Saturday we had a gathering of sorts- invited some people over for a Redneck Bouillabaisse. A what? Redneck Bouillabaisse aka Frogmore Stew, Lowcountry Boil. I happen to have a soft spot for the name Redneck Bouillabaisse. Simply put it’s a stacked boil…you put in your ingredients that will take the longest (sausage, potatoes, corn on the cob) in with some water and the secret combo of spices ( Old Bay..no one really cooks seafood round here without it) and progress up through the seafood ( crab legs, scrimp). If you go all out and do it right, you turn the pot over on a table spread with newspaper a la having crawdads. In this case we settled for some large trays. One day, I’ll get a sign off on going full Southern with this dish. One day.

We planned for a good number of people, about half showed. Originally it was going to be at Casa Primer, but with the weather getting so nice, we held it at a friend’s place. She had a good expanse of back yard, a deck and oh yeah…a river out back and a dock. It was a nice backdrop.

We also had some oysters going, so lot of food. I pretty much manned two large stock pots for a good majority of the early hours of said shin dig. Met a good number of new people, so it was a great way to spend a Saturday. It was also my first time having a roasted oyster. I avoided those things like plague. Mainly because I always thought the only way to have oysters [apart from all out frying them] was to have em raw on the half shell. And that was a roulette I wasn’t going to tangle with. So I tried it fresh off the grill with a bit of cocktail served up on a saltine. I’ve been depriving myself people. Those were awesomesausen on a cracker. (typo’ed on purpose…/disclaimer). Even with half the invitee list showing up with their appetites…there was still a good bit of food.

As the night wore on, I had to figure out what to do with the leftovers once people had taken their fill and grabbed what they wanted to take with them. When it comes to this dish, I had dubbed myself ‘apprentice’ because I learned this from Billem. He gave his ‘blessing’ in the form ‘it’s good Chelle,’ while finishing the mouthful he had in his mouth so I think it’s safe to say I am no longer a padowan learner. So we were talking about what could be done with the leftovers. I mean, the work was pretty much done, it was all cooked. There was a pause for mutual pondering and I offered up ‘Gumbo?’

‘Gumbo.’

You can freeze gumbo and if I was going to turn the leftovers into Gumbo..that was gonna be a lot of Gumbo. And thus, I made my first seafood gumbo. I had to make two store runs, mainly because I forgot to put some things on my list and I didn’t want to make my own seafood stock. My pantry isn’t what it used to be, so there isn’t a lot of staples I usually keep in there for such occasions. I cut myself slack because the cooler weather’s just starting, so I’ll have said staples soon. I’ll be filling a lot of homemade soup requests shortly.

It turned out decent. I think it’s missing something, but it makes up for it for the sheer fact of all that crab meat through it. I’m ok with that.

In a short while, I’ll be headed up to North Carolina.

For reasons I will expound on in a later post, I will be heading up to my old hometown(s) this weekend. So anyone in the Jacksonville/Emerald Isle/ Morehead City, NC area that wants to meet up, please let me know. I shall convey the digits. I’ll be up in the morning on Saturday and depending on what goes down, I’ll be leaving sometime Sunday/ early am on Monday, with the very real possibility of being highly caffeinated to make the five hour drive.

So, as I promised…somewhere [SDS.net is the hub and it gets linked from various other interweb profiles I have], I’d make a post about this year’s NaNoWriMo endeavor. Quick summation for those that don’t know what NaNoWriMo is: In a nutshell it’s an initiative to write a novel throughout the month of November. Thirty days, fifty thousand words. I’ve participated for a number of years, and each year, November’s proven to not be the right time of year to just bust out with a story and see where it goes. But I do it every year. I like the challenge of writing in general. Since writing also de-stresses, I can always use channeling stress into a creative outlet. Win all the way around.

The working title is ‘No Evil.’ The idea for this hit me back in the summer; jotted it down and let it marinate- finding key voices, settings etc. Since I know I take time nailing certain things like characters, place settings, it’s never too early to take an idea and grapple with it months in advance. [which is why I heart Google Notebook and Docs]. Until they feel right, I won’t be writing much of anything without a lot of frustration and road blocks.

So, below is a teaser of sorts. I’m putting this out there asking for initial reactions. Also those interested in being updated on new posts, please let me know. I’m going to be posting at Anodyne. If I can centralize how to let everyone interested know that I’ve posted new stuff, you know that appeals to my affections for organization and efficiency. Pretty sure I’ll link updates from there to post on Twitter. I may even make an email distribution list [so you know, emails sent my way will be helpful]. Now with that done, the teaser time, she comes!

This is not a story of a superhero.

I didn’t one day have something happen to me, then run the gauntlet of discovery, adaptation, honing and figuring out what I was going to wear. In fact, ‘it’ didn’t just happen in one day. It’d been happening. Innocently enough at first because when you’re young, the myriad of the fantastical is very real. With imaginations, imaginary friends, grand adventures, ‘it’ was snugly disguised. Hell, I didn’t even take notice until much later, and I conveniently blame hormones and tween angst. Even if it’s completely irrelevant, I’ll be honest and say I wanted to blame something, so I did. As innocent a time as childhood should be, let’s face it, it’s just like you- dying the moment you came into being.

I wasn’t trying to be anything. I just wanted to play my games, have my adventures, be dazzled at the concept of magic being real and the good guys always winning at the end of the day, because that’s how the world worked. Think back to your time, when you’re testing the rules, daring someone else to essentially set themselves up to be grounded until they’re fifty. The first foray into concepts like loyalty, solidarity, alienation, exile, cruelty. We’re never too young to be alienated. I’m pretty sure even the resident tattle tale didn’t like the fact that they were the resident tattle tale. Which is both humorous on one hand and sad on the other; that a moment of self preservation brands you the childhood equivalent of a leper. You were either the victim, victimizer or that other kind that managed to go without labels and was left alone, despite that they’d butt in on occasion. I was that other. I had a tooth knocked loose for taking on a bully that was twice my size; they were nearly three times the size of Susie Lillen. Like I said I wasn’t trying to be anything, but there’s some things that can’t be overlooked. I have no idea how I managed to go by mostly unscathed from being mocked or doing the mocking. I ratted on kids, I was selective about it and apparently judged fair when I did, but I wasn’t this saint of a child either.

When I think about it now, I guess I had some kind of code of honor- I only snitched when someone needed a good grounding, or whatever the punishment du jour was at the time. Maybe it was part doing something smarter, not harder, but that’s a lot of credit to hand to an eight year old. The difference between now and then? Innocence. At some point, having the luxury of that naive innocence becomes forfeit. And when you do that, when you molt away until you’re now an adult, there’s no safety. Because knowing something, holding a secret of somebody’s…self preservation will push people to do all sorts of things. And I liked being subject only to my own just fine. The world isn’t quite so compartmentalized though and I’m not nearly egotistical or delusional enough to say ‘I am God.’ Though right about now, I’d settle for being a minor deity

For those that know me and those that have gotten to know me, you know that I’m my own person, a unique and pretty lil butterfly as it were. Even if you disagree about the pretty butterfly, go with me on this (and stay after, so we can have a ‘talk’). I often describe myself as a tomboy and a geek. When I’m initiating the New about who I am and give that descrīption, some people don’t believe me. At one point, it was about being geeky. Now it’s leaning more towards not buying it that I am a tomboy. And I think I understand the culprit.

I can’t be accused of being overly girlie or prissy. Well I can, but it doesn’t hold water. Though oftentimes the jest is missed when I make certain remarks (z0mg, I broke a nail!). The fact of the matter is, I’m a mutt. A little of this tendency, a little of that tendency, some of this trait, dash of that. I like clean and organization. It makes my mind zen when there’s a semblance of order in key places (my desk has never been one of them for some reason). I love wearing jeans, a t-shirt and sandals. I didn’t start wearing make-up until I started my internship my senior year in college. Prior to that, it was lip gloss, if you can count that. When given a choice between movie genres, I gravitate to action, sci fi, horror and historical inspired by default. As a child, I played outside all the time. From seafaring to scaling high mountaintops (read: trees, they’re very versatile playthings). That bit about cleanliness…it didn’t count when playing outside.   I grass stained my knees with the best of them.  I played with the boys, until puberty hit in and then I had a hard time understanding why they were such doofuses all of a sudden. The onset of betties will do that to you.

I did in fact have things like barbies as toys. I also had playsets a la kitchens, I was She-Ra for a while, and I was pretty down when someone broke my walkie talkies. T-Rex still finds that story amusing and that I remember it so well. Like I said, I was pretty down. You know how many kinds of awesome fun can be had with walkie talkies? Apart from that, there were games and as I said…running amuck playing outside. I never wanted to be a princess growing up. I wanted to survive on some castaway island though. The Robinson Crusoe-esque movies always had really cool treehouses.

Of course I had my odd moments because as I rose through the grades at school, it was being pointed out to me I wasn’t like other girls. Naturally I wondered about this. Then I became the doofus. That point in every tween-teenage girl’s life where she’s awkward around boys, very aware of her appearance and looking for some acceptance. I’m glad it lasted only until high school. I would epically fail at conveying how glad I am about that.

I was only keen on fashion as I was early on because of my sister and mainly because she wouldn’t have me as a sister otherwise, then she kinda adopted me as a project of sorts. I’ve always hated shopping for clothes, mainly because we’ve always had a rocky relationship. I was ok shopping for other things.  That part…hasn’t changed so much except perhaps for screen size/gigabytes/awesomesauce factor.

It wasn’t until I was faced with interning that I realized I needed to step up my game. Then I was honest with myself and realized I needed some game first. At 21 I owned make-up for the first time and I even knew what to do with it. I polished myself up well with the help of family. My sister had passed on by this time, but I’d pretty much swear she was the equivalent of squeeing in spirit when Mom and I went on that shopping trip.

Since then, I’ve got more dress/business clothes than my usual comfy fare that I’m a fan of. With work, I wear dress clothes five days a week easy. I hardly see my jeans and I get a lot of miles on them for the sheer fact that unless I’m schlepped somewhere for work, they’re not worn often.

As such, most people see me at work or straight from work. Decked out the usual dress pants, a top that vibes and the accoutrement to go with, right down to heels. And I’d lay odds that that right there contradicts when I say Chelle= tomboy. A majority of the time, I do not look the part.

The funny thing is for a long while, I had a hard time finding a way to dress as needed for work, but to infuse my personality. That little pop of funk, of fun. My cube is decked out with awesomeness, and as girlie as it sounds..I wanted to match. Somewhere along the way, I learned how to do that.  I was seeing the same conumdrum more and more with my peers and generation- how do we incorporate that which makes us geeky and fun;show our personality.

I get a lot of compliments on my shoes…from guys. I know somewhere guys are supposed to be programmed to notice such things if they’re in certain situations. Ye ole ‘he’s been trained well’ joke.  Not always the case, actually most times the exception really. When I wear my Naughty Monkeys (that is the brand’s name, no joke) I always get a compliment on them. Anywhere from ‘nice’ to ‘awesome kicks’

And they’re usually the reason I’ll respond with ‘they give the ensemble a lil funk’ because a) they do and b) well look at them [stage left] . Those are completely money.  I can see where the double take or ‘does not compute’ would come in.  I’ve never really fit completely, neatly, or close enoughly to a mold anyway.