Non-linear thoughts about muffins

I tried baking something for the the first time today: homemade muffins.

However, I was talking on the phone to True Tomato (admittedly, a *strange* psuedonym -- very sorry -- but now we're stuck with it) ... so I was talking on the phone with her while mixing this batter. I forgot to add the milk. I realized this while trying to mix the wet ingredients with the dry. So then I added the milk.

It was positively sloppy batter -- when it was supposed to be on the "barely wet" side -- so I added some more flour, corn meal and baking powder.

Seemed to save the consistency of the outcome from being too terrible. But I didn't quite get the baking soda as well mixed in as I should have, and the result is the occasional unexpected bitter spot. I'll call them "UCM's Bitter Surprise Blueberry Muffins." Whatcha think?

Gotta dozen of 'em here with your name on 'em. First come, first served!

Suffice it to say, I'll be paying closer attention to the recipe the next time I try to bake something. As they say, cooking is an art, and baking is a science. You can't usually go hibbity-jibbity on the ingredients like I did at the end and expect things to turn out alright.

I'll be trying something new next time.

I like muffins.

A little tangent here: XGF and I used to live next door to this whacky lady I inexplicably nicknamed "The Muffin" one day. (This was in days before I was eating muffins on a regular basis; now, I would not insult muffins in that way. I may not have much respect for humanity, but I sure respect muffins!)

Anyway, The Muffin ... why did I name her that? I think it had something to do with what she looked like when all bundled up in her winter clothes. She moved up here from California, and I think the damp chill here in winter and spring was not to her liking. She wore excessive amounts of material on her face, around her neck and atop her head until WAAAAAAY after I was out mowing the lawn in my shorts.

She was a soft-spoken woman of about 60 who struck me as a little feeble minded. Feeble minded just so that most people wouldn't recognize it. Least of all herself.

Conversations with her were always peculiar. A lot of them were about her endless searching searching searching for some kind of spiritual something-or-other that was going to liberate and exonerate her for being "the awful, terrible person I was."

It was also hard for me to imagine The Muffin used to be an awful, terrible person -- or that she "was" one, anyway, because there were days I thought she might still be one. Mainly, I just wondered what she meant by that. XGF and I used to speculate. We'd work ourselves into small convulsions of laughter, trying to imagine The Muffin as a "awful, terrible person."

The Muffin as mafia hit woman. The Muffin as a disease-spreading junkie seriel killer. The Muffin as a suburban housewife. The Muffin as ... as ... what? I mean: WHAT did that woman think was so bad?

Maybe she was just a person without religion. Maybe that's what she meant.

A person like me.

Except for the part where she's feeble minded and I'm not.

And I'm not searching searching searching -- because I don't believe there is "An Answer." But The Muffin most certainly did. Sometimes, when I was sweeping the sidewalk or pulling weeds, she'd start talking to me about all that searching and the answer she had found.

I once asked her what "the answer" was, and she wouldn't tell me.

She got all funky and pious and righteous in her posture and voice -- not too much different than normal, really -- and told me she couldn't just out and outright tell me. Seems I would have to find it for myself.

At least she had some sensibility. If there is an "answer," it makes sense we'd have to find it on our own.

Not like spirituality -- or whatever -- is as simple as a recipe, as scientific as baking.

I've had reason to think a lot lately about "spirit" and consciousness and "the unseen" world around us. But I don't know how safe it is for me to proceed in my thinking, so it's occuring in fits and starts (and getting derailed by devilish people with their own pathetic motives). All in all, I am fighting a massive undertow of resistance.

Here's my latest excuse:

I screwed up a simple recipe for blueberry muffins. There's no telling what I might do to, say, Buddhism.