Pi Day Pie

I can’t believe it’s Pi Day again already! In honor of this, my favorite geek holiday, I’m reposting my Pi Day Pie blog that I ran last year.

Happy Pi Day.

Sunday Night:

#3 just came running in to remind me that we need a pie for tomorrow. A few weeks ago she gave me a sheet from her math class. It was about Pi Day (March 14) celebrations, and they were asking for, among other things, some pies.

Last year I saw a picture of the most badass Pi Day pie ever made. I just searched Google images and can’t find it, which can only mean that I must know the person who made it and saw the picture on Facebook. It was homemade, crust and all, with the symbol Pi cut out of pie crust and placed on top in the center, and then the numbers cut out of pie crust, placed all around the edges of the pie. This was the first I’d ever heard of celebrating Pi Day. I was an instant believer.

I am a geek at heart and that pie thrilled me. This memory is what welled up in me when #3 handed me her math sheet, and it was what took over and compelled me to yes, volunteer a pie. I was going to make her a homemade pie, crust and all, and decorate it with as many decimal places of Pi that I could fit around the circumference.

Then I went to Berlin and we had some crises at home and I forgot all about it until she just now came to me, and I am jetlagged and cranky and the last thing I want to do is leave the house and make a goddamn pie happen.

This is what happens when I try to be a better parent.

But.

I said I would.

I am now off to the store to see how I can remedy this with a half-assed solution without totally crushing my geek spirit, or completely letting down #3 and her math class.

I asked CC for input. (Foodies, you can stop reading here). He suggested frozen pie crusts and canned filling. Hot damn!

*********

Back from the store. I assemble the pie parts and then proceed to use an additional pie crust and cut out numbers freestyle with a blade. I am way too into this. The kids keep coming by and looking, and they comment on how cool it is and how unlike me it is. It takes a long time. I do not read #5 and #4 stories tonight like I usually do on Sundays. I do not even tuck them into bed. I am Baking a Pie. Leave me alone.

I signed up to give a pie to try and be a better parent. I end up being a worse parent with a nifty pie.

Nifty, except it had an accident in the baking process. The color is uneven. And it ripped, and now it looks like it’s bleeding.

Doesn’t it rock?

I had hoped that some superior mom would be envious of my pie and erroneously attribute me mad parenting skills. That was before my Pi pie turned into sweet vampire protection.

Punctuation Saves Lives

I remembered this image when I was searching for a title to start writing today’s post. I was going to call it:

Jesus Christ. What Happened?

and then I realized I could also call it:

Jesus Christ (what happened).

And then I giggled uncontrollably because I’m doing production on a show that has Jesus in it and it’s the reason I’ve been posting so sparsely and sporadically since December. I would like to say that everyone here at work in the theater turned around and asked me what I was laughing at but the truth is they’re all so used to me being on auto-giggle by now that no one paid any attention and even if they had, they wouldn’t laugh anyway.

We’re at that point.

One of my favorite places in New York is the Westerly Market. It’s a small natural foods grocery store that I love mostly because it has tasty snacks and my favorite chocolate. They have healthy things too, including a juice bar.

We had a strangely-timed lunch break today because we’re shooting B-roll (video to be used for publicity) so I went to Westerly and hit the juice bar. I got a shot of wheatgrass while I was waiting for my drink.

I dig wheatgrass. Sue me. And yes it does, in fact, taste like grass. I’m pretty sure when I was an infant I spent a significant portion of my crawling months eating grass. It’s just that good to me.

The drink I got today is called a Maca Firecracker. It’s coconut, cinnamon, agave, cayenne, and maca. It’s divine. Heavy on the cayenne, easy on the agave, as per my request.

It was perfect.

I paid at the juice bar ($12.50. No, I’m not making that up) and then grabbed my tasty snacks and went to the front counter to pay for them. You have to do that separately because making drinks that involve pressing wheatgrass and hacking open coconuts is quite time-consuming, and they can’t mess around with ringing up your tasty snacks back there at the juice bar.

At the front counter, I pay for my tasty snacks and then watch, like it’s in slow motion: My sleeve catching my Maca Firecracker and knocking it off the counter. The cup flipping upside down. Me screaming “nooooo!” in a very Wookieish voice. Half of my nectar of the gods rushing out of the broken lid.

Here’s the thing about a Maca Firecracker. When it’s spilled on the floor, it looks like vomit. I’ve never had so much personal space anywhere in New York City. I’m considering carrying around rubber vomit with me just to get everyone out of my hula hoop.

Oh, so back to the Jesus Christ (what happened) thing. I’m in production, blah blah blah. The hours are long, yadda yadda yadda. Also, there a lot of screens. It looks like this:

By the end of the first week of tech rehearsals I had the worst case of screen-related eye strain I’ve ever had (even worse than the case I got when I stayed up all night and wrote this post over the summer). When we finally reached the day off I had to lay around with my eyes shut. I didn’t even make it to yoga.

I had to read analogue books for a whole week (I read Sara Zarr’s How To Save A Life and Ree Drummond (aka The Pioneer Woman)’s Black Heels To Tractor Wheels)

Even now, ten days later, I can feel my retinas singeing. It’s still bad enough that I’m not even going to attempt to fix the alignment of these pictures.

Speaking of wheatgrass (and we were, earlier, I swear), there’s a guy I work with who is friends with a guy who started a wheatgrass company out of his apartment back in the day . The mice kept getting into and eating the wheatgrass. And the more they got into it, the harder they were to exterminate.

I feel like the wheatgrass people could make a motto out of that somehow.

I guess none of that really had anything to do with punctuation.

This sandwich will change your life.

#5 was complaining of a tummy ache this afternoon. He also had a boo-boo, but he wasn’t complaining about that, because he had this:

A bacon bandaid, sent to him by loyal reader and fan of #5, my friend Genny. As we all know, bacon makes everything better. It’s a logical choice for a bandaid. We have found the bacon bandaids to be more effective on boo-boos than kisses.

CC set him on the couch and brought him a glass of water and went back to making lunch.

That? Oh, that’s fifteen pounds of bacon. Minus lunch already in progress.

(If you’re lucky enough to live near an Original Pancake House, you may be interested to know that you can now buy their bacon by the case for four dollars per pound. Around here, that’s way cheap for bacon, and it’s damn tasty.)

#5: (yells from the couch) I smell bacon!

CC: You are correct. Would you like a piece?

#5: BACON!!!!

CC: What about your tummy ache?

#5: BACON!!!! BACON!!!!

CC: Have you eaten anything today?

#5: Um, no.

CC: Anything at all?

#5: No.

CC: Remember yesterday when I told you that you were going to starve to death playing video games because you wouldn’t stop to eat anything?

#5: Yes.

CC: That’s what’s happening right now.

#5: Oh.

CC: That’s why you have a tummy ache.

#5: Oh. (waits quietly for a minute) So. . . can I have some bacon?

CC’s plan was to make everyone BLT’s for lunch:

Isn’t it lovely? I saw a blurb on TV once about food photographers and all the creepy things they have to do to their food to make it photogenic. I think of that every time I see pretty food in advertising. It makes me want to take a shower. This here is undoctored bacon, folks.

CC asked #5 if he wanted a BLT.

#5: I don’t really like lettuce. I also don’t like tomatoes.

Of course you don’t.

I loves me a good BLT. But something else was speaking to my soul today:

Peanut Butter & Bacon. I make it a point to try to turn everyone that I meet on to the PB&B (unless they have a peanut allergy or don’t eat pork, in which case? More for me). Most people initially put up a lot of resistance. Those people are merely unenlightened, and as a PB&B disciple, it’s up to me to show them the path to true happiness and peace of mind.

CC: What about peanut butter and bacon?

#5: I don’t like peanut butter.

Me: Commie!

#5: (sticks tongue out at me)

CC: Stop that. Both of you. Here, eat your sandwich.