Jesus H. jumping Jesus Harold Christ. Yes, yes, yes–I get it! She takes riding lessons and TKD, and something else I don’t remember. You have an iPhone, so you can send mail anywhere, anytime. I get that, too. Please stop sending me 500 photos a week. I like the kid, but FFS, if I was that much into kids, I’d have at least one. It may have occurred to you that I do not, and that is because I don’t fucking care about kids. Sometimes I look at one or two of the shots, but for the most part, I just archive them without opening the message. Someday, I’ll have to clean out my Inbox because it’s getting scary in there, but I have other things to do ATM. Sure, send me a photo here and there so I’ll know enough that I could pick the kid out of a crowd of two, but spare me the weekly family photo album. Why is it that people with kids seem to think that those of us without kids give a goddamn? WE DON’T. That is why we don’t have them.

On a more cheerful note, I came across a site devoted to…liquorice. No joke, the entire site is nothing but “liquorice of the world”, and best of all, they have the stuff that Pia used to get from Denmark! The first time she came in and dropped a bag on my desk, I thought, “Why is she giving me black liquorice? I can buy that right up the street.” Pia was pretty much always smiling and cheerful, but that day, she had a very definite, “I’m up to something naughty” look on her face, and told me to try one. Some people just don’t like black liquorice, not even black jellybeans, but I do; developed a taste for it when Dad used to give me the little beady candies from the Bassett’s liquorice allsorts he always got at Christmas, and eventually I learned to like the others as well, plus he used to buy liquorice pipes and cigars as penny candy at Ellsworth’s store and I’d always want one so I’d be like Dad. V. and M. would eat the coloured jellybeans and leave the black ones for me and Dad. I still don’t eat the black ones along with the other flavours because the flavour is stronger, but I separate them and eat them by themselves.

Anyway, the candies Pia had were harder than any I’d seen before, but I guessed that liquorice was probably liquorice and these were maybe a little stronger or something, so I took a few from the bag. She laughed and said I might want to start with just one, though I couldn’t imagine why. She’s the Dane, though, so I took her advice, and thank Christ for that because the flavour was not what I’d expected. To me, black liquorice has the liquorice flavour, and it’s somewhat less sweet than the red stuff (which is liquorice in name only), and I was expecting strong flavour from the Danish stuff, but I was absolutely not expecting…salty. I was somewhat taken aback at first, and Pia did stand there and giggle at what was probably an odd expression on my face because I’d been expecting sugar and got salt, but after the initial WTF??, I thought, “Hm. This is pretty good!” She took some out to the front desk, and out back, but the only taker she had that day was me; everyone else thought it was horrible. It took a few before I got from “pretty good” to “goddamn..I like these”, but I did. After that, she’d often bring some to me when her mum would send a “care package” from Denmark to her, and whenever she and Søren went back to visit, she’d bring back a bunch for me. No one around here is Danish, though, and there’s no speciality store that has anything like that, so I hadn’t had any for years. B. told me once that he’d get some for me–they go to Denmark relatively often to buy booze because it’s cheaper than Systembolaget–but I knew he’d never remember, so I didn’t think too much about it. It’s not his responsibility to feed my old addiction anyway. Now, though, I can just order it online from Nebraska, and they even have Y&S liquorice cigars, which are the same ones Dad used to get at Ellsworth’s, and I used to buy by the box at Earl’s as an adult. I like the pipes a bit better because it’s fun to eat them down to the curve and eventually to the beady things at the end, but they taste the same. They also have the “dubble zout” round pastilles I’d occasionally get at the Dutch-Canadian Shoppe, but they’re rather saltier than the Danish stuff, so to me, they’re kind of like dulse…something you have to be in the right mood for. The Danish ones are great any time. 🙂