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National Creamsicle Day 2024
What better way to get through a sunny 🌞 Summer 🔥 Hump 🐪 Day than to celebrate National Creamsicle Day?
Taste 🍊 Of 🍦 Summer
Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it. ~Russell Baker
Back when I was a kid, I really liked 🌞 Summer 🔥. Naturally, I had off from school and could stay home to play in my room and watch TV.
Don’t be so shocked. I have never liked being outside when there was an option to stay in and read a book, watch a show or just orchestrate a story of my own with my action figures, Hot Wheels cars or army men.
That’s just how I roll.
However, in childhood, my tolerance for the weather was more flexible. Seasons came and went. None of them bothered me in particular.
After I got in the Air Force and they sent me to Minot AFB, my blood thickened up real quick. I took a distinct preference for cold and a particularly kryptonite-like reaction to the heat.
Sadly, I wasn’t there long enough to fully appreciate or make extensive use of the acclimatization. Next thing I knew, I was right back in the civilian life.
The great thing about college was that it mostly took place in the more tolerable seasons of the year. 🌞 Summer 🔥 was for working up a stash of spending cash.
Fortunately, the high ceilings of the warehouse kept it relatively comfortable. We were storing office supplies and insurance forms, so keeping the place somewhat dry and temperate was important.
In the hottest days, we’d have the doors wide open and big floor fans circulating the air. Nobody wants a curled up, congealed insurance form now do they?
🍊 DIY Those Creamsicles 🍦
How to Make a Creamsicle | Homemade Orange Creamsicle Recipe
One of the things that makes a hot season more tolerable is a cold treat.
Orange creamsicles are defintely in the top ten of frozen treats. I was always partial to Nutty Buddies, but I certainly wouldn’t say no to an orange creamsicle.
The DIY recipe above looks tasty, but I definitely like mine with the ice cream in the middle of the orange popsicle coating.
Hey, I’m one of those guys who likes the plates with the little section dividers. I like my orange and my cream to be separate. So shoot me.
The difference in texture and flavor is half the treat. If you just have an orange cream mush, that can be tasty. It certainly is, but I really like the juxtaposition of orange ice and vanilla ice cream better.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
Orange Dreamsicle
I love Serge Lutens orange blossom perfume; my mom got it for me. It’s my favorite. It just smells clean. ~Gia Coppola
One of the running gags in The Sentinels: New Blood is intended to serve a few purposes.
Tanda is a 20 year old young lady who has been obsessed with becoming a member of the superhero team since the first time she saw them in 2nd Grade.
As a firstborn, she’s temperamentally inclined to be the sort of go-getter who sets her mind to something and sees it through. That’s a common feature of firstborn children, particularly if this is nurtured and rewarded.
Since she was touched by a stray Chaosian in the womb, she was born with naturally blue hair and dark brown eyes. The rest of her family has dark brown hair and bright blue eyes. She was also born with superhuman physiology, but she never realized it.
We don’t know what we’re really capable of until we’re put to the test. Even then, we often don’t realize how extraordinary we might be. If we do something amazing, we can write it off as an adrenaline rush or a bit of good luck.
Tanda’s not lucky. She’s a superhero. She knew she was born to be one, but in a basically normal world with only three known superheroes it’s still hard to believe that a kid from the Lower East Side would actually gain super powers and join the Sentinels.
She asked her grandmother to help her become a superhero as a Bat Mitzvah request. Her grandmother pulled through by hosting a grandson of her old friend in Israel. He wanted to come to America to visit family and she put him up in a spare room in exchange for teaching Tanda in various IDF skills.
By the time the story begins, Tanda could easily be mistaken for a Mary Sue. She’s a very competent fighter with a superhuman physique and she trounces some goons early on.
BUT
She’s really just a goofy kid and lifelong fangirl of the Sentinels. She’s been so focused on becoming a superhero from the comic book perspective that she has let a lot of normal social interaction and developmental touchpoints go by the wayside. She just didn’t have time or interest in a lot of the standard aspects of growing up.
She’s got this bottle of Orange Dreamsicle body spray that she got when she was younger. It’s a big bottle and she doesn’t use it often, so she still has it and sees no point in getting another until she runs out.
Her friend, Marti, loves to tease her about it. “Still with the Orange Dreamsicle. What are you, twelve?” and also about Tanda’s goto order at the Zavijava: Vanilla latte and a blueberry bagel with strawberry schmear. Marti considers her socially stunted and is desperately trying to help her to grow up.
Another purpose of the Orange Dreamsicle is to spur memories for Mary Christmas. At first, she (like Marti) thinks it’s a bit juvenile but the persistent smell of orange blossoms soon begins to stir repressed memories of trauma at the hands of The Conclave. It will drive a wedge between them and cause problems with the team.
I’m still on my first draft, so I will need to circle back and make this more apparent as I polish the work, but that’s something that came to mind for me today.
Given the topic of the day, I thought I’d cover this fairly minor facet of the story. Sometimes, the details matter.
I’d like to weave in more little things that seem like throwaway content, but actually impact the story in a meaningful way.
This stuff just comes to me as I write the story and I have to decide which are just window dressing and which to lean into.
That’s it for today. 🌞 Summer 🔥 is burning away with glorious haste, so be sure to slow things down with a tasty frozen treat before we find ourselves in Pumpkin 🎃 Spice season.