Category: Mental Pictures

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Atelier Crenn.

I recently had the delightful privilege of dining at Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.

Dominique Crenn has been a foodie her entire life. I learned a great deal about her from her cookbook, Metamorphosis of taste, including how to make our first bite. But I am not here to talk about her extraordinary food journey, I am here to memorialize, and to share, my memories of this one glorious evening.

Dinner begins not with food but with poetry. Chef Crenn named her restaurant Atelier, which is French for studio, in memory of her father’s art den, a lifelong and beloved hobby tucked into a little shed behind their home. She believes that art and food are inseparable, and so the first peek at the “menu” is not a list of ingredients and arrangements, but a series of poetic impressions. Though I prefer my poetry in more traditional rhyming meters, it’s a stunning touch, a sign before even seeing the food that a tremendous amount of thought and love has gone into not only each dish, but each component of each dish.

First: a trio of small bites. The Kir Breton, a single bite and a nod to the signature cocktail of her homeland. Presented a perfect globe of creamy white chocolate and cocoa butter, with a dot of rich red cassis gel on top. Inside the sphere is reduced apple cider from Brittany. I let it sit on my tongue a moment, hoping the shell would melt and cider caress my tongue as it slipped out, but impatience won and I gave it the gentlest bite (some of you know the one I’m talking about). It shattered in a most delightful explosion, the cider lighter than I expected, and cool.

Then an acorn, made of a dozen ingredients, mushroom forward, soft, with a crisp oak leaf on top made of more mushroom. A single bite, delightful, but overshadowed by the next.

I have a soft spot for gougers. Little balls of cheesy eggy dough, crisp on the outside and filled with whatever you wish. Topped with three perfect slices of truffle and an edible flower, it wasn’t the prized fruits of the forest that wowed me, it was the popover itself. The kitchen had piped in a rich, creamy, cheesy mornay sauce, and a similarly creamy, but fruity and fresh, apple butter. Apples and cheese make an excellent pair, but they’re usually served as slices, crisp, cool, salty, and fresh. In this iteration, the two together played off each other more intimately. Instead of them blending together gradually as I chewed, they burst onto the scene in unison within the delicate, nutty, crisp shell; spurring my first “wow!’ Of the night.

Next: oysters. I know they can be a divisive food but I love them, and these gently poached little pearls of the sea were lovely, so lovely that they disappeared into my mouth before I remembered to take a photo!

Scallops can also be a divisive matter of taste, and of texture. Easy to overcook, and soft when raw, these had been sliced into short wide ribbons and arranged in concentric circles around a bright vinegar sauce, studded, as most dishes were, with micro greens and small flowers. Chamomile I remember, and nori chips for a bit of crunch. Each bite of scallop, dipped in the vinegar, gave a whisper of resistance to the tooth, and tasted both bright and creamy.

On to my next “WOW”: a brick of tuna. This perfect, miniature rectangle had been thinly sliced and then reassembled, interspersed with rectangles of kohlrabi cut wafer thin, abutting a generous dollop of black sesame paste, in a tiny lake of soy. Oddly enough, it was the chopsticks I marveled at the most. The tuna was buttery soft, melting in my mouth, the nutty sesame adding body and the kohlrabi crisp for contrast. But the chopsticks, with slender metal tips, surprised and impressed me. They clung to the tuna as it moved from plate to palate, but the sensory experience of them leaving my mouth is hard to describe. They offered no resistance whatsoever leaving my mouth, and their thinness evoked an incredibly delicacy.

A note on the dinnerware. Every dish is served with it’s own conveyance, whether that’s a three tined fork, a small wooden spoon, a hammered copper knife, or nothing at all, that choice is as much a part of the dish as the ingredients inside it. What made me mark this choice in particular was another recent experience with metal tipped chopsticks. Phryne and I, finished dress shopping for this very occasion, wanted a little bite. We chose Din Tai Fung and ordered bok choy with scallion oil, cucumber salad, and fried rice. The options for silverware were metal tipped chopsticks or a large ceramic spoon. I think I lasted through two instances of dropping the slippery greens before I shrugged and resorted to my hands. The chopsticks were large and bulky, designed for a commercial dishwasher, and Xiao long bao, not for oiled vegetables. They were comically bad for the food we ordered, and both of us laughed off our clumsiness.

So when my experience with these chopsticks was so wildly different, so soon after, I noticed, and I marveled, and I made my way through some of the most excellent tuna I’ve ever had with ease and grace and joy.

Moving on to the crab cakes. And oh dear lord were they good crab cakes. Touched with a light creamy dressing, each bite slightly acidic from capers, rich in a buttery sauce, salty with caviar, and garnished under a perfect ring of baby nasturtium leaves. Face over the bowl, I gathered in the aroma of nutty fried fish, the freshest, sweetest crab in California. But the real piece de resistance, for me, was the seafood broth, served alongside in a tiny ornate glass. It. Was. Amazing. I would have taken home a gallon of it just to sip as I read a book or took a walk. I love tea. I love meat. Broths are just meat tea, and so combine two of my favorite foods. Which means I’ve had a decent amount of broth just on its own, and this one blew my fucking mind. Hearty without being heavy, flavorful without being overpowering, dark, dark brown while staying crystal clear… and so came my third “WOW. Wow wow wow” of the night.

This was also one dish where I really noticed the wine pairing. I love pairings. Wine can really enrich the experience of eating, and I am in love with the fact that NA pairings are becoming more common, given that my two closest personal friends are sober. But wine doesn’t always add to the experience, so when it does in a meaningful way, I notice. The dry champagne in this pairing, sipped after each bite/broth circuit, did something marvelous. As it washed over my tongue, it picked up all the butter from the sauce and swept it up and away. From a creamy coating on my tongue, the sweet and savory flavors lifted and suddenly hit me in a different way. Volatiles in the dish rose to my soft palate and, for a single moment, I tasted it all again, but lighter and fresher. I love a pairing that dramatic!

The next dish was lovely: a brilliant orange flower on crisp squid ink tuile, over rich potato pudding and garnished with trout roe. Salty and sweet, creamy and crunchy, it was lovely, but it was as if Queen opened for Chapel Roan at a concert. Yes, it’s that good, but also…

Next: bread! Delicate brioche loaf, tear and share style, set beside a little log of herbed butter. It was spectacular bread. Crisp but melt in your mouth soft on the outside, buttery and pillowy on the inside, and enough to have a few bites unadorned, then sop up sauce from the next few courses. I love bread, and this iteration reminded me of the rice flour rolls from Eleven Madison Park. If I had access to bread like this on a regular basis, I think I’d need to do a lot more hiking!

The next dish was fascinating: deconstructed French onion soup, a nod to Chef Crenn’s Breton heritage. First: perched on an icy glass pillow, savory sorbet, with onion pearls (not pearl onions) arranged in a little necklace around it. They surprised me with their pop and potency, oniony and caramelized, pure without being raw or harsh at all. In the bowl: a cheesy dumpling under hot broth at the center of an onion flower, garnished with a profusion of bright yellow flowers. Instead the usual arrangement: cutting through a thick crust of bread and melty cheese to get to the dark onion broth, you had to go through the broth to get into the cheese. As a nod to Chef Crenn’s ocean muse, the “croutons” came on the side, a coral-shaped tuile, light brown and toasty. My dining companion, a tremendous fan of the late Thierry Rautureau’s French onion soup recipe, enjoyed it quite a lot, almost certainly more than I did. Sometimes food is like that: the dish can be ingenious, excellent, but the memories it evokes, or not, make the difference between “mmmm” and “WOW.” I think that’s part of what Chef Crenn hopes to inspire with her poetry menu, and what she offers each diner in turn.

Atelier Crenn is pescatarian these days, so instead of moving toward meatier dishes at this point in the meal, we stay light, with black cod: poached, served with foams made of broccoli and yogurt, and of course micro greens. Tarragon in this case, I think, and nasturtium. Of course it was cooked perfectly, tender and flaky without being dry in the least bit.

Next we enjoyed a turbot custard, firm on the tongue, decorated with a paper-thin, crisp wheel of squid ink tuile, and a mussel foam. To be honest I don’t remember this one as much. It was good, like everything else, but my fourth and final “WOW” came immediately next and cast a long shadow.

As an entre into dessert, they gave us salad. French cuisine often serves salad last, so it fits, and what a salad it was! Inside a spinach merengue bowl that fit easily in the palm of my hand, they piped olive oil jam and a vinegar cream, then topped it with a dense profusion of the ever-present micro greens. Served with no silverware, you just pick it up, pop it in your mouth, and try to mumble your WOW around it without being rude. Crisp, herbaceous, so slightly sweet, creamy, juicy… I would take a dozen of them home with me and find it nowhere near enough. I remember being surprised at how clearly I could detect the different flavor components. The spinach of the merengue, the herby-ness of the greens, the sweetness of the jam… all in perfect harmony, honed by a dozen repetitions a day for years. (There is a similar recipe in her book, for the curious.)

Next was olive sorbet, shaped and tinted to resemble it’s main ingredient, stuck with an olive twig as a handle. I found it a refreshing, almost savory bite, in fitting with the salad. Served alongside it was yuzu custard in an eggshell, like a soft boiled egg, but sprinkled with tiny puffed quinoa crunches and tiny bits of crystallized ginger. Sweet, but tangy and citrusy.

Their newest dessert, served that night for the first time, came inside a halved wine bottle. Cake, under a pear compote, with champagne foam and champagne pearls. This is an instance where I am sad these dinners are few and far between. As a new dish, it wasn’t fully formed yet. The cake could have had a lot more spices, and the other flavors hadn’t really come through. I think in two or three months, going back and trying it again would be marvelous. They asked for our impressions and feedback, and I got the strong sense that what we said mattered, and would influence it moving forward. Every diner that evening had a hand in shaping the future of the dish, and I would be fascinated to see where that leads them.

Finally, a few chocolate covered items: a wasabi pea coated in white chocolate, a hazelnut robed in milk chocolate, and a dark chocolate espresso bean. I do love a good chocolate covered espresso bean, but I’d never seen a wasabi pea in sweets before. I don’t generally like them much, and I think the pairing here was more interesting than delicious. But that’s part of the joy of a tasting menu! Let the chef expose you to things you wouldn’t normally try, and enjoy what comes.

That crab bouillon and the merengue salad will live next to the tomato from Eleven Madison Park and the Consommé from the French Laundry as some of my favorite dishes in my silly, passionate, and frivolous pursuit of Michelin stars. I have been incredibly fortunate to have these experiences, and I am looking forward to the next, and the next, and hopefully many more.

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Snow

Wet snow, plopping
Soft snow, drifting
Quiet snow, muffling
My corner of the world

We don’t get much snow in Seattle, but I’m not in Seattle as I write this. I’m tucked away, a little stay-cation, in a cabin in the woods, by a lake, and this morning I woke to snow.

Growing up, snow was a fact of winter. Every winter. Multiple times. The plows were hard at work, piling burms down the center of each street from well before dawn til after dark. One winter, the snow from our driveway alone became an entire season’s entertainment. Digging out the center of a densely packed pile, we made a fort, massive in my memory, the inside iced over by hours of patient breathing, close and hot.

Making snow forts was a common pass-time for little me. As a kid I spent hours sneaking snacks, staying up late reading fantasy novels, and playing in the snow. We spent hours sledding the big hill by the school, skiing with bus loads of other kids, and hollowing out every mound and pile that presented itself.

As a teenager, there was a little less playing, but it stayed a feature of every year. Snow days came few and far between in a land with that many plows, but the chance to stay in bed and binge a new series (of books. Netflix still only served a few discs at a time) was always welcome.

And the winter sun. My God do I miss the winter sun.

Seattle is great in many ways, and it being a city of hills, it’s good that it only ices over once or twice a year, and not for long. But I miss the dazzle of crisp cold sunshine off white snow. That a time of year with such little feeling of sun had the power to amplify it helped us all stay a little brighter when days were short.

Seattle doesn’t have it, so I had to range a bit farther a field to find it. I’ve got a long weekend of deliberate rest, a chance to read and write and relax in a way that I can’t in the city. I almost always have something I need to do on any given day. Laundry, a meeting with a patron, networking, advertising, exercising… it’s hard for me to feel truly leisurely.

Out here, away, there are still things to do. But none are time-bound, and that offers an emotional and intellectual rest, unlike the many but broken hours of free time scattered into my usual routine.

And so to wake up when my body felt like it, and find snow gently veiling the window, was a treat.

It’ll be short lived. It’s already melting. I can hear the pitter-patter-thump of soggy clumps hitting the roof every time a tree sneezes. But for now the world is clean. The lake is a crisp expanse in the near distance. The only sounds are the ticking of the clock, which I ignore, and of my keyboard, which I enjoy. Later there will be a fire in the fireplace. S’mores. Perhaps a game or two.

Later

Now? Let it snow.

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And Ode to Lunch

As teeth sink into that first bite, hunger enhances sensation.

Delicate bun, perfectly browned on top, the tenderest crumb, and yet it doesn’t fall apart. How? I can taste the malt powder they use in the bake. Helps it get that perfect tan, and gives it a sweet, nutty flavor.

The patties are firm, almost tough, heavy with beef flavor and fat. They break apart into smaller and smaller pieces, blending, mellowing, but never disappearing.

Bright yellow cheese product, an American single, that slice directly out of childhood. It is the only cheese appropriate for this kind of burger. The only thing that will melt, and yet not split. It glues the paper to the sandwich, and the sandwich to itself.

Lettuce that used to be crisp, still more crisp than the foods it accompanies, comes dressed in the fast food melange: yellow mustard and generic bulk mayo. It likes to slip out the sides, no gods, no masters, ruled only by a quick mouth that sips fallen leaves from that cheesy paper wrapping.

And pickles. Those tangy sweet nuggets that bring it all together. They somehow hold their own against the salt and the fat and the sugar, staying crunchy despite their minute mince. There are spices in the vinegar, permeating the cucumbers, coriander and bay and sweet green summertime.

Creaminess, sweetness, nuttiness, meatiness, crispness, firmness, sourness, all in one overwhelming and yet humdrum familiar bite, the bite that is the Dick’s Deluxe.

Happy summer, my friends.

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So that’s why they’re called Pearls.

I went hiking yesterday. No surprises there. I’ve been trying to go once a week, so the odds of going hiking yesterday are pretty high.

One thing I really love about hikes is that they force me to think. I don’t listen to music or podcasts while I’m on the trail, I can’t play games or read a book, and each hike lasts for hours. I’m stuck inside my head while my body carries me through exquisite scenery, and as I walk, I ruminate.

I chew on old scenes, moments of conflict, problems with friends and family. I chew on irritating comments, people who don’t leash their dogs, and like an oyster with a grain of sand, I wrap each irritating idea in layers and layers of thoughts.

Once, while walking down the sidewalk in front of an old office space, I saw a woman walk away from where her little dog had relieved itself. I made eye contact and asked if she wasn’t going to pick that up. “SHE PEED!” Came the indignant reply.

I can still see in my mind’s eye the woman’s curly blonde hair, her tone, and the coolness of the day under the trees. I remember the little dog’s fur that matched her owner’s hair, and the slender lead with which she tugged it away. I wonder: should I have looked harder before calling her out? Should I have apologized? Should I have saved my own indignance for someone with a bigger dog? A worse infraction? This is only one unhappy social misstep that I chew on as I walk, despite it’s insignificance, and the fact that it happened nine years ago.

So when I found myself, yesterday, turning an idea over and over in my head, looking at it from different angles, refining and imaging the scenario, I was pleasantly surprised to realize it was an idea for a photo shoot.

You see, for the past several years, between pandemic, politics, family drama, and a variety of demanding interpersonal conflicts, much of what I had been ruminating on was an upsetting past. I spent hours and hours and hours of time carefully crafting replies to questions and accusations levied months ago, outlining elegant arguments that will never be heard. As the pearl grows, memories surface, new arguments are drawn up, and another layer goes over the sand, protecting me from it’s scratch.

I can’t tell you what a pleasure it was to realize that I had spent an hour, fully inside my head, thinking about creating. Dwelling on beauty and how to frame it, capture it, share it with people who will see it and want to steal sweet moments with me. Thinking not of what I could have done back then to prevent or ameliorate pain, but of what I will do in the future to create beauty, pleasure, and joy.

It doesn’t hurt that at the peak, as I rested in the sun and took in an expansive view, five bald eagles slipped smoothly out of the sky to circle the clearing. Three adults and two juveniles took turns perching on high, bare branches, riding the thermals to scout for prey, and playing together. They would slowly swoop down, chattering and chirping at each other, and make mock dives at slow speeds just to see which would give way. The breeze kept me from lingering, even the high early afternoon sun wasn’t quite enough buffer, or I’d have stayed longer, reveling in their reveling, taking my own pleasure from watching them play.

I have read that an interaction with a bird can improve your mood for something like 20 minutes afterward. Maybe it was the eagles, maybe it was the sugar rush from my granola bar, maybe it was the relief of going back down after getting overexerted on the way up, I’m sure it didn’t hurt that I had just spent a fabulous night with a delightful new suitor, maybe it was the pleasure of a warm but not hot day with no one else to share the trail, but I had one of those rare moments where I was just happy. Not excited, not simply content, but gently, peacefully happy. It felt good to be where I was, when I was, feeling the way I was.

I’m still marveling at it 24 hours later, in case that wasn’t obvious. Taking still more pleasure in the act of examining the memory. Feeling echos of it reverberate through me. As I look out my window at a stunning sunny day and make plans for more hikes, more activities, more opportunities for simple happiness, I can see where the echos ripple into the future. I can see where new experiences will complement the old, magnifying them.

I feel so incredibly blessed. To have the time and flexibility to take myself away for hours and hours at a time in the middle of the week. To find a trail, lonely and peaceful, and the ability to make use of it. To have the freedom, education, and inspiration to write about it. To have an audience, however small, to share with and to hear how impactful it has been. Blessed to find these pearls of wisdom, of happiness, come from unexpected places. The world isn’t such a bad place sometimes.

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CuttleFish

I haven’t been to the aquarium in ages so I was delighted when one of my beloved patrons suggested a trip as a way to spend some time between the bedroom and the dinner table.

I have mixed feelings about animals in captivity. On the one hand, the Seattle Aquarium works almost exclusively with rehabilitated animals or those born in captivity, particularly birds and mammals. Their salmon hatchery is small but educational, and they only keep their octopuses for a few months before returning them to the wild.

On the other, the Dolphinarium in Puerto Aventuras had a fully grown sea lion in an enclosure smaller than my apartment. And if you didn’t otherwise need to be convinced that keeping charismatic mega fauna is inherently inhumane, you must have missed the nation’s collective  binge watch of Tiger King.*

But an aquarium is populated largely by invertebrates and otherwise relatively low needs creatures. Their internal worlds, as far as we can tell, are small and so it seems so much less cruel to keep them in (well maintained) tanks. In fact, it seems quite the opposite. In a world full of predators, offering simple prey animals a sanctuary, and feeding predators relatively easy meals, is kind of like offering them an early retirement.

While I did enjoy the afternoon (it turned into a gorgeous day and the outdoor sections became a pleasure to linger in), I felt a snag or two, watching the fur seals and the river otters doing laps, bored off their cute furry asses. I know they wouldn’t survive in the wild, being either rescued or captive bred, and that helps me feel better. It also helps that the staff are dedicated not just to the physical health of the animals, but also to offering them enrichment and amusement, just like we do with our pets at home.

But no amount of sea otters feeding and harbor seals hamming for the tourists** kept me from returning to my favorite exhibit.

The Cuttlefish

Cuttle fish are not fish, they are cephalopods, related to Octopuses and squids. And they. Are. Awesome.

Seattle Aquarium has seven (that I found.) There are two near the seahorses, down low where the little uns can see them, and they are the more colorful ones. Their resting mantle colors are vivid blues and purples and yellows, but they change them at the drop of a hat. They can also change the texture of their skin, smoothing out or projecting spikes to blend in and hide or stand out and threaten.

Though the vivid ones were pretty, they’r tucked into a small corner, and the two were in neighboring tanks, unable to interact with one another.

Moving to the next room, we found a tank with five all together, and at adult eye level. This species is called Sepia bandensis and has a far less vibrant mantle. And their inter… cuttle-al? interpersonal interactions were SO COOL to watch. They mostly hang out under their little rocks, blending in so perfectly that at first I only counted three. While we watched, they came out and slowly, glacially, had a little tiff.

I think it was two males and a female, because one stayed low to the ground, her skin color and texture changing so slowly I almost didn’t notice it, while the other two jockeyed for proximity. They flashed from white to so purple they were almost black, spikes jutting from their skin and then smoothing out. The one in the middle showed his angry black top side to his rival as his underside, the side facing the female, was a reassuring white. As they moved around each other, like a sitcom rendered in silent ballet, their colors strobed, flashed, bled from one to the next, telegraphing meaning in an instant.

The subtleties of color and the speed with which they changed it, slow sometimes, when adjusting camouflage, lighting fast when telling someone else to piss off, are myriad. The color changes are controlled by a special type of cell that (called a chromatophore) they have instant and total mastery of starting at birth. Well, hatching. They come from lil eggs. They’re so cute!!

And how cute are they, anyway!?! Their eyes are at the transition point between their fat, oval little bodies and their short tentacles. Depending on which way they’re approaching you, they might look like they have an enormous fat nose and a teeny tiny little body, or they might look like they have a big round belly while their face is long and skinny. When their tentacles are all together, it looks like a long nose and a slightly disapproving face, but when they open their tentacles for whatever reason, they suddenly become a chibi Cthulhu, their small stature preventing any real scare factor from their tentacle ringed maw. Their motile fin is incredibly thin and encircles their bodies, a gossamer fluttering tutu.

And the best part? When they’re near the ocean floor, they take their bottom two tentacles and use them like little leggies! They’re buoyant, so the legs walk in a kind of astronaut slo mo effect as they wander to and fro.

At the end of our leisurely walking tour, after cruising the mammal tanks and swimming with the whales in virtual reality, we had enough time to revisit one exhibit and I chose cuttlefish.

The love triangle seemed to have cooled off for now and all five little smushy water dirigibles hid in their rocks, indistinguishable from their surroundings.

I don’t know which one it was. Maybe it was the female (I didn’t read until later that you can count their tentacles to discern male from female), maybe it was one of the observers to the delicate dance battle. No matter, one of them broke away from her stony hiding place and slowly, slowly approached the glass. She moved to the opposite side of the window, her little tenticlegs cautiously bringing her my direction. Finally, she settled across from me, mere centimeters of glass separating our noses, and we watched each other.

It’s almost impossible to know, and definitely to remember, what her mantle told me. She was in full camouflage, instinctively hiding her soft, tiny body from potential predators. He skin was mottled cream and brown and almost black, protrusions breaking up her silhouette, blending her into the gravel. And yet, she made small, subtle changes, strobing soft stripes that moved from head to toe, or from eye to forehead? It’s hard to tell what the equivalent would be. Her spikes sometimes softened at the tips, just a bit.

For a moment, nothing moved and no one else existed. I looked directly into her W shaped eye and wondered if she was thinking what I was thinking. What is this creature? This mute, bizarrely sized, caged creature. Did she know she was the one behind bars and not me? Was she wondering if I knew that I am me? Was she observing me, wondering about me, just as I was? And did she have the better life? Ostensibly free of stress, free of wondering about higher meanings or your impact on the planet, well fed and housed with stimulating neighbors, was she happier than me? Was I on the wrong side of the glass?

It’s a hard concept to accord any weight, later, over steaks and wine and gratuitous desserts. Cuttlefish don’t have orgasms, as far as we know, and their tongues are not for tasting, or for pleasure. Their lives are short and fraught, ruled by instincts and unable to know the wider world.

But it’s no harm to wonder, in both senses of the word. To wonder at my assumptions and ask questions of the world, and to wonder at this world of light and color and diversity and pain and majesty.

My thanks are often general, addressed to the many, many people who have helped me craft my life as it is, as I like it. But today I have the privilege of thanking one person. The wondrous gent who shared my joy, watching her watching me watching her, who conjured for me a day at the aquarium without knowing just how perfect it would be.

Thank you.

*To be fair, I missed it, too, but Didn’t miss the messaging.

**The river otters and the fur seals may have seemed kind of bored, but the harbor seals sure looked a lot like they were having fun interacting with visitors. They’d bump up against the glass right in front of someone, or boop face first into it at low speed. They played with each other, and took care to rest where people could see them clearly. Also they are one hundred percent adorable, and they’re a pretty sedentary species anyway.

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Forget Not, the Bathroom Gods

My washing machine has been leaking. I don’t remember when I first noticed, but I’ve run laundry with a towel on the floor for a few weeks now. I’m a procrastinator, but the accumulation of other maintenance needs finally got me asking for help. Two days later, to my relief, I have a spanking new washer drum to handle a backlog of laundry.

While I am not exactly excited to do laundry, I am pleased with myself at a series of tasks completed today and the prospect of still greater achievement. I have exercised, I have journaled, I have updated my planner, I am early to work, and it’s a duo no less. I know exactly how I will spend my afternoon and I am certain that by the end of the day, my sense of self satisfaction and accomplishment will only have grown.

Imagine my surprise when, freshly showered, anointing myself for my date, relaxed and a bit dreamy, I step into a puddle on my floor.

I’m not supposed to have puddles on my floor anymore. I am annoyed. I’ll have to call maintenance this afternoon. I toss a towel in front of the washer. The towel is immediately soaked. I am no longer annoyed. I am now nervous.

I take one, two, three breaths, watching the floor, realizing that whatever this is, this isn’t my usual leak. The water is spreading rapidly. In several directions.

As I move into action, pulling every towel I have ever hoarded out of cupboard and closet, I think. How do I stop the water? Should I call maintenance now? No way maintenance can get anything done in a half hour. Should I cancel my appointment? When is Phryne supposed to get here? Do I have enough towels? Shit, it’s gone under the wall. If I wring them out in the tub, I think I can reuse them. Should I put clothes on? Oh dear lord you idiot, you can just turn off the damn washer. No, you’re not an idiot, you’re just panicking. Gross! What the hell is coming out from behind my washing machine? Now I have to wash the tub. I hope that’s Phryne knocking on my door. Shit! Shit! Shit! How does maintenance know my washer’s overflowing!!! Thank fuck. They’re here for the other thing.

HAHAyesitsabadtimepleasecomebacklaterthankyou.

Oh dear god. I’m still naked.

Only two minutes after the intended start time, al(most al)l the evidence of my minor maintenance mishap was gone or hidden, I was dressed and made up, and Phryne and I had donned complementary robes. The sole remnant of the emergency was my still racing heart. Our dear gentleman friend was none the wiser.

I was so proud of myself. I had taken control of a situation and solved it, more or less. We had gone on to have an amazing time: a king sized bed full of the three of us and a delightful afternoon. My self assuredness from earlier in the day returned and I patted myself on the back on my way home.

Unfortunately, the bathroom gods, divine creatures of cleanliness, patrons to all who wish for hot and cold running water, saw me.

You see, they have been good to me over the years and, until now, I haven’t really given them their due. I took too much of my success on my own shoulders and failed to offer them my thanks and worship. The lesson of the washer hadn’t sunk in.

So they spit my shower head at me.

The next day, less than 24 hours after the washer lesson, I decided to take a long, hot soak at home. I washed out my tub, added lavender epsom salts to a deep bath, and settled in with a book. I rubbed hair treatments and moisturizers in and let them do their work. I luxuriated in wet heat and my success from the day prior. After the water lost it’s warmth, I turned on the shower to rinse and wash it all off.

My punishment began with a pressurized jet bouncing off the wall directly into my face. Then the hose connecting the handheld shower head to the wall just… fell out. I was left standing in shock with a dribbling shower head in my hand and a sloppy spray facing exactly the wrong way. Dumfounded. All I could think was “are you fucking kidding me?”

This lesson’s silver lining came in the form of a gooey, garlicky, crispy quesadilla from the taco truck outside Home Depot. Instead of curling up with fresh clean hair and the rest of my book, I had to haul my soggy, rapidly chilling butt up Aurora for a replacement shower head to finish my wash. There was a very ling line. It was windy and cold. For that hunk of tortilla wrapped steak and cheese, dunked in fresh guac, it was absolutely worth it.

I am now officially humbled. I will never take a trustworthy washing machine for granted again. I will never gripe about how long the hot water takes to get hot, or begrudge the daily cleaning required to honor their temple. I will thank the bathroom gods for their carne asada gift and hope it’s enough.

Take heed from my story. Do not neglect the bathroom gods during your daily ablutions. Don’t forget to offer them regular sacrifices of drain-o, or the prayer of the drain snake. Otherwise you, too, may be humbled.

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HUMP!

Every year, Seattle hosts HUMP Fest. It’s a short film festival started by Dan Savage in which every film is pornographic. I’ve only been twice now, and despite the discomfort inherent in watching sexually explicit (and often wildly kinky) material in a theater full of strangers, it was a blast both times.

Each viewer gets to vote at the end for Best Sex, Best Kink, Best Humor, and Best in Show. Since it debuted in 2005, it has expanded to cover multiple weekends and it now airs in multiple cities including San Francisco and Portland.

Each film is short, so short that it can be difficult to know how you feel about one until it’s already over.

Crimson Cruising, film number one, was a red tinted homage to gay cruising in a sexy art house lesbian flick.

Body Language made use of body paint to make two people look like one heart, beating together as they fucked. In English and Spanish with untranslated titles, filmmakers made a convincing argument that verbal language plays second fiddle when it comes to coming together.

The Boy With the Tighty Whiteys was a-fucking-dorable. Our young protagonist shares his love for the bum-hugging undies and turns what could have been traumatizing memories of middle school bullying into a niche, and a surprisingly hot, kink. My only disappointment was that we didn’t actually get to see our hero cum, but I’m pretty sure he has an only fans…

Anathema was ridiculous, absurd, and hilarious. Two space cadets wind up on an alien planet a la Captain Kirk and what few garments they had to begin with don’t survive landing. A bubble gun adds the perfect fun foolish gimmick to a charming queer five-some.

Feast of Fantasy confused me: I both wanted to attend the surreal sex and food party, and was terrified by it. Someone popped an olive out of her pussy to garnish a martini. Someone else mashed cake all up in their bits. A plague doctor fucked an I don’t know what and there was a LOT of eating food off of people. I have politely nibbled strawberries and cream from a breast or two in my day, but the sheer magnitude of the licking overwhelmed me.

Shadow Play took a minute to understand. Shadow puppets kissing, then fucking in a variety of poses. Pretty straightforward as to the action, but what’s the backdrop? Is that a leg? Someone’s cock? Oh dear god it’s a scrotum pulled taught! I can’t imagine the patience required to hold yourself stretched like that so someone can make smooching noises and film silly shadow puppets.

No Translation brings Spanish and English speakers together again, but this time their bodies are translated as well. An afternoon at home together invites the audience to enjoy the pleasure his pussy and her cock bring each other. A final shot of the two flipping through his sketch book drew an “awwwwww” from the room at what was arguably the most intimate moment of the film.

Screen/Play gave us all the hits as far as seventies lesbian porn tropes go. Roommates watching TV can’t help but imagine themselves soaping up cars (but mostly each other’s tits), slapping flour in a mixing bowl (but mostly on each other’s bums), and just generally projecting themselves into the screen. Off screen, they realize what’s up and things on the sofa get steamy, too. Cute and hot. What more could you want!?!

The Cannoli brothers introduced me to the term docking, in the style of a (deliberately) badly shopped nineties late night infomercial. If you’ve never heard of docking, it’s…. Well, don’t worry about it. Just imagine a cannoli made by wrapping the dough around a couple cute lil cocks. They do not look delicious, but they do look fun to make.

Grace spent a lot of time off my screen. A few moments in I realized that this was the film to miss if you had to use the ladies’. I’m not into cutting, blood, or piercing, but starlet Grace very much is and for those who love it, it’s got it all. What I did see before excusing myself was a very happy young lady. If all I had seen was her face, I could not have guessed what was happening to the rest of her.

Bloom Room… I don’t… I know this is an indy film festival, but this was too indy even for me. It wasn’t even pornographic! Just weird.

Ronald McDonald for Some McDicken just skeezed me out. The other food related films made me slightly uncomfortable, but still offered something visually compelling. This couldn’t be anything but satire, and not very good satire at that.

State of Mind was, for me, one of the most difficult to watch. I admire the dynamic between a loving dominant and a loyal submissive, but I struggle to watch black people assume roles and postures of fear or subservience with any comfort. Had the dominant not also have been black, I think it would have been impossible. The cinematography was beautiful, and I believe that, because of what HUMP is, the relationship on display must be loving. But without knowing the two men personally, it was hard to get comfortable with it.

For Your Health doubled down on the discomfort, except this dominatrix and her submissive added a heavy dose of medical fetish play. Again, well shot and well edited, the film did exactly what it was going for. Which was not my thing at all.

It’s Me, Mr. Yamface was hilarious. Two dolls go to have sex but can’t find their genitals! At a loss, they are excited when Mr. Yamface bust through the wall kool-aid man style and offers them a plethora of choices. This stop motion film plays a silly game full of vulvas, tits, and dicks of all shapes, sizes, and colors. Truth be told, given the chance for some spare stick-on parts, I think I would be just as excessive as Barbie and Ken.

Cum As You Are tried to make an angry feminist point. Lots of smashing things and yelling. Vice overs about power and witches. I’m not a particularly angry person so I didn’t see the appeal. But whoever made their props did a great job. Real glass beakers won’t break against soft flesh. Their sugar ones were pretty darn convincing.

Get Ready With Betty starred our hostess, Drag Performer Betty Wetter, as she did a simple, brief makeup routine. Drag makeup is not only precise, it’s outrageous. But I never knew they could get such results using people’s cocks for brushes! Charming and exactly a Drag Queen’s amount of farcical, her tutorial made the whole theater laugh.

Luscious was exactly that: Sumptuous fabrics, long slow kisses, elegant lingerie, an envy inspiring peignoir, and two overflowing bodies gently roiling in an 1800’s royal bed made for a sensational short film celebrating big beautiful bodies.

Demon Seed absolutely had to have been satire. It had all of the worst things about porn guys :TM:. Uninspired dialogue, stiff acting, a complete lack of foreplay of any kind, and the money shot didn’t even make sense. If you’re trying to put a demon baby in the guy, why did the demon pull out!? I didn’t get the feeling that any of that was done on purpose, and I have no idea how it made it into a festival so richly populated with quality art house style works.

Color Me Wild was by far the hottest from a strictly sex perspective. What happens when you and your lover dip your hands in UV paint and fuck under a blacklight? This. And when you and your lover are stunners with a friend willing to hold the camera for you? This. Hands down my all over favorite.

A Deep Understanding gave it’s viewers a window into probably one of the most obscure kinks of the night. I did not know until now that watching attractive women “sink into quicksand” is a fetish. I get it, the ostensible helplessness, the viewer’s fantasy that only they can rescue the young lady, and being consumed I am all familiar with. Plus, they writhe and moan and whimper, all of which are sexy visual and auditory cues. But the best part was finding out that the performers who do the sinking love it, too. Not because they find it sexy, but because they find it hilarious.

Menage a Fromage tickled my nerdy bone. Hard. Imagine you’re an amateur cheese maker and want to make a unique cheese. Now imagine you have five or six adventuresome eaters who like to fuck. Add a dude in a hazmat suit wielding q tips and you’ve got it. The yeast sampled from the bodies, lips, bootys, even feet of the orgiastic revelers went into a gallon of whole milk, fermented overnight, and became a fresh, soft cheese. Yes, they ate it. And no, I can’t promise you I would’t at least try it.

Two things I noticed this year: there was, in my opinion, an over abundance of slo-mo shots. I get it, it’s a cheap and easy way to make something look dramatic and give yourself extra seconds of the best shots. I myself have used it when editing my own content. But it’s like salt. Too much ruins the dish. Between that and the wildly popular and headache inducing shaky camera trend, I felt like things were a little more amateur-art-housey than I wanted. But hey, I’m not behind the camera, and for 25 bucks it was totally worth it.

The second thing I noticed was a complete lack of cis/het/white couples. No one likes being excluded from spaces and so I notice in myself a mild sense of feeling left out. I don’t like that feeling. But I am SO glad it was there this time. I live in Seattle, I consider myself pretty socially progressive, the festival is run by a gay journalist. This is nothing that isn’t welcome or expected. Ditto with my discomfort: humans are inherently tribal. Discomfort at exclusion is a survival mechanism we have not yet learned to overcome. But I am doing my best to see it, acknowledge it, and let it go.

As with the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, I am trying to remember to attend these city specific sexy events more often. I’ve been to two HUMPs and one SEAF now, in my twelve years as a Seattle Resident. And I’ve been to zero Fremont Summer Solstice Parades. It’s fun to see what happens when creativity and sex meet in the hearts and minds of a variety of folks. It’s fun to talk with friends about how the products of those creatives make you feel and think. And it’s fun to absorb these events and bring them into the privacy of my bed where I can share them with others who aren’t quite ready to enter the arena of public sexuality.

I look forward to hearing from those of you who have been to HUMPs now and in the past, who can’t see themselves there, or who just haven’t been yet.

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Awash

Meditation has always interested me. There is a reasonable body of evidence that suggests it helps even one’s moods, improve one’s sense of well being, encourages the brain to rest and repair, and if done long enough, can even open the door to influencing one’s physical body.

Few of the data are strong or conclusive, and I have a private hunch that the placebo effect, long known to the scientific community and more recently, employed deliberately, plays a large part in the positive effects. Our minds are so incredibly variable, and individual practice is difficult to judge; it is difficult to imagine we can, with the tools currently available, prove that it helps.

However, I have had a lot of time on my hands the past month and after finishing The Sacred Enneagram by Christopher Heuertz I supposed there was no time like the present. He finishes his exploration of the nine personality types with guides for a few different prayers popular with catholic monks of various persuasions. These prayers are essentially mindfulness and gratitude meditations performed through a Christian lens, e easily translated into a secular practice. So, for the past six days, I have taken at least twenty minutes each day to let my mind wander and try to gently corral it into something resembling peacefulness.

My mind is not naturally a peaceful mind. One of the reasons I read so much is that I read quickly. Particularly stories that are pure narrative and don’t require much introspection or pause. Part of this is habit, but a big part of it is that my undisciplined mind sucks in information, processes it, and immediately spits it back out again. Speaking and writing both help me slow down and think, but I still think fast enough that sometimes I forget what I’m saying, or what I was going to say, because inside I’ve already moved on.

On the first day, I used a mental image of myself filling with light. It started in my lungs, filled my body down to my pelvic floor, then two columns moved towards my feet. Often I got distracted halfway. Never did the light make it all the way down to the floor. But for twenty minutes, I redirected my wandering thoughts back into the light. When I finished and opened my eyes, I almost felt like I’d gotten stoned or a little drunk. My head felt light and stuffy and I was a little dizzy, and full of a kind of mellow happiness.

It’s only been a week but I am hopeful and energized by the experiences I’ve had so far. One day in particular was almost overwhelmingly beautiful.

I spent last weekend in Portland, celebrating the gradual return of the sun with friends. One of the kids helped me with my yoga practice for the day (meaning she pestered me about it all morning until I did it, then lost interest after 20 minutes) and at the end, there is a brief cool down timer, only three short minutes. I drew breath and light into myself and let it back out again, and for a moment felt like I had zoomed out, like I was watching from above as a light full of love, washed out from me and filled the back yard. Then it overflowed the fence and went into the house, full of people I love, and began washing out into the rest of the world.

I didn’t see it keep going, I was only there for a moment, but when I came back to myself and felt this overwhelming feeling of love.

According to the nine personality types, I and people like me offer acts of service as a natural outpouring of the universal love we create, hold, and share. When we are dysfunctional, the acts of service are not done by choice but by compulsion, are often poorly considered, and can occur so frequently they leave no room for us to love ourselves. The practice I am beginning is to make room for me, to get used to receiving love, and to become more deliberate in my actions so they serve me and my community.

So to feel this powerful surge of love coming from within, coming from my pelvic floor through my heart and so abundant that it seemed it would never run out, made me cry from happiness.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever had to explain to a house full of people that you need a minute to feel the love of the universe flowing through you before you can get your head together enough to start roasting a chicken, but if you do: be prepared for some bewildered and indulgent looks. I am fortunate that my friends are tolerant of experiences outside their own. They didn’t look at me funny or shame me or try to comfort me because I was crying, they just kind of smiled and asked me to let them know when I was done with my universal happy juice and could help.

I’ve tried to recapture that moment a few times since and haven’t managed it yet. Perhaps the presence of people is necessary to spark the connection between a practice and a feeling overwhelming enough to bring on happy tears. Perhaps in time it will come back. Perhaps, even, it will become something I can draw on when I’m angry at an awful driver or feeling fear at the veiled future. Whatever comes, I am pleased already to have felt some of these feelings, and I am looking forward to feeling them again and gaining some facility with them.

I have always been a loving and grateful person. With time, I have also become wiser and more certain of myself. I hope that my future holds a place where I have both, and can share it with you.

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Duo Rev: Tiny Phryne

LOCATION: My Place in Wallingford

DATE: November 2020

NAME: Tiny Phryne (Fry-nee)

INCALL/OUTCALL: My incall

AGENCY OR INDY: Indy, low volume

ACCURATE PICTURE: Totally. Pics are babed up while she’s more chill in person but definitely her.

AGE: Old enough to have a masters degree, young enough to still love meeting new people.

PERSONALITY: Bubbly AF, and genuine.

BODY TYPE: Teeny Tiny. Fit, but soft.

WEIGHT: I couldn’t even begin to guess. Normal for some one who is 4’8”

HEIGHT: Four. Foot. Eight. SOCUTE!!

BUST: Titularly tiny, pierced and perky.

WAIST: Cute

HIPS: Present

HAIR: Dark, veeeeeery long. Looks even longer because, y’know… she’s short.

EYES: Dark and sparkling. She’s an open book and I love it.

FEET: Present

SKIN TONE: Soft and similar to my own

TRIMMING: “She’s so fluffy! She basically enters the room before I do!”

TATTOOS: None that I noticed

SCARS: None that I noticed

PIERCINGS: Ears, multiple times. Nips.

MOLES: I didn’t notice any

BIRTHMARKS: Nothing

CLOTHES: Casual over lingerie. I lent her a sexy robe for fun.

GLASSES: Yes. Perfect nerd chic.

MOANER OR A SCREAMER: Moans and trembles. LOTS of moans and trembles.

ENERGY LEVEL DURING THE SESSION: So high! Just having a blast and loving every minute of it!

MULTI SHOTS DURING THE HOUR: If you could manage it, she’d be down. We were hard pressed to fit one per person in our two hours.

ACCEPTS FRENCH: Yes. Oh yes.

SMOKES: Not that I’m aware of.

DRINKS: Probably would but we had some sparkling water instead.

KISSES: Gentle, passionate, fun.

FRENCH: Rumor of her skill are NOT exaggerated. Mmmmmm.

GREEK: Good question. I doubt it but we didn’t try.

RUSSIAN: Hahahhaahahahahah! I mean, you could try. Downside of ridiculously perky boobs is they don’t smush together very well.

DO’s or DON’T’s: Plan ahead and be polite. Relax, enjoy yourself.

WEB-SITE: tinyphryne.com

SCREENING PROCESS: References or real world screening. She’s on extremely low volume at the moment because 2020 took all our fun away.

PHONE: She will provide at her discretion.

RECOMMEND: She’s SO cute!! And SO fun!! Definitely would recommend and adore a rematch.

COMMENTS: Phryne and I met some time ago at various mixers and I always thought she would be fun. I had also heard from some polite but excited gentleman callers that she has not disappointed so I was looking forward to meeting at a more intimate level. 

She arrived early so we could talk logistics. Instead we showed each other cute animal pictures for 25 minutes. We could have gone on longer but time is time and it passes. Before we knew it, there were three of us robed up, group hugging and getting excited. A three way kiss with such a short person is better accomplished using height equalizing tools so we spent some time seated on my couch, talking and teasing, before I escorted my guests to the bed.

The thing about a threesome with experienced sex havers who dig each other is it feels seamless. Shifting positions, trading places, three way blowjobs, cowgirl plus face sitting, oral round robin, my turn, her turn, his turn (eventually)… it just works. They say in a threesome there’s the giver, the taker, and the sandwich maker. Our sandwich makers were so busy watching the extreme hotness happening in my bed that they forgot to make sandwiches!

Two hours flew by. It was a pleasure to see all three of us slip in and out of gasps and giggles by turn. Phryne is not only well educated, she’s clever and cute and enthusiastic. As a friend of mine put it so well: “She’s got her vagina in the right place.”

Phryne is on my list of ‘please give me an excuse to revisit’ and should be on yours, too. Thank you to the darling gent who was willing to submit to our health needs in order to get us together. She’s keeping a low profile for now but I imagine that, come widespread rollout of vaccines and her accompanying broader availability, y’all may want to get in line to spend some time with this mini-babe.

Quote from our gentleman friend:

“Yesterday is a lot to process. A moment struck me—when you called attention and let us all know what a good job we did. It was either right before or right after we were done. I appreciate that you called that out, because we did. It was horizontal ballet.
Amie, that was the greatest sex I have ever had.”

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To The Hilt

The sides of my wrist were pinked with hyperemia, more blood flow than usual, the way my neck blushes when I’m excited or your ears burn when you’re nervous. My forearm, finally freed, was at the end of its limits and relaxed only very slowly. I’ve always wanted to have a cock so I could feel, from inside, a woman contracting with orgasm, clenching my cock as she shuddered and spasmed. I may not have a nice, thick cock, but I do have very small hands.

I went slow at first, like I need with an unusually thick cock. Let the muscles ringing her pussy relax and give her a chance to slip onto my hand instead of just pushing into her. Just a little stretch and once the thickest part of whatever is doing the fucking is past the choke point, the little pain goes away and all there is is pleasure.

She was worried that it would be too much, after a surgery and long recovery, and after two already fuck-full hours, but he kept watching over my shoulder with delight and encouraging her, reminding her that we were there for her pleasure and I could speak up for myself if I was overwhelmed and that, in the past, when they had gently overcome her resistance, she had been happy they had.

Three fingers, a little less than his cock, slipped in easily. Four wasn’t far behind and in no time at all my relaxed hand, all four fingers and my thumb, gentle and constant, pressed its way in. As I felt my fingertips reach the back of her, I curled them as gently as I could to form a full fist. A loose fist at first, feeling her dimensions and watching her face for cues of pain or pleasure. She gave me excellent directions and encouragement, asking for more, bigger, thicker, stronger.

Given what I know about my own equipment, I wondered if perhaps what she was asking for was more stretch, right down at the base. I tightened my grip to make my fist as wide as I could, turned it sideways to maximize pressure, and pulled back until I felt strong resistance.

If you’ve never felt a woman with a strong pelvic floor contract in orgasm around your wrist, you’ve missed out on a truly incredible experience. I hope feeling it around your cock is as good. I felt like some insane sex goddess, watching and feeling and hearing her come this incredible, fierce, powerful orgasm, back arched and muscles rigid, moans and yells and eventually deep, rich, velvety screams. Her husband watched, absolutely over the moon, as his wife, his woman, got fisted by this slight, busty pro. From the corner of my eye I could see his gaze flickering between my face, her face, and her pussy, dripping wet onto the pillows. The sounds and the smell of her fresh sweat, the sight of her writhing and shuddering, my wicked happy grin, our three naked forms working to give her every sensation she asked for.

With the aftershocks of her orgasm heating us all, I slowly withdrew and thought we were done. He was so excited at the sight of my tiny wet hand slipping out of his woman’s glowing cunt that he asked me to do it again. She was done, she said, but she thought she could handle a few more ins and outs before she would need a cool shower and another glass of champagne. Well, this is what happens when two people who know each other inside and out make suggestions. Neither she nor I knew that she had one, final, loud, body wracking, firestorm of an orgasm left in her.

As I slipped in the second time, I thought it was simply to please her husband. To our surprise but not his, she gasped and suddenly changed her mind about being done. This time, she was warmed up and demanding more. I remembered something he mentioned offhand about her G Spot so I turned my wrist and curled my entire hand up in a ‘come hither’ motion. The flat of my four knuckles put full, broad, strong pressure directly into it.

It’s things like this that make me a little jealous. With 15 years on me and twenty with the same encouraging and open minded partner, she comes harder, faster, and stronger than I do. I wasn’t keeping track but I know I was responsible for at least four orgasms (six if you count his) and got an assist in at least two more. Based on volume and sheer heat, they felt powerful, possibly even overwhelming.

With my fist balled as wide and hard as I could get it, fucking her as fast and as hard as I could, watching and hearing her (and him) enjoying every wet sloppy minute of it, I felt like Aphrodite, Loki, Hera, and Athena all at once. (yes, I know I’m mixing mythologies. You would, too.)

Today I am reminded of last night with every step. Our interlude with the strap on gave me a tender pubic bone and my right forearm and my back are reminding me of just how little I cared about them last night. His length, strength, and vigor left me exhausted inside and her insatiable pussy tuckered out the rest of me. Nothing hurts, darlings. I know you’re reading this and you’ll worry about me. I pay other people money to make me do far less fun exercise and feeling sore the next day is part of the satisfaction. Part of the pleasure. Part of the experience.

Young lady. Nice boy. You two are a gem as a unit and as someone who only knew you for a few hours, I’m pleased on your behalf for your openness, your adventurousness, your confidence, and your inspiration. Would that all wives welcome the chance to come for hours on end. Would that all husbands listened to what their wives wanted and helped nudge them towards it. I’ll see you two again, I’m sure of it. Just give me a few days for my arms to recover 😉