayward childhood dreams I would have to, 1) Write solely in ancient hieroglyphs, 2) Wrap myself in toilet paper like a mummy, 3) Beg my sisters to fan me with palm leaves, exploiting their guilt for not doing so in the past, or 4) Make ancient Egyptian food from scratch. Number four seemed easy enough. I was pretty set on the whole paper mummy thing, though. More on that later.
So, anyways, of course there came first and foremost the preliminary research. I had checked out just one book from the library which happened to pertain to this subject.
And four on physics, three on reflexology (one of these in Spanish), one on time theory, three fiction, one on meteorology. Oh, and that one ornithology journal. Librarians fear me.
I will be honest. I didn't even research that much. It was 7 in the morning and I,
goshdarnit, was going to be a certified Egyptian princess before that afternoon. The recipe I used was derived from the images on the walls of the tomb of Senet, illustrations meant to carry living memories and experiences into the afterlife, that now in the future produce a vivid picture of ancient life.
Crush the grain with sticks. Remove the husks through a sieve. Using a grindstone, crush the grain finer until you have a heap of white flour. Mix the flour with enough water to form a soft dough. Knead the dough by hand or by treading on it gently. Tear off pieces of the dough and shape into rounds. Cook directly over ashes-- Once the bottom of the bread starts to brown, turn over and cook the other side.
Oh goodness. I had no idea what a sieve was and and could not even be remotely persuaded to walk on my food, which only serves to further confirm my theory that I would have quickly died of starvation in ancient Egypt. If the whole "frogs everywhere" thing didn't send me packing before that. Well, anyways, if the Homeowners Association happens to ask you, that's why I was outside looking for sticks this morning and returning only with soggy tumbleweed (Gotta love Eastern Washington).
I got out a mortar and separated the chaffs before pounding the grain to pieces and feeling like a horrible, heartless monster. Picture an orphan baby grain separated from its mama wheat plant. And I, the merciless villain, just crushed it. Give me my callous psychopath badge now, because I surely deserve it.
Those little baby wheaties deserved a peaceful, swift end, with all their pyres (that comes later, in baking the bread..... Too soon?) Instead, for fifteen minutes, I ground with the arguably useless pestle and delivered a lifetime of torture within their last moments. My arms were sore and probably about to fall off, yet still, the little grains were intolerably stubborn. The nerve of them. Impeding my ability to become Remenkīmi royalty. I hadn't slept enough to achieve rational thought and contemplated crying to sway the wills of the obstinate grains until I just gave up and used a blender. Far less torturous, for everyone involved.
At this point in the escapade, I am standing in the kitchen wearing fuzzy, pink earmuffs and feeding wheat to a ferociously growling Vitamix blender. I am jumping up and down in my toesie socks to "encourage" the wheat to flour-ize faster. My face is puffy from suffering a cold, and I'm so doped up on cough medicine that I can't keep my eyelids from drooping, and my stuffed sinuses are rattling like kazoos as I hum "Eye of the Tiger" (again, to motivate the wheat). Oh, but wait. I haven't even gone into the abyss of Arctic ice outside yet. It gets more fun.
With that, my flour's made. It's a heap of off-white powder in the blender and it's wafting up through the air like smoke. Except not. Because it doesn't smell as nice, and doesn't make you cough as much, even though you're still coughing. My lungs were spasming a little and I felt like I'd just murdered thousands of grain babies, but.... Yeah, there's no but. Heartless monster, etc. When I looked outside, I honestly thought it was going to be far warmer than when I was collecting tumbleweeds earlier. I don't know why I claimed this obstinate, unfounded belief, but looking back on it the following turn of events seems rather obvious.
I was going to build the best fire the world had ever seen. And in that moment, the world snickered. I would most definitely
not be doing that. Not only was the fire going to be a miserable catastrophe, I would get frost nip and a mild case of the grouchies. I trooped outside with all my materials, and suddenly--
the temperature.
I am a frail person with a 5'2" frame whose primary reliance in cold is in her ability to borrow her boyfriend's hoodie, through a lot of begging. It's November, and I've yet to acclimate to the cold. Vaguely Californian in spirit, I cannot handle when my home's internal temperature dips below 65 degrees, let alone the polar wasteland beyond the door. Let alone wearing thin pajamas, toesie socks, a sparkling personality, and perfectly white slippers. I am also very stubborn, which will probably get me killed eventually, but
not today. I hope this explains, for the most part, why I locked myself outside in this boreal desert to experience "the realities of living in nature" (which apparently is a suburban backyard in the late fall).
Well, really.... I just had to go
back in the house to survive. But I wasn't about to give up.
Just like that, I was trapped in a glacial tundra wearing nothing but pajamas. I have done far more imprudent, arguably foolish, things, but this was pretty rash of me. Honestly, the only reason I did it was because the whole time I was keeping up an internal dialogue of "this might make a good story". Why did I run off in the woods that one time?
Plot development. Nobody should ever,
ever trust me with even the slightest amount of decision-making. I am extremely misguided.
So there I am, kneading the flour into freezing cold water, the melting frost seeping through my pajamas into the goosebumps plastered all over my skin. My fingers are almost too stiff to continue working the dough as blasts of icy wind shred through my body and whip my hair over my eyes. It's too
early for this crap! But then I remind myself-- this is how they used to do it, and unless I want to earn my wuss patch, I'll have to put on my big girl boots and cope. Eventually, I do complete the task, albeit significantly less ebullient than when I began. I toss some dough to the ducks, who aren't quite sure what to do with it.
In case you aren't familiar with my hometown environment, it's like the wild west, minus the cacti. There are tumbleweeds, rolling hills, deep valleys, and the occasional rattlesnake. Lots of people wear cowboy hats. And, we're either amidst a horrific windstorm or recovering from one, constantly. Add windstorm as the girl in her pajamas searches wildly for more tumbleweeds that aren't covered in frost to use in her sorry little excuse of a campfire. The girl only finds one tolerable brush before she realizes, that in a distraction involving approximately 10 minutes of chasing wild birds, that she is halfway down the hill, in someone else's yard, and the sprinklers are turning on. In frumpy pajamas, and once white slippers that are stiff with globs of mud.
Yes, as you know already, that girl was me. I sprinted back to my yard, tripped, got up and kept sprinting, and finally returned to checkpoint wielding only one moderately damp tumbleweed. It was measly and a tad embarrassing, but I set up a tiny fire structure of wood chips on the concrete patio anyways. At this point I discovered that my trusty old strike anywhere matches were all duds.
All of them. Of course, since I'd locked myself out of the house, I couldn't really get anymore, which seemed quite foolish to me at that moment as I could practically feel the hypothermia creeping up on me bit by bit. Thankfully, as a small child, I wanted to be an action hero and taught myself how to 1) run in high heels, which has proved very useful and 2) pull off screens, pry open windows, crawl through an opening several feet off the ground, borrow my grandmother's keys, forcefully unlock the house only to find that there was another unlocked door, etc.
Okay. New matches. As it turns out, I need exactly sixteen of them for this procedure, because of the wind and my desire to smother the fire to absorb its warmth into my cold, dying little body. I was past the point of no return. My fingers were so numb that I didn't feel my thumb get burnt.
But then, out of the depths, the clenching jaws of despair.... fire. Bestowing gentle light and radiating warmth upon the weary, hope to those of frozen hearts, loving charity to all that accept the generosity of this precious gift of life. So beautiful. So resplendent. So forgiving of the cold.
My grandpa probably had no idea that he would walk outside that morning to see globs of gelatinous, charred bread-like substance heaped atop a miniature pile of coals and failed matches, tended to by me. Okay, let me rephrase that-- he's vaguely aware of my partial insanity, but he
definitely had no idea that I was camped out burning half baked goo on the patio. For this, he responded fairly well. Just like the usual; shrugging to admit defeat and backing away slowly. He didn't comment at all on the fact that I was wearing "BFF" footie socks (that I bought for myself), or that I had soggy slippers solidifying by the fire, or that my eyes were swollen shut and my face was blotchy with the shade of a tomato that won the county fair. A most unwelcome scene.
He
did tell me to go inside. I said, "Never." How dare he suggest that I succumb to the elements and give in to failure. How could he not see that my destiny for royalty hinged upon this very moment?! Never mind that my fingers couldn't move or feel! Never mind wood pieces and ash were stuck to the soft underside of the bread! Never mind that a lock of my hair was dangling in the fire! THIS WAS DESTINY, AND DESTINY NEVER GIVES IN! (I went inside).
The rest of the baked bread I topped with mozzarella cheese, spinach, and sliced olives (a bit tastier than the recipe that was provided, I must say). This whole "just flour and water" and "worsening cold symptoms due to 'prolonged exposure to below-freezing temperatures'" thing has got me thinking. The generations of the past command respect simply by existing. If I had to mortar grind all my wheat, I would quickly be sorted out as a weaker specimen. I would, for many reasons, hypothermia among them, be very dead. Without modern conveniences, I doubt the vast majority of us would last in any measure of the same luxury or ingratitude. Look at this. We've got stoves, packaged flour-- grocery stores!-- running water, indoor heating, access to books... Thanksgiving has passed, and in its place is the avarice of the shopping season. Black Friday is to appreciation as the Black Death was to human life. It's so inconceivably shallow and hypocritical that we turn in one day from giving thanks for everything we have to craving an insatiable amount of "more".
We've been blessed with the ability to take things for granted.
But let's not do that. Let's be grateful for the glorious wonder that is a Vitamix blender. For shoes, for family, even for locked doors (because, hey, that's a sure sign that there
are doors). Thank goodness that we don't have to cook turkey over coals. Yet, with privilege comes opportunity to extend our blessings onto others. This holiday season, I'd encourage you to give the plunders of a dollar store trip to something called
Operation Christmas Child. There are those far less fortunate, children who have never experienced the joy of a gift, and through one small act we can impact countries away, for the better.
These shoe boxes filled with even the most inexpensive of presents can bring joy to the life of little ones whose countries are home to turmoil and distress. What better way to celebrate the meaning of gratitude than by giving?
And who knew my 8-year-old aspirations to become Cleopatra would lead to this?
Yet, since I failed at making the bread exactly as the recipe on Senet's tomb intended, or without a whole lot of episodic complaining, I am forced to resign to option two of my diabolical Egyptian princess scheme. Let me tell you something about human nature: No one likes to be woken up at 2 in the morning by a person who, for whatever unspeakable reason, wants to be wrapped in toilet paper. Additionally, other people do not want to receive a text that says simply, "I feel like I'm allergic to excessive amounts of hemp pulp. Is that normal?"
Please do not do these things.
I am begging you.
You will perhaps say that you've never thought of doing such things, but then I suppose you'd also not be the kind of person who tumbles down staircases in zipped suitcases, so
shame on you. Anyways, I was a toilet paper mummy for the extent of time it takes to dance to both "This is Halloween" and "What's This?" and with everything considered, I feel like that grants me the official title of a Princess. Finally. After years of insatiable agony, my childhood dreams have been actualized and I can now go on to live a fruitful exis-- Hey, I wonder what it takes to become a Duchess?
