It’s dangerous knowing how to make great homemade bread. At first, it doesn’t seem like it. You fail a few times and chew stoically on your fifty pound loaf that should have come out light and fluffy because damn it, you MADE this and you’re gonna EAT it and pretend to ENJOY it because it took you HOURS to make it. You think back on everything everyone has told you about bread, with their sneering Bread Overlord smug...

Mid July in Nova Scotia. My grandmother’s century and a bit more home, painted white wooden siding freshly cleaned by rain from the day before. It might reach 85 at it’s hottest in summer there. Years later while I am old and cantankerous, living in Florida I’ll mock myself for thinking it was hot. For now, for us in that moment and time it was pretty warm. My grandmother’s kitchen was the focal point for her entire...

I’m usually not a fan of pet stores. They are dangerously heart-breaking places for me.  I have to purposefully avoid the pet stores in places like malls that usually sell puppies or kittens not from shelters.  Unless the cages they are in take up most of the store, they’re too cramped, too small, to horrific for me to deal with. Standing there and watching little pups and kittens laying with dull eyes in a space just...

Today marks the first year of being officially married to Bariguy, my other half here at 2phatgeeks.  We’ve been together for years, so long that everyone who knew us simply assumed we were already married. So it was a shock that early last year I revealed that not only were we not married; but that I had to return to Canada to get my paperwork in order for us to get married. Luckily, everything turned out alright. And here we are,...

I write a lot about my mother. Probably not a whole crazy-much-bunch that some might, but I write a lot more about her than I do my father and some (HI DAD!) might think it’s a bit unfair. Do I hate my father? Do I have some sort of horrible scarring trauma about him and the varying reincarnations of his mustache and beard that send me into shrieking nightmares every night? No, not exactly. You see, when I was a little girl, I was a...

It’s been a busy year here at the Pence household. Like most people, I’m busy celebrating with the better half and quite definitely “nicely relaxed.” this year, I am “nicely relaxed” (ie obliterated… so please excuse the typos) on a steady stream of Mooing Irish Pepsis (Bailey’s, coke and milk) and rum and cokes, but made with this awesome Black Cherry rum. It’s very rare that me and the...