Friday, March 30, 2012

The Spicy McHaggis Jig

May those who love us, love us; and those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts; and if He doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles so we'll know them by their limping.

So after discovering I had posted the same song... err... in the same month...  It is not as though I write it down... maybe I should?  Anywoo... not quite ready to let go of March yet... and after kicking back with a Guinness tonight, I figured a jig was in order.  So here you go the ballad of Spicy McHaggis...  ~JB~ This is for you deirfiúr! One day will we go and do the jig on stage at the St. Patrick's Day show in Boston... one day, when neither of us in poor because of student loans. sigh.  <3  ~a


Thursday, March 29, 2012

As the Month of March Closes

May God grant you always...A sunbeam to warm you, a moonbeam to charm you, a sheltering Angel so nothing can harm you. Laughter to cheer you. Faithful friends near you. And whenever you pray, Heaven to hear you.”~ Irish BlessingIrish Blessing

March is coming to an end... and thus I share you with you one of my favorite laments, slightly different than traditional as it is men singing so they changed to be about a "lass" so... Anyways, brings a tear to my eye each time I hear it and anyone who has felt love, pain, and loss will understand. That is pretty much all of you... so listen and remember with fondness.

xoxo

~a


Sunday, March 25, 2012

Not Pants... leading up to *GASP* my opinion of Jeggings, PJ Jeans, Furry Boots during all seasons, and in general, morons.

Because the return of the rampant Christmas Plague has returned, I am extra uber cranky... also it is Shark Week. (no, not on the discovery channel) So that combined with the weird side effect of a medicine change that has caused swollen... swollen doesn't even begin to describe the cloven hoofs of squish I have developed and the fact that this forces me to wear the highly uncomfortable "Old People" socks... IE: Compression socks.
Have you ever wondered why grandma was never in a good mood? (Except my beloved grandmommie, she was an angel on earth and I miss her deeply every passing day.... yeah that wound is still pretty new. : ( )  Well if you had cranky gam gams... it was because of the compression socks. Look at that another world issue solved by me. YEAH! GO ME! Y'all aren't impressed.... sorry.  But alas I am working for y'all because I love you.  So enjoy this great parody whilst I go cook short ribs for the family.  Bet y'all wish you were here for some yum-tacular  Southern cooking. awww.... I wish you all could be!  xoxo ~A



Saturday, March 24, 2012

A Man After My Own Heart...

In the Chuckie Codpiece story from yesterday I talked about how I tormented my ex boyfriend "Chuckie's" bill collectors... of which there were many.  In fact I think some of them called just for a break in their boring ass day; days full of people scraping together something to pay them, offering them payment in the form of farm animals, or just saying whatever they have to just to tell these people they don't have the money.  That is really one of the things I don't understand about collections.  I would answer the phone and give them access to my  bank account if I thought it would make them honestly believe that -$4.57 is in fact my current balance.  It just is. I am a student. I am poor.  This is life.

Bill collectors are a special breed though, as are telemarketers, they believe in unicorns, fairies, and the idea that I do have a Swedish "nameless" bank account and I am just WAITING for the day to be rich.  Yeppers... just waiting.... that telemarketer is going to call and tell me when that day is... or I will finally hear back from Ndugu in Nigeria about my 22 million GBP.... that man with the balloons and the giant check will appear at my door and tell me it is my day to be rich.  The telemarketer would believe I would SURELY sit right down and call my bill collectors FIRST THING.  The bill collector already believes and maintains an attitude that I live in some island nation with weak extradition laws.

Anywho... Dave mentioned this guy in the comments of yesterday's post. I have heard it many times.. and many times wondered if this guy Tom would be suitable for marriage... or at least be fun to hang out with.  I would have to start wearing adult diapers... so there is some give and take here. So here it is, a man after my own heart.... PLEASE let me know if you have NEVER heard this!  I will literally fall over in shock.  It is old but it is great!

A Man After My Own Heart...

In the Chuckie Codpiece story from yesterday I talked about how I tormented my ex boyfriend "Chuckie's" bill collectors... of which there were many.  In fact I think some of them called just for a break in their boring ass day; days full of people scraping together something to pay them, offering them payment in the form of farm animals, or just saying whatever they have to just to tell these people they don't have the money.  That is really one of the things I don't understand about collections.  I would answer the phone and give them access to my  bank account if I thought it would make them honestly believe that -$4.57 is in fact my current balance.  It just is. I am a student. I am poor.  This is life.

Bill collectors are a special breed though, as are telemarketers, they believe in unicorns, fairies, and the idea that I do have a Swedish "nameless" bank account and I am just WAITING for the day to be rich.  Yeppers... just waiting.... that telemarketer is going to call and tell me when that day is... or I will finally hear back from Ndugu in Nigeria about my 22 million GBP.... that man with the balloons and the giant check will appear at my door and tell me it is my day to be rich.  The telemarketer would believe I would SURELY sit right down and call my bill collectors FIRST THING.  The bill collector already believes and maintains an attitude that I live in some island nation with weak extradition laws.

Anywho... Dave mentioned this guy in the comments of yesterday's post. I have heard it many times.. and many times wondered if this guy Tom would be suitable for marriage... or at least be fun to hang out with.  I would have to start wearing adult diapers... so there is some give and take here. So here it is, a man after my own heart.... PLEASE let me know if you have NEVER heard this!  I will literally fall over in shock.  It is old but it is great!

Friday, March 23, 2012

Chuckie Codpiece

Chuckie Codpiece

There are a handful of things in life that are irritating, so irritating in fact that you consider jamming a pencil mosquitos-suckit oct25in your eye. Some of these things you can do something about; others are not so easy to be rid of. For example you can usually squash a mosquito thus ending the annoying buzzing and potential for itchy spots. Those noisy child toys can magically disappear or stop “working” all together. Damn it all.

August 6

Sometimes the most maddening things we live with in this life are less avoidable or fixable; baby poop unavoidable, evil children screaming at their parents in stores around Christmas time… legally must walk away. Taxes you have to pay, and hope at the end of the “year” you do not have to pay more. Death… well you cannot escape that; life is a terminal disease.

Then there are debt collectors, they work to hunt you down for debts… however large or small, size is not important. The goal is to make you feel as stupid and freakishly moronic for accruing debt in the first place;Derp Helmet. Made it month ago I know it anything_ec1e24_3167800 like you should be wearing an orange helmet with a flashing green light on the top so people will know to avoid you at all costs. Collections agents will employ any means necessary to try and get you to pay your “debt” in full if at all possible. One of my student loan “counselors” seems to think I am suddenly, as soon as my loan goes into effect, going to have thousands of extra dollars lying around; I do not Zombie-Debt-Collectoreven technically owe on the loans yet but the way this woman talks it is as if she thinks whatever job I find after college will pay me a lifetime in advance. We will not even talk about what my medical expense “managers” think. People who take these jobs are not human or extremely naïve or so jaded they no longer have a soul.golden-egg-150x150 They seem to think you shit golden eggs filled with cash money. I am not Bill Gates or that Facebook kid; so no I am not capable of that.

There is one time, and one time only I can say I enjoy receiving these calls. When they are calling seeking my ex-boyfriend; I share an ex with Chibi… it is how we know each other. Let me give you some back story on this specific boyfriend. I lived with him, which was the first time I had lived with someone I was dating. Not long after we began cohabitating I lost my job; I was receiving unemployment and able to keep us both fed and the trailer clean. Yes I said trailer. Mobile_Homes292-DJFsFor some reason, (well the reason was desperation and a sense that this poor lad needed saving), I decided that living in a single wide trailer, the wheels and hitch still attached, with no air conditioning (in the South, which is essentially living in a huge metal cracker box that heats up all day long) was the best possible outcome for my life. Do not get me wrong there is no shame in living in a trailer. Lots of people do; and I do not look down on them; I have been in some extremely nice trailers, well taken care of and much loved; this was not that kind of trailer. This was the kind of trailer you would drive by on a lovely country drive and wonder who had lived there when it was condemned.

chuckieChuckie, the real prize winner of the deal here, has at least a two pack a day habit, Camels, never generic YOU HAD BETTER NOT TRY AND SAVE A DIME ON HIS TOBACCO! Carter, Chuckie’s grandfather who smoked more than he drank, and drank more than he bathed… imageswas a sweet old senile man. I hope wherever he is now he has at least got a functioning shower. Chuckie kept saying he was going to fix it… One time I stopped in on Carter to see if he needed anything and he told me how he had come to live in North Carolina. I am not entirely sure I got the whole story because I am not good at deciphering slurred cough, but it seems he wasOld-Man-Smoking-Pot-80245 fugitive from the law, as the getaway driver for some crime. The statute had more than run out now so he said he could talk about it. Poor Carter, I lied and told him I had a pie in the oven and I had better go get it.

To make things more interesting this single-wide palace, with its tobacco-colored walls, carried at least two mortgages. I am not sure how but somehow whenever Chuckie asked his grandfather for something, Carter would move heaven and earth to make whatever happen. bills bills bills (168-6890)One could not keep count of the refinancing, loans, equity… you name it, and there was a paper on that trailer saying should it default it would belong to this company, or that person, or some loan shark. At times I wondered if that was why the hitch and wheels were still attached… I imagined one day I would be mopping or baking bread and just be hauled off to some impound lot.

no_phoneMy parents kept my cell phone on for me as that was really their only way of reaching me. Chuckie never had steady phone service. Somehow or another my cell number was given to people as a way to reach Chuckie. That worked out fine for the time we were actually living together…

That was about four years ago. He apparently “fell off the grid again” shortly after I left him. (And stole “his” dog…) It was then that the calls started. At first, it was just painful and I would ignore them. Then I found out ol’ Chuckie chuckie-400x400had moved some new girl in… It did not matter so much I guess; I had told him repeatedly I was not returning; but Sweet Baby Jesus let the door shut all the way before you move the new girl in.

She also had a shi-tzu that she dyed green and for some reason that just flew all over me. An explanation of why women hate other women is unnecessary here. I knew exactly what he had OscarTheGrouchtold her because he fed me the same sad story about Chibi… She was apparently much more talented at not talking to others than I was. Besides Chuckie’s behavior had just escalated to the point that I had to explain some things, and I wasn’t going to lie for him.

Chuckie was more or less invited to leave… Let’s just say the invite did not come on engraved paper. Honestly, I believe Chuckie thoughtside-image that once you no longer lived in a home or on a piece of property you no longer had to pay for it; not that he paid much to begin with but it was at least enough that the collectors and investigators were not looking for him daily, multiple calls and harassment throughout my day. I was working again and often worked nights. These calls were a bit of a problem. Incidentally, he felt the same way about cars he drove… if they stopped running he stopped paying. If Chuckie got a DUI and the police impounded the car… then they had taken ownership. That’s how it worked in his little mind.

0214

Finally one day I just lost it. I had worked a 12-hour night shift that had been particularly inhumane, as a 911 dispatcher and I was no longer in the mood for these people. I couldn’t just turn off my phone on the extremely off chance they might need me to come back to work and suck even more at understanding police officers on the radio. So after the same number had called me FOUR times in a row I picked it up. I screamed into the phone slide1

“SOMEONE HAD BETTER BE DEAD!”

There was that “silence” of a call center on the other end as the person apparently shocked that anyone had answered or at how I had answered. Finally, I hear this nasal accent of what could have been Sarah Palin before she was governor, I do not know and she says debt-colletors-crossing-the-line

“Ma’am I am trying to reach Chuckie Codpiece, could you please put him on the phone?”

“OH, DEAR! You didn’t hear? He’s in witness protection now. His name is Stan Something and lives in Arizona. You will have to get in touch with those people who do that.” Then I hung up.420619_340779952626772_208009342570501_952534_7786335_n

I was so giddy with pleasure that I decided this would be my new game whenever they called and ruined my day I would just say whatever, however, and see if I could get iStock_000012424117XSmallthem to rise to the occasion. The most jaded agents knew I was full of crap, and I was… but I did not know or care to know where Chuckie was.

One time a previous boss of his, whom I had met, called me wanting to get in touch with Chuckie. I was apparently the only viable number in his personnel file. I told this man, poor guy, that Chuckie was probably unreachable because of his being in rehabilitation. The surprised man asked if Chuck waschaney1 alright (he was always wrecking his car so I guess he assumed hospital…) I said he would be once he got past animal porn addiction. The guy started laughing and said in all seriousness

“Y’all broke up huh?”

“Got it in one” I replied.

He told me “Good, Chuckie was not good enough for you.”

The best responses came when I started using the different accents I could use. Apparently, call centers in Debt CollectionIndia do not like Irish accents. So instead of me constantly asking them to repeat themselves I would just mutter a bunch of Irish slang at them… They usually hung up first.

The best one ever though was a woman who never believed a word that came out of my mouth and she caught me in the middle of a good dream. So when I answered she said something about it ruining both Chuckie and Carter’s credit; that theytrailer-bw would come out and repossess the “property” referring to Buckingham Trailer. I told her in my best Indian (dot not feather) accent, that she could not find the property. To which she coldly replied

“Ma’am last we checked the property is right where it is supposed to be.”

Then I calmly and quietly replied in my best “The South will Rise Again” accent

“Okay. But did you check for land mines?”

caution-land-mine1

She hung up.

I won.

Eventually, it did stop being fun and I just told them that we had been broken up for months, green-dogyears… whatever, however long it had been, and that I did not know where he was but that he lived on someone’s couch with a Lime colored shi-tzu that answered to Shamrock or some stupid green associated name.

xoxo ~A

Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Where will I be Friday night?

While I deal with my writer's block I will put this out there.  I won't be one of those crazy people waiting until midnight Thursday night to see the movie first thing. I think I have only done that once in my life... when his Lordship was little we took him to see him Batman first.  He was a huge fan and it was a big moment.  The Hunger Games books were amazing to me... Usually you only get the future presented in happy tones in young adult books.  How far are we from such a dystopia?  The Romans killed people  and enjoyed it mindlessly like people watch reality shows today.  When do we end up in this place? What is it that tips the balance?  Those are all valid discussion questions... but Friday night... possible Saturday to avoid all the psychotic little girls... I won't be thinking about any of that.  I will watch one of the greatest books I have read in a long time come to life.  I will eat my little (actually teeny once you open it) 42 dollar box of candy and 17 dollar baby soda cram myself into a seat next to a bunch of strangers and chew my nails until the actual movies starts.  Which of course, depending on the theater is actually 45 minutes to an hour after the advertised start time.  Then I will sit through the drama and love and ups and downs and loop de loops of what had better be the best movie representation of one my books.  (ie: not like what happened to Twilight movies)  That's what I will be doing this weekend.   


Monday, March 19, 2012

I'll Tell Me Ma

It is still March... which we have covered is "Really Pale White People" month...  unofficially.. but no one had trouble drinking themselves silly yesterday.  So because March is special I will continue to post my favorite songs that go with the month! You wait until May and Cinco de Mayo!  WOO!  Anyways, this is a great cover of a traditional Irish Folk song.  Do you recognize it?  It is featured in a movie... and not an old one.  I happen to love this film so gold star if you know it!  xoxo~ A  

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Red is the Rose, covered by the High KIngs


And finally one of the most beautiful Irish Traditional Songs "Red is the Rose" covered here by the High Kings.  It is good to sign off the day with.  Good to sing to you love or you kids... awww sentimental now. And thus St. Patrick's Day is over.

So until next year my dear friends



If I Ever Leave This World Alive by Flogging Molly

It is never the end of St. Patrick's Day until my head hits the pillow which it will do shortly... but this is quite possibly the BEST Flogging Molly of all time... and I MUST Play it for all on St. Pat's Day.



Saturday, March 17, 2012

Turkey Nipples

Gobbles Turkey Nipples

My cooking is so bad my kids thought Thanksgiving was to commemorate Pearl Harbor.
~Phyllis Diller

41747The school district I moved to in Seattle had a lot more time off school than I could have ever imagined in Alabama. One day when I was home alone on a “holiday” I thought I would help out by making dinner. How hard could it be? I would make a nice dinner and mom and dad lisa-frank23would be surprised and realize how adult I was and let me get that tattoo I wanted. This plan was perfect. The super cool tattoo would lead to my discovery as a supermodel and my best friend was going to be Nikki Taylor. I had it all written down in a Lisa Frank notebook, I kept all my best laid plans in there.

 

This was my supermodel practice song.

We had a Turkey in the refrigerator for some reason; it was not Thanksgiving or even near it because IButterball Turkey remember the windows being open. Still we had this Turkey. I read all the writing on the wrapper, well most of it. I calculated how long it had to sit in the oven to cook, cut the wrapper off, dumped the huge bird on a foil lined baking sheet, and then covered the carcass of this poor animal in whatever barbeque sauce we were using at the time. We had Honey-BBQ-Sauce-Gallonrecently discovered the beauty of Costco (as a Sam’s Club replacement) so we HAD some barbeque sauce. Industrial sized bottles of Barbeque sauce. If I recall correctly Butterball took about one and a half of those bottles. I did have to coat him inside and out, for fullness of flavor. I did not want to touch his insides; I felt that was just too personal and moving way to fast with a male, dead and of the fowl variety or not, I did not really feel comfortable with it. So I just squirted the sauce into the Turkey cavity with a baster; that is what it is for right?How-Big-is-a-Turkey-Baster Then I carefully put the Turkey who I had now named Gobble, because we were gonna gobble him up, into the oven. I nearly dropped him twice. I succeeded the third time when I checked his temperature and “turkey popper upper”; more sauce and no one knew the difference. I did mop up, so no harm done. (Seriously is there a technical word/term for the turkey done popper upper thingy?)

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I even went on and baked a cake! It was green, with green icing that I had “piped” onto the cake using the corner of a Ziploc bag. You can do that in a pinch, Martha Stewart showed me how once on her show. The only food coloring in the house was green… so… (I think when my parent’s saw the cake the fear of dill slipped into their minds but they never said a word.

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I sat them all down at the table and situated his Lordship in his booster seat. Then I presented the BBQ Turkey…. I do not remember what “veggie” I served. It did not really matter I had this incredible, nearly purple with sauce huge Tom Turkey. The weight of this Turkey was staggering and caused my prance into the room, with this platter of turkey-liciousness, to be less than fabulous. Instead of swaggering into the room with the air of Julia Child and Martha Stewart; I staggered into the room with all the dignity of one of those circus plate balancing acts… drunk.

plate-spinning

The response I got from my parents was one of shock but not because I had prepared such an amazing, albeit a bit bake_turkeyburnt around the edges, turkey, but because I HAD prepared a turkey, a roaster turkey, with barbeque sauce. The turkey was clearly done though, because the pop up turkey nipple was sticking out; I left it in for effect. My thought was it showed my gift as a chef that I draft_lens2483652module14384372photo_1233861378turkey_breastsactually got the pop up Turkey nipple, to pop up. I have now declared this the new technical term for the turkey done popper upper thingy.

TURKEY NIPPLE think about it, it is all flat and cold when pull the frigid beast/beastette out of the box of chill (whether it be the freezer or refrigerator) you have to undress it. It is into some kind of kinky latex thing and then wants you to cook it, literally punishing it and occasionally spraying it with hot liquids. Then and only then will the Turkey Nipple pop up; farmed turkeyslens2483652_1233861291chicken-breast are known to be raging lunatic morons, they will literally drown in the rain by watching the water fall out of the sky, but in my expert opinion they have a serious nymphomania problem, the lot of them.

Somehow I interpreted the look of sheer shock on my parent’s faces as awe and delight. His Lordship was still preschool age at the time and I do not recall him registering anything off beat about this specific production of “Amanda has cooked something AMAZING”. Silence filled the tiny “breakfast nook” where we took our meals. I was far too young to have really worked out that the turkey nipple never really works yet so, why were they not praising my accomplishment? I had made a damn turkey. All you ever see on television is people complaining about how hard it is to impress your in-laws with turkey…

Here I was an awkward, gangly, buck toothed, with welcome_to_the_dollhouse_46143_mediumglasses thick enough to see Jupiter and with frames in a size to rival Sally Jesse Raphael’s; I was deep into the middle of my leggings and stirrup pants phase of the early 1990’s… I was nowhere near in-laws… Hell I was nowhere near boys and yet I had made this glorious turkey covered in Barbeques sauce. I carefully sat the platter in the middle of the table and handed my dad the carving knives.

It was then and there that I learned some things that only confirmed my choice not to feel up this bird whilstTURKEY NECK preparing it. My brother may not have been very old but he was aware of anatomy, so when my father pulled out the turkey neck from inside the turkey he hollered out in his best little southern drawl “turkey gots a penis”!

I may have gotten past the cursing years before but to my knowledge I had never even kissed a boy other than my dad and my brother and as far as I was concerned at that point neither of those counted for anything. The most boyfriend I had ever had was back in Miss Brandt’s class when a “husky” kid named Shane with a bad cow lick and aviator style glasses (not sunglasses) stole a stuffed seal from his younger sibling and gave it to me wrapped in the industrial Lutheran School toilet paper and taped with that medical tape they kept in our gym bathroom.

tumblr_liclwuoVPR1qaqkolo1_500

Remember when you could call kids husky and it was not really bad or anything. It was not going to damage their psyche or make them serial killers because you referred to their bigger bones as a large and powerful animal. c69ca__6011503485_038abc94fdNow we would rather make them anorexic then refer to their section of clothes as “husky”. What do they want kids to do? Oh I know they want them to wear things that don’t fit and thus the world is now dominated by “muffin tops”. Do not even get me started on how we dress little girls as hookers, pump their milk full of steroids, and teach nothing but abstinence in school, and then question why teenage pregnancy rates are so high. I cannot blame mike-the-situationeverything on the Jersey Shore but those kids came from somewhere… well I think that “Situation” guy just appeared one day on the planet. I don’t know for sure, but that cannot be God or evolution at work.

Either way in 1992 or thereabouts I was not ready for a physical relationship for a turkey so I did not stick my hand in the “cavity”. metal-thing-in-turkey1I guess I got caught up in the calculations to make sure I didn’t kill my family to worry about giant turkey penis necks being left inside a turkey. His lordship was most disturbed that this poor “MAN” turkey had been deprived of his most important bits. His little self was standing on his little chair doing that toddler foot shuffle shouting that someone had cut the turkey’s PP off and then made him swallow it! Once the trauma was reduced by my father explaining that it was the neck of the turkey, not exactly THAT much more comforting but better than penis all day long. The bag of guts followed; my father said that next time I wanted to cook a whole bird I needed to empty it first.

Shit. Like this was ever happening again.

Then the questions about the “sauce” began. Apparentlyturkey leg barbequed turkey is not a delicacy in any country except Renaissance festivals and state fairs, and then only on the giant turkey legs of those nations. (Seriously have you ever, EVER, seen a turkey drumstick that size anywhere but a fair?)

chinese-takeout-boxI recall now that I had made rice, the one thing I had seen done a lot and felt pretty comfortable with. It was crunchy. There was so much Barbeque sauce inside Gobble that it looked as though he were bleeding. Crunchy rice, bleeding turkey, and the trauma of a tortured penis swallowing Butterball meant we ate out for a few nights.

I have never made another Turkey.

 

My other “Super Model” practice song. I was going to be the best you know. That takes lots of practice. And a lot of hair flinging…. er… tossing.

xoxo~A

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

The Pickle Incident

The Pickle Incident

I told my doctor I get very tired when I go on a diet, so he gave me pep pills. Know what happened? I ate faster.
Joe E. Lewis

Since I occasionally ask my Facebook or Twitter followers for ideas on stories or opinions I can write about; I sometimes find myself at their mercy. My most recent two suggestions came from my original two readers, the General and Kelso.

Kelso wanted a post about monkeys; but the only real opinion I have on monkeys is that I am okay with you dear Monkey sir, as long as you do not throw your feces at me, bite me, pilfer my pockets, or steal my beer or Daiquiri.

It isn’t cute when you buy they drink and a flea bitten fuzzball drinks it…. but then I guess that is like any other night at the bar.

Also I am not a follower of Hinduism so I do not worship Monkeys. They are cute though with their big eyes and fuzzy little selves. I like fuzzy, who the hell doesn’t? FLUFFYIf you can show me someone who does not enjoy fuzzy, anything fuzzy, and I will show you someone who is tactile deficient and likely extremely disgruntled with life. I mean soft like a Gund Teddy Bear fuzzy, not fuzzy like a wool sweater.

 

The Generaltumblr_lm11n1UE1g1qjgv7ho1_500 in her infinite wisdom asked about a post on dieting. I am by no means a diet expert. In fact I would probably be worse to y’all than Paula Deen when it comes to healthy cooking. That isn’t to say I do not own a huge variety of cookbooks and a large collection of recipes; because I probably own more than one person should. Is it weird that I actually enjoy “reading” a cook book? blog-0092I love taking bits and pieces of different recipes and sloshing it all together on the other side to see what shakes out. Naturally over the course of my life my attempts at cooking things have varied and I have certainly improved.

My first attempt at “cooking” was really more of a fourth grade attempt at “inventing”. invention-ideas-for-kids-1I have mentioned that I was a latch key kid at times in my life and this particular invention came about when I was home alone. Most of my best “inventions” did; parental supervision always caused my best laid plans to go all pear shaped. I decided that for my lovely and beautiful fourth grade teacher, during a lesson unit on great inventions/inventors, I would make her an invention. It is that easy you know, to invent, you just make it. Frankly I do not understand why y’all are just sitting here reading my vintage teacherdrivel when you could just being inventing. I stray from the story though; my fourth grade teacher Miss Brandt was beautiful. She was everything I thought I would be one day when I grew up. She wore pretty flowered dresses that never got torn or dirty and she did not have to wear tights that crumpled up around your knees and ankles. No she had real lady stockings; I being of very vivid imagination assumed they were silk like they were in all the old L'eggsmovies. (Looking back now, and knowing what a teacher’s salary is, it is more than likely those poor stockings came out of the same tacky plastic egg from the grocery store as my mother’s did) At the time I was attending Lutheran school in Alabama and my tomboy-ish ways were cute at first, and then more of an annoyance. Kids-White-TightsEspecially after the Wednesday Chapel service my class was in charge in and my scrawny legs in those horrible white tights that always sagged on me. On my way up the aisle to the front of the church to assist in the presentation my class was doing, those saggy white tights fell to the ground and I fell ass over tea kettle up onto the alter. White bloomers in the air and all! I have always had the ability to face plant at the best moments.

Business man falling down set of stairs.

Any way you slice it though Miss Brandt was beautiful little-girls-knee-with-a-ripped-stockingwith her dark blonde hair cropped short like Donna Reed (Okay so I watched a lot of old television and movies) and silk flowered dresses with no runs or picks in her stockings. She was tall and most important to me at the time was that she had braces! As a little girl I saw braces as the epitome of high fashion; all my favorite “cool” babysitters had them.braces-ceramic The natural conclusion in my eight year old mind was that if Miss Brandt still had braces even as an “old person” then she had to be awesome and know all sorts of things even my freak parents did not. Even when she got her “removable braces” (retainer) I wanted one of those too! I was absolutely convinced that the pink part that fit into the roof of your mouth was candy. So now that I have thoroughly covered how cool Miss Brandt was and completely lost the topic….

I knew she liked pickles. She had at least a pickle with lunch every day. main.pickleSo in my fourth grade awesomeness, I invented: Pickle Dip. Do not all jump up and down with joy here; I know it is difficult for your mind to understand the sheer power of fabulous going on here. Pickle dip was going to be the thing of the future and I knew it. Dip to actually dip your pickle in… to make it more… pickle-y! I am not talking those crap sweet pickles. No we were going with Dill Pickle, the original. So what I am saying here is I ultimately mixed nearly an entire bottle of my mother’s dried dill spice in the cabinet into a medium, that’s right not the small, Tupperware bowl full of mayonnaise. I added some pickle relish because…10308958 duh pickle dip and pickle relishes belong together like peas and carrots. This was no silly dip that tasted just of pickle this was Pickle Dip to enhance your pickle experience. It smelled so strongly of dill and uh… essence of pickle that when the lovely Miss Brandt opened my gift she gagged with joy and sparkly laughter. Our classroom and indeed 1sparkles119part of the hallway smelled of dill for the remainder of the year and part of the next. I think they finally removed the asbestos from the ceiling or something and got the last of that smell. It was a sad day. For some peculiar reason MANNA’S PICKLE DIP never really took off. I still love pickles and dill, and one day…

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It was a very long time after what became known as the “pickle incident” before I was left unattended with a magic-potion-200x300kitchen again. Hell, even his Lordship, seven years my junior was left with me to make sure I did not concoct some magical potion of culinary art again. Eventually time forgives all horrible memories. We moved across the country when I was in sixth grade. I had to ride a bus and come in alone after school completely by myself at this point. Before there had always been some program or person around; not now, now I was in the big leagues. We lived in Seattle and a whole new world opened to me.

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TO BE CONTINUED…