a while back, the universe bestowed upon me a small gift. the universe being my buddy Cyrus and the small gifts being 30+ pounds of Brazil Nuts still in their shell. i heart Brazil Nuts. i heart even more free Brazil Nuts.
so then the problem arose that i had no nut cracker. cracking 30+ pounds of nuts was not on the front burner of my industrial stove of a life so i just havent bothered. either to find a nut cracker or to do anything productive with the nuts. wait, i take that back. the majority of the nuts, housed in an old pillow case, have come in quite handy maybe once or twice when they were able to double as a hard lumpy bean bag. or nut bag, if you will. contrary to what you would think, sitting on a reasonable sized nut bag is more comfortable than one would think.
but i digress. more recently, that same universe who thought it fit to bestow upon me a large lode of tree nuts, has come forward to gift me what amounts to be the key to the city, a nutcracker, for 27 cents. thank you u district garage sale circa last weekend.
now, the single jointed crushing device turned out to be somewhat of a double edged sword. yes, now i can harvest the gold out of these suckers, but a) Brazil Nut shells are formidable and my hand is sore and b) i am one of those people that likes to do a job thru and thru, not leave it half done, no matter how tedious a task. so now, yes i am feasting upon most excellent Brazil Nut Creme ala ilvs, yet my enjoyment is clouded as the project of cracking the as of yet uncracked shells looms heavily before me.
on a positive note. i did find out that cracking Brazil Nuts is a job made infinitely easier when you soak the nuts in water for at least 2 hours if not over night.
on a different note altogether, i have noticed that when i spend any amount of time around those who speak with a marked or even slight accent, the urge to mimic it is great. i catch myself tossing out words with oblong vowels and clipped consonants. not to the point of being annoying but sometimes it gets real close to the boarder of where charming meets weird. this is something i know about myself with regards to the spoken language. this week, the written language has some thing new to teach me about myself. i am 3/4 of the way thru 'Their Eyes Were Watching God' by the incomparable Zora Neal Hurston. for those of you not in the know, reserve a copy from the library and check out the fact that the practically the whole thing is written staying true to 'the dialect spoken by blacks of African and Caribbean descent in the South of the early 20th century.' that accent has been floating thru my cerebrum for the past 4 days and it is threatening to bubble out my mouth. the result of which would be neither cute nor charming but more along the lines of awkward bordering on inappropriate. lucky for me, i live in a bubble on capitol hill and i dont have any black friends i hang out with on a regular basis so the chances of me insulting someone is real low. er. i mean, lucky for me, the book is only 197 pages long...
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