Oh. My. Oz.

What the ?

Since I'm up to my neck in ghosts and zombie tarot these days, I thought it appropriate to go completely nutters and share a wee story about how I ruined the Wizard of Oz for a roomful of people. I know there's no correlation, just go with it, I'm on deadline here.

I was a shy teenager. Stop laughing. And new to my high school in Southern Oregon after spending most of my childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area (East Bay, yo) so I thought what better way to make new friends than to show off my pipes in their fancy choir. I was a stupid child. Ever see Glee? Yeah. That's not me. So when the call went out in the regular slum choir, I raised my hand to audition. I was looking forward to choosing the music, bonding with others over our mutual love of song and jazz hands - go with me here - and I was ready to dazzle.

With not a whole lot of time to prepare, I settled on Over the Rainbow. A classic beloved by millions and a real tearjerker. I arrived, sheets in hand and waved off the pianist when she tried to grab them from me. I was going solo. I got this.

Planting my feet firmly apart and taking a deep breath, I shoved my Madonna knock-off plastic bracelets up my arm and belted out the most upbeat, jazziest, hip-swinging, fast tempo rendition of Over the Rainbow that anyone at Hidden Valley High School had ever seen. As the committee looked on in stunned silence at my complete misinterpretation of a classic, I waited for at least one person to stop twitching.

"That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen," one teacher said.

"Did you take a little something before coming in here?" said another. This was a very laid back school...

I think another teacher started crying.

I made it in.

And transferred to an astronomy class two weeks later due to creative difficulties. Go figure.

Sandbox Killer

From the tender age of four-years-old I wanted to be an archaeologist - or more accurately, someone who found dead things, buried them and then feigned surprise when I found them with their buggy feet in the air in the dirt. It was either archaeology or I was practicing to be a serial killer. My mother, patient woman that she is, watched from the kitchen window as her fourth child scoured the yard (and neighbor's yards) for anything that wouldn't run too quickly away from chubby hands such as worms and dolls. Off to the sandbox or garden I'd scurry like a pirate ready to bury her treasure, sidestepping the swing and trucks littering the landscape, and ready to burrow. At home this didn't turn many heads but it was more challenging at the playground.

"Mom! I found a bug! It's dead (squish), see?"

My mother, knowing what was coming next but not wanting to alarm the other parents would nod and give me the eyeball treatment where she'd wiggle her orbs in a desperate attempt to talk me out of creeping out the other children, while she smiled.

"That's great, Stacey. Why don't we go on the slide?"

"Pfffff." I would run off, looking for the right sandy soil to give it a proper burial. "Mom! Get me a stick! I can dig a hole right here next to this dog poo!" My mother, looking properly mortified would move me away from the offensive spot and distract me into the sandbox.

"Let's make a sand castle. See? Take the bucket, fill it with sand and.... Stacey, get the bug out of the castle."

"But Mom, I can just dig it out later. Then we can take it home and I'll bury it there."

"Let me see what other toys we can find, stay right there." The poor woman crossed the park to our car to check the trunk. I could see her arms flapping and her mouth moving as she practiced what to say to the psychiatrist when they finally drug me in for treatment. By the time she'd returned, she found me happily patting sand inside a plastic bucket.

"Look, Stace, I found a shovel and a... what's that poking out of the bucket?"

"It's a head." Barbie's face didn't betray the indignity of being buried with bug bits up to her neck in sand. Her blonde locks streamed out beside her in a pinwheel of tangles as I carefully combed them clear with my fingers.

"I think it's time to go home," she said with a sigh. With a nod to the mommies that had inched away from us, we gathered up our toys and headed for the car while she mentally mapped another park for future use. We were running out of sand.

The bride's lasagna

Two book contracts and a summer camp to run this June have me hiding under my desk eating crackers before the kids find me and demand dinner and clean underwear. I think it's overrated. The dinner, I mean. I'm not that great of a cook. If you notice, the only recipe I have on the blog is for granola because I can bake like a boss but when it comes to things like, oh, I don't know... lasagna, it falls apart a little.

When I was a newly married girl, I thought it was my duty to stuff my skinny husband until he popped out a new appendage. So I drug out the cookbooks and happily scoured  recipes for apparently the most artery-damaging foods on the planet for supper and dessert. Weekly blueberry pies, Baked Alaska, assorted meals with green pepper (they were cheap) and my mother's fail-safe recipe for lasagna. However, this meal I was going to make it my own. I'd put my own stamp of lovin' on it so my innocent husband would adore his bride and her growing waistline.

The sauce was naturally homemade, the noodles freshly done and cranked out from a tiny pasta maker. I was covered in tomatoes and flour and I was going to RULE bride-dom with this dish.

Hmmm, what was missing? Tomatoes? Onion and tons of garlic? Basil and oregano from my windowsill garden of our teeny apartment overlooking the dumpsters and Glisan Street in Portland, Oregon? Ahhhhh, yes. The cinnamon. This bad boy needed a healthy heap o'cinnamon because I had read *somewhere* that Mexican dishes used a bit of the bark to spice up their flavors. Yes. Say it with me now, "Stacey. Lasagna is not Mexican and you're a complete boob." I'm not even sure Mexican meals have cinnamon, maybe they meant cilantro?

The lasagna was huge. I baked for ten even though there were only two of us. My groom looked on in love as I dished out my latest culinary achievement and took a huge bite. And spat it out back on his plate and ran out of the room since the cinnamon had been a little on the heavy side and had caused some sort of reaction to his sinuses. Whatever. The big baby.

Seventeen years later, I still hear about that fiasco. It's taken on Bigfoot sighting proportions in legend and I'm used as a cautionary tale to our five daughters when I try to teach them to cook. I think I'd better stick with granola.