Creative Ventures
- Thread starter Alice-Bee
- Start date
Bourbon is another option so I did both. 
Calliegirl
Forum Legend
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2012
- Reaction score
- 5,816
- Lifestyle
- Vegan
Last year I started some homemade vanilla extract...one with vodka and one with bourbon. I still have it so it is nice and strong now!
View attachment 1275
I made some using vodka, it's almost a year old now. I've used most of it up already though; I love to bake.
How does the taste of the vodka vanilla compare to the bourbon vanilla?
Blobbenstein
.......
kazyeeqen
Superb Owl
Hmmm...he's less scary looking than I thought he'd be.
He probably feels terrible for making people feel bad all the time.
mary1
Forum Legend
ledboots
Peace
Renee1
Rawry
I've (sort of) completed the opening monologue to the play I'm attempting to write. I'm pretty scared of sharing it, but it's a good exercise to do so, so I'll paste it in spoilers. Probably some nsfw content, as when is real life really ever sfw...
I Don’t Know How to Ride a Bike; I Was Raised a Jehovah’s Witness:
How I Moved to Montreal and Learned to Feel
The word profound has been used so often in my life in the past nine months that I’m afraid it’s starting to lose its meaning, which in and of itself seems to be a rather profound statement. I used to consider myself a reasonable person, as I’d always been able to maintain control over myself. In fact, I realize it was something I erroneously thought made me superior. Now I know that’s not even remotely true. What I considered my ability to keep a cool head was merely the result of me repressing every emotion and desire I felt. This is the story of how I shook my own perception of myself, became unreasonable and learned how to feel my feelings.
Catalyst Wondergirl. Nine months ago I saw her. One look at her face and everything changed. I knew everything in my life was wrong. I didn’t love him. I felt right in Montreal. I felt like myself. Everything was wrong in Winnipeg. I wasn’t raised to believe I could accomplish anything I set my mind to, I was raised to believe the world was going to end tomorrow and that I couldn’t do anything. Moving away from where I was raised seemed impossible, but if I bothered to listen to myself I would have known it’s all I ever wanted. There was a return of the lust that used to fuel me; Indescribable lust. I would move. I could do it. I could do anything. The chains that were holding me back seemed to dissolve. I’d see my mother for the first time in eight years. I’d quit the job that I loved. I would leave Winnipeg. I would leave everything behind. But was that everything? It was nothing. It was the most singularly powerful moment I’d ever experienced. I don’t know that I’ll feel anything like that again because in her face was something that set me back on the path I should have been on all along. Her beautiful face. It will always be the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I see it all the time now. Sometimes I have to look away because it’s painful to see something that beautiful. Stendhal syndrome, maybe. I didn’t have to spend that afternoon with her in Kyle’s kitchen to take action, but the realization of the depth of my lust for her didn’t do anything but help the meaning of the epiphany gel in my mind. Maybe it was love.
After one last winter spent in Winnipeg, living in what used to be my office in the antiquarian bookstore where I worked, I made my way here. I held no expectations of Catalyst Wondergirl. She’d moved me in such a profound way, it didn’t matter that she was now blowing me off. I wasn’t even remotely settled when exactly one month to the day I arrived in the city where I’d moved to be ridiculously happy when something else happened that I will grapple with for the rest of my life.
I keep a mental list of the things Kyle would have found hilarious. When I review the list, as I often find myself doing when my mind wanders, I can hear the sound of his dissonant laughter, the voice that never matched his face. Seconds before I found his cold and stiff body, I remarked “I’m going to go and check if he’s dead”. Kyle would have delighted in the macabre irony in the fact that his 26-year-old self was indeed, very unexpectantly, dead.
The sex bruises that covered my arms from Queer Dancer were a delight to him. They represented how far I’d come to Kyle, and how far I was going to go. They were also the reason the police assumed that I’d killed him. The weight of what the cops thought I did to my best friend, the person I loved more than anyone in the whole world, still strangles me from time to time. Kyle and I were regularly assumed to be lovers throughout the course of our friendship and I suppose it was appropriate that it happened one last time. He would have laughed raucously about me being his suspected murderer.
He would be amused with the relationship I’ve formed with Catalyst Wondergirl. The night before he died, he was angry with her because he knew she was playing headgames with me. I wasn’t exactly angry – just disappointed that someone who had changed my life so profoundly obviously wasn’t going to be a part of my life. I felt as though I had something I could offer her; and when someone has that strong of an effect on you, you don’t exactly want to let them go entirely. Rather recently she said to me, while she was rescuing me yet again, that Kyle introduced us for a reason and that he knew I would need her. If Kyle hadn’t died, and she wasn’t the only person I could get a hold of when the paramedics told me I should call a friend, we wouldn’t be as close as we are now. This person, who I didn’t even really know, did everything for me when he died. She made sure I ate. She did everything. Gratitude doesn’t begin to cover what I feel for her. It seems to be that as long as I live I will never be able to repay her for what she’s done for me. She told me, in a very nonchalant manner, that we’d been through more together in the past three months than most friendships survive in a lifetime. Truth.[/spoiler]
How I Moved to Montreal and Learned to Feel
The word profound has been used so often in my life in the past nine months that I’m afraid it’s starting to lose its meaning, which in and of itself seems to be a rather profound statement. I used to consider myself a reasonable person, as I’d always been able to maintain control over myself. In fact, I realize it was something I erroneously thought made me superior. Now I know that’s not even remotely true. What I considered my ability to keep a cool head was merely the result of me repressing every emotion and desire I felt. This is the story of how I shook my own perception of myself, became unreasonable and learned how to feel my feelings.
Catalyst Wondergirl. Nine months ago I saw her. One look at her face and everything changed. I knew everything in my life was wrong. I didn’t love him. I felt right in Montreal. I felt like myself. Everything was wrong in Winnipeg. I wasn’t raised to believe I could accomplish anything I set my mind to, I was raised to believe the world was going to end tomorrow and that I couldn’t do anything. Moving away from where I was raised seemed impossible, but if I bothered to listen to myself I would have known it’s all I ever wanted. There was a return of the lust that used to fuel me; Indescribable lust. I would move. I could do it. I could do anything. The chains that were holding me back seemed to dissolve. I’d see my mother for the first time in eight years. I’d quit the job that I loved. I would leave Winnipeg. I would leave everything behind. But was that everything? It was nothing. It was the most singularly powerful moment I’d ever experienced. I don’t know that I’ll feel anything like that again because in her face was something that set me back on the path I should have been on all along. Her beautiful face. It will always be the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I see it all the time now. Sometimes I have to look away because it’s painful to see something that beautiful. Stendhal syndrome, maybe. I didn’t have to spend that afternoon with her in Kyle’s kitchen to take action, but the realization of the depth of my lust for her didn’t do anything but help the meaning of the epiphany gel in my mind. Maybe it was love.
After one last winter spent in Winnipeg, living in what used to be my office in the antiquarian bookstore where I worked, I made my way here. I held no expectations of Catalyst Wondergirl. She’d moved me in such a profound way, it didn’t matter that she was now blowing me off. I wasn’t even remotely settled when exactly one month to the day I arrived in the city where I’d moved to be ridiculously happy when something else happened that I will grapple with for the rest of my life.
I keep a mental list of the things Kyle would have found hilarious. When I review the list, as I often find myself doing when my mind wanders, I can hear the sound of his dissonant laughter, the voice that never matched his face. Seconds before I found his cold and stiff body, I remarked “I’m going to go and check if he’s dead”. Kyle would have delighted in the macabre irony in the fact that his 26-year-old self was indeed, very unexpectantly, dead.
The sex bruises that covered my arms from Queer Dancer were a delight to him. They represented how far I’d come to Kyle, and how far I was going to go. They were also the reason the police assumed that I’d killed him. The weight of what the cops thought I did to my best friend, the person I loved more than anyone in the whole world, still strangles me from time to time. Kyle and I were regularly assumed to be lovers throughout the course of our friendship and I suppose it was appropriate that it happened one last time. He would have laughed raucously about me being his suspected murderer.
He would be amused with the relationship I’ve formed with Catalyst Wondergirl. The night before he died, he was angry with her because he knew she was playing headgames with me. I wasn’t exactly angry – just disappointed that someone who had changed my life so profoundly obviously wasn’t going to be a part of my life. I felt as though I had something I could offer her; and when someone has that strong of an effect on you, you don’t exactly want to let them go entirely. Rather recently she said to me, while she was rescuing me yet again, that Kyle introduced us for a reason and that he knew I would need her. If Kyle hadn’t died, and she wasn’t the only person I could get a hold of when the paramedics told me I should call a friend, we wouldn’t be as close as we are now. This person, who I didn’t even really know, did everything for me when he died. She made sure I ate. She did everything. Gratitude doesn’t begin to cover what I feel for her. It seems to be that as long as I live I will never be able to repay her for what she’s done for me. She told me, in a very nonchalant manner, that we’d been through more together in the past three months than most friendships survive in a lifetime. Truth.[/spoiler]
mary1
Forum Legend
AeryFairy
Anachronism
Renee1
Rawry
It's the opening. It's all exposition, so you have the stage set for the story. I think it's pretty clear what the play is about - it really is alllll in the title.
Thank youIts right there in the title Envy
Its beautifully written Renee
Ha! Well, maybe if I ever get over whatever is blocking me, you'll get to find out. I already know because it's all happened to me already.I want to know what happens next!
Thank you very much.I really like it, Renee
Dedalus
Mercurial and fleeting
Kittendumpling
Crafty Wino
kazyeeqen
Superb Owl
That does look fun. It's probably for the best that it's in England, cause I have quite enough to be crafting with!
Present I made my sister...with the star of the show!
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