A moment of silence, friends. Your SJ has discovered something that peanut sauce does NOT taste good on: Nilla Wafers. I have been buying rather than making cookies lately, because sometimes you just want that fix, and tonight my eyes strayed to ye olde Nillas. The peanut sauce did not taste bad on them, per se, it just kind of obliterated the Nilla-ness of them and left them tasting kind of sweet. I scamper back to the standby, toast, as a vehicle for peanut saucey goodness.

More Nilla Wafer hilarity ensues as the box they come in assures me I can make something called a “tiramisu bowl” with Wafers, Jell-O, coffee, and cream cheese. GOOD CHRIST. No rum? This is not tiramisu, nor is it trifle, which is what it resembles all stacked up in the bowl like that. FAIL. I am going to give this trifle a shot for Xmas, which WL says is orsum. But probably I will cut it in half, since I am not entertaining in anyway for xmas, except in a schadenlulz one.

Today I am thinking about death. I was thinking about my kid and her recently-deceased grandmother, and how we are talking about her lately. I think I never told you about The Death of Monkeyhip, because I was on, ahem, my court-ordered “hiatus” then. We were living in that tragic apartment on Aurora Avenue where the dude got pasted while crossing the street, and Monkeyhip got all hamster ancient and expired. Franny happened to be with us and I found him cacked in his cage. I had to sit her down and tell her and she WAILED, and then got over it about four seconds later.

That afternoon we went out to lunch and happily ran into Kaijsa at Jai Thai, before it went all downhill.

“Hi Franny,” kaijsa said. “What’s new?”

Much to our surprise, Franny burst into song.

“Monkeyhip died and we PUUUT him INNN the DUMPSTER!” She did a jolly dance while singing dramatically. Kaijsa and her friends did not know what to say to that. I was silently shaking with laughter, but also embarrassment about being exposed about what we’d done. But it was winter and we lived in an apartment–what else could we do? I still felt pretty bad, though.

Tonight before dinner we were having a living room dance party to shake of the Mondayness of it all, and I put on Monkey hips and Rice and she flopped on the couch and started weeping. “This song reminds me of MONKEYHIP!” She had named him, after all.

This is like the non-deep thought of the century, but I was at the grocery store wheeling the cart past the giant line of perfect condiments, you know, and I was thinking what a shock the hamster’s death was to her, followed by her Nana a year ago, and her grandma last month. And how someday death becomes acceptable, expected, and even routine. How many hundreds of famous dead people have you heard about in your life? How many dead in wars and natural disasters? I hear over and over again about people who are very ill or old being ready to let go and die and it just made me think–does it get to the point where you know more dead people than actual living people? Do you feel like you grow accustomed to it until you are ready to cross over too? I feel less scared than I used to when I was younger, even of losing people I love. It’s amazing what we can recover from.