SOLSC 2022 #14 - Happy Pi Day!

 

It is March 2022 and time for the

 15th Annual Slice of Life Story Challenge  

Every single day, for all thirty-one days of March,

writers will share stories.

Thank you, Two Writing Teachers, for creating this supportive community 

of teacher-writers!

Happy Pi Day!

Isn't it funny what's on your mind when you wake up? Especially, those much-too-early wake ups when you are lying in bed wide-eyed, counting how many hours of sleep you had already and how many hours until your normal wakeup? 

(I credit this morning's early wake up to the time change - the older I get, the harder this 'one little hour' change messes with my body.) 

Anyhow, I woke up thinking about Pi Day. (It was not 3:14 in the morning, but close.) 

I decided to write into it. Let me serve up a slice of pie today...a PI-le of memories...

I have my grandmother's recipe for homemade pie crust. It's a depression-era recipe, made with simplest ingredients - oil instead of butter, for example. She mastered this recipe, used it all her life, and made many delicious pies. She wrote it down for me some 50 or more years ago. Yes, this handwritten page is disintegrating; I treasure this and have no earthly idea how to actually 'keep it' for posterity.  

I just realized I am now the age that my grandmother was then - which means I've come full pie circle, yes?

I have yet to master pie-making...I simply don't work at it enough. I enjoy making pies at Thanksgiving, but otherwise I really do not make pies. Which means, every Thanksgiving, I make a flop of a pie - something uniquely wrong with it, hahaha. 

When someone says, 'it's as simple as pie' does that mean the task is going to be onerous? 

Oh how I love blueberry pie. Pretty fond of pecan pie, too. Apple pie? Nah, not so much.

My mother-in-law made the most amazing chocolate pie.

My aunt made a phenomenal lemon meringue pie.

My friend Debbie loves to make pies as gifts for others, and they are both pretty and delicious.

What's a cow's favorite pie?

Mooberry

This lame joke is almost a verbal tic at my house whenever pie is served and my sons are home, thanks to countless hours lost absorbing this and other really weak cow jokes when they were young. The source: Road Construction Ahead, a children's video that they watched over and over and over. (Warning - do not check out that video link with a three year old sitting next to you.)

More pie, please -

I remember being in my mid-20s, on a business trip to Denver, and the fun my colleagues and I had at dinner one night, eating at a Marie Callender's restaurant. How many different pies did we taste? Oh my! 

How many times have we stopped by the Varsity on our trips to Atlanta, so that my husband can have a fried peach pie?

Sweet potato pie! This deserves its own line of celebration. This is a pie I absolutely married into - and have no regrets whatsoever.

Let me ask now - what is a mathematician's favorite dessert? - a Pi, of course!

How often do I eat pie these days? Sweet pies, only rarely. Otherwise, practically every Friday, when we have our homemade pizza pie. I have long rationalized it as salad on a slab of bread. 

Oh, and quiche is a pie, yes? I have become fond of making frittatas - which are quiches without crusts. Is a frittata a pie? 

When is a pie a pie? 

Once you define pie as "often having a crust," doesn't that imply it does not have to have a crust? So do crisps and crumbles and cobblers become pies? Or only when served in a circular dish?

Wait, I haven't even discussed chicken pot pie. Yum yum! 

I am going round and round here.

I think this is my first time writing about this...would you say, I PIE-oneered the topic today?

Which brings me back full circle to -

Happy Pi Day!