Spacial Mass and Proportions....

"You have spacial mass and proportions."
That's just one of the sweet little somethings my husband doesn't whisper in my ear every day so much as he calls it out as I stumble into the corner of anything, and everything........yet again.
You gotta love a man who doesn't mind repeatedly informing his wife that she is NOT a gaseous entity as she seems to act like she is, that the laws of physics and human bodies DO apply to her. That sharp corners WILL dig into hips, painfully in fact, that cast iron skillets WILL burn her fingers and unfortunate wrists should she bump them, that testing to see if the water is boiling hot yet by sticking the tip of her finger in it will result in a painful owie moment and she WILL feel the repercussions of her denial over basic human laws.
Laws like hot water hurts, corners hurt and door jambs don't move out of the way of ditzy females as they skip to the loo. They instead stand steadfast in their harsh and unyielding ways and will cause nasty bruises on shins, shoulders, and any other flying parts that misjudge the space that makes up a doorway and bashes straight into the side....ow.
It's not that I'm clumsy (some of us are still in denial ok), it's not that I'm constantly tripping and stumbling over invisible rocks in the living room...very often. It's more like my precious grey matter in the old noggin has better things to occupy itself with apparently than calculating trajectory, speed and collision potential.
If I want a glass of water I will pop up from my seat and rush towards the source of my desired beverage and will not take into account the tv tray, the chair, the table or even cat between me and what I want. I just sort of...bash into any and all things between me and my goal. Over...and over.....and over.........
It gets to the point where I have clumsy days, days where I honest to Gawwwwwwd have hollered, screeched and cursed OWWWW so many times my husband will kindly offer the suggestion that I should "take it easy" as it's "going to be one of those days."
The sort of day where I might poke my head out the window to look at the lizards sunning themselves and smack my head into the glass........I have done this....but it wasn't lizards I was trying to look at...if that makes any difference at all.
The other day in the space of a few hours I managed to cut my thumb on a cat food tin, smack my right arm into the the dryer as I was tossing wet clothes into it, burn my wrist and scrape the back of my hand on what I don't even remember now....after so much pain things just start blurring together....and why?
WHY? I do not know...I ask myself these questions every day.....I might even find the answer to this burningly painful question if I watch enough late night infomercials, they probably make a nice super drug for clumsiness, something with pleasant side effects like despair, diarrhea and death.

Legless Lizards My Ass....

Occasionally, like any normal 30 year old woman, I surf the net and look at photos of lizards. You know, so I can find out if the blue bellied beasties in my yard are poisonous and going to gather together in a cold blooded strike force against me one day if I keep snapping photos of them. Never once asking their permission, never once asking them to sign a waiver that states I am free to use their likeness in perpetuity, never once considering that my heavy humanoid breath blowing across their scales might be delivering a stagnant breeze of ill will and fear into their poor little lizard hearts.....
Anyways during one such lizard look up on the net I ran across.....legless lizards.
HA!
I wasn't born yesterday, no one dropped me on my head and my leg can't be pulled any harder. I'm dragging out all the colloquialisms in my arse...ok I mean my arsenal but wouldn't arse be a fricking riot instead? Made ya blink didn't it?
The wool has long since been removed from my eyes, I'm no dweeby dunce, I know about legless lizards only where I come from they're called Ssssssssssssssssnakes. Genetics Sche-metics, if it looks like a s-s-s-snake...it's a s-s-s-s-snake.
BLECK!
I know about snakes too, oh I know all about them, snakes ARE EVIL.
I'm not throwing any biblical references around here either, I just know from looking at them and by the very nature of their existence that they ARE EVIL. I mean you don't have to have a degree in slitherin' snake-ology to figure this out, all it takes is one interaction with the belly crawlin' varmints to realize THEY ARE EVIL.
I can not stress this enough, I'd need a helicopter, a bull horn and a big ass stick to make my point as crystal clear as I can, SNAKES ARE EVIL.
Like any gal who's got a pure and unfettered hatred of snakes I have a brother who must have a few screws loose, a few marbles lost and a bat or two in his belfry (see colloquialisms all over the dang place today) because this boy....liked snakes. I mean he deliberately went about the fields LOOKING for them, not realizing looking for a snake is just looking for trouble. It's like walking down a dark alley in the middle of the night with a hundred dollar bill stuck to your forehead and a can of whip cream in your hand...it's just stupid.
Occasionally he'd find one of...them...them wiggling, slithering, squirming, twisting, writhing little demons and brandish it in the air like he'd won a fricking trophy. I developed super vision when he did this, I could be a million yards away and my eyes would zoom in on the thing he held in his hand.
My heart would slam against the inside of my chest, hard enough to jolt me out of my frozen immobility and I'd holler across the slowly decreasing distance between my brother and I as he smiled happily and advanced on me to show off his new..*shudders* friend.
"Michael, don't come near me with that thing!!!"
"Why? It's not slimy, you think it's slimy don't you? It's NOT slimy."
Oh yeah, right like that's gonna make all the difference in the world, the evil spawn of satan isn't SLIMY????? Well bring it on then boy, bring it on. HA!
NO, H, E, double hockey sticks NO!
I'd calmly start backing up in a dignified, lady like retreat and holler to him,
"Michael, if you come near me with it I am going to freak out, I mean seriously freak out, I am GOING TO FREAK OUT!!! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME???"
And then, I'd hit him with the best piece of logic that cuts through a younger brother's delight at his sister's drooling, backwards scramble away from him, I hit him where it hurt most....I jabbed him right straight through the heart of his deep and loyal love of s-s-s-s-snakes.
"Michael, if you come near me with that snake, I will freak out and I will hurt the snake. Do you understand, I don't want to but I will, by accident.....but I will."
Michael would pause, a frown wrinkling his forehead as he cradled the tiny bit of earthly evil in his hands and now it was he who would back up. A truce realized, at least for the moment.
I have never hurt a snake, let me make that clear.
Unless seeing a grown woman shudder like a Californian earthquake is damaging to the snake's psyche, I have never hurt a snake.
Not even when I lived back home in Canada and would be merrily traipsing down our country drive way, on my way to check the mail. Day dreaming about ice cream, how to get ice cream and wondering when I'd get ice cream again, and then it would happen....
I would freeze midstep and suddenly become aware on some unconscious level that's hammering on the door of my conscious level to start haulin' ass because "look down, look down, there is evil about!"
To this day I remember, finally looking down and a s-s-s-s-snake was curled up in the middle of the drive way and I had already taken a step over and was frozen for an eternity of 2 whole seconds realizing I had yet to complete the step.
I think I levitated, I seriously think I must have spontaneously levitated for a moment, for one gigantic physics defying bound later I was over and past the curled up evil sunning itself evilly in the middle of our now evilly tainted driveway, I leapt forward in giant strides and didn't stop till I was off the gravel driveway and on to the safety of the cement road where I shivered and quivered and broke out in enough goosebumps that I hardly recognized myself....and still I couldn't quell the rising stomach churning nauseated feeling that can only be described as "ughhhhewwwwwwwwwwecccckkk"
I am not sure the logic behind my next actions though it made a hell of a lot of sense at the time but I started freaking out a wee bit more even though the snake was no where near me and beat at my ankles as if it was twining itself around my limbs, I ripped off my sneakers and bounded a good 6 feet away on the cement in case any snakes should be lurking within in them and kept on the move, ya know, dodge and weave, a moving target is a less likely to be snake attacked target.....
My brother Michael thinks that is hilarious, he tries to explain how silly the whole jumping in the air like a mentally un-balanced ballerina doesn't do anything, especially if the snake is practically a mile away by now....uh huh, he thinks I'M CRAZY? He who looks for, touches and...l-l-l-l-likes s-s-s-s-snakes?
To this day ever since the un-expected encounter with a supposedly harmless snake that deliberately chose the middle of our drive way as a lovely place to snooze so he could mess with my mind when I went to check the mail I have been on alert for snakes.
In California there are...r-r-r-rattle snakes and I'm sorry I just can't wrap my head around that, any snake is bad enough and now there are supposedly musical ones that can BITE YOU AND POISON YOU?
When I walk outside I have my very own patented snake expert walk that I do, every step I take I bring my foot down on to the ground like thunder, as a warning to any hidden or invisible snakes in the area to get the hell outta here cause I'm a comin' through. You think I'm exaggerating?
The last earthquake california had I'm pretty sure was just me out back getting some oranges off the tree.
I wish I was joking, but you have no idea how unbelievably tiring it is to stomp my way through 15 feet of rugged terrain (aka grass and dirt) to the orange tree, with my head swiveling about like it's coming unhinged as I'm becoming unhinged trying to grow a third eye so I can keep an extra look out for hissing coils of evil in the grass. Luckily the neighbors don't think too much of me stomping and scowling about with my arms full of oranges and eyes bugging outta my head, they just think "There goes that Canadian again."
Legless lizards my ass. You know who came up with that don't you? S-s-s-s-snake lovers, trying to put a nice spin on the un-spinnable, you can call them marshmallow frosted dimples for all I care, if it's long and squirmy and has no legs....it's A SNAKE.
p.s. May I just say how calm and collected I am being right now, if you fully understand my deep and abiding vault of distaste and...dare I admit it..fear I have of s-s-s-snakes then you'd be clapping your hands at my being able to add the photo of one to my blog. Also that all my typing hasn't been reduced to lkc.nasqw .kvncc,m nm,xhfjkd.
By the way, what cruel joke is it that I should meet and marry the love of my life, a California resident and find out that the s-s-s-s-snakes around here are at least 4 or 5 times as long as the ones we had back home in rural Nova Scotia. I snapped the photo of the s-s-s-s-snake above with our telephoto lens from the safety of our patio and that was a year ago and still I have not calmed down or quit absent mindedly beating my ankles to be sure no s-s-s-s-snakes have snuck up on me and taken up residence there......
The only thing that makes me feel a little tiny itsy bitsy miniscule sized amount better about that s-s-s-s-snake photo is that we identified it as a California King s-s-s-s-snake and supposedly they eat rattle s-s-s-s-snakes.
Oh yeah, I know I feel a hell of a lot better knowing the greenery that looks so pretty at a distance is woven with insanenly long living ropes of evil with bellies full of rattles...ughhhh.
S-s-s-s-snakes...they're just so very wrong.

A Chocolate Pardon...

Dear Mr.Bunny.
I suppose you suck ass a lot less than I had thought. Because this Easter you finally came through for me. Mind you I do not know yet if I can completely turn a blind eye to your mysterious absence all these years, after all I know it wasn't some horribly crippling illness that kept you away. Too bad. Didn't all the youngins in my family strut their never ending parade of eggs, toys, chocolate and Easter Bunny related goodies past my face time and time again, year after fricking year? Further rubbing salt into the deep and festering wound that was your absence in my life? I can answer that, yes, they DID!
But this year, something changed. What was that?
Seriously, was it the pink sneakers cause I'll wear them every day if that's what made the difference. Was it my constant whining for the entire month of March about the lack of YOU shaped chocolate in my life any more? Wait, it wasn't the fact that I'm finally learning how to drive is it...did that scare you Mr.Bunny? Did you see how challenging it is to apply the brakes at night time when one of your fluffy little kin crosses the road....was it the fear of me possibly having my driver's license by this time next year that finally broke your silence? A little road rage goes a long way huh?
Well what ever it was I suppose I should thank-you, grudgingly of course. Upon waking on Easter morning......o.k. it was Easter afternoon, I pried open my sleep crusted eyes and looked blearily into my husband's and rasped with out much hope, "Did the Easter Bunny come?"
Blue eyes widened, darted wildly about for a moment like crazed blueberries trapped in a bowl of white milk until finally settling back in to place. My sweetie looked straight in to my eyes and finally, the answer I've been waiting 10 years to hear, 10 long torturously Easter chocolate deprived years...he says..."Yes."
I bolt upright in bed looking wildly around, the Rabbit wouldn't just visit and not leave a treat, not after 10 years of candy-less Easters, 10 years of accumulated anger and frustration and dark mysterious plans to exact my revenge upon him.....
"Where's the chocolate?" I demand.
Alan haltingly, strangely stutteringly explains "Well you see, um, I heard the Easter Bunny calling for me to come outside to get the chocolate from him but I was sooo tired. I told him I couldn't come down and he could leave it. But the Easter Bunny didn't want to leave chocolate out in the hot sun so he said he'd leave it inside the coolness of a local store. We just had to go pick it up and pay a small handling fee to the employees for holding it for us."
I stare deep in to my husband's eyes, completely awake now.
He seems to be holding his breath.
I tilt my head absorbing this...this strange twist of events. This non standard Easter Bunny practice....
For 10 years I've been harboring ill will and confused emotions towards this rabbit, for 10 years I've waited and wondered how I'd react if I ever saw or heard tell from him again.
I smile.
Alan expels an oddly long breath of what almost sounds like relief. I suppose he was as worried about the Easter Bunny as I was.
Turns out, a little chocolate goes a long way towards repairing a damaged relationship. Come to think of it I know a few people who could use a pound or two to sweeten their complicated interactions.
And what lovely little goodie did the Easter Bunny leave for me at the local store? Imagine my surprise when my sweetie tells me it's Godiva chocolates!
SCORE!
Looks like some one is trying to suck up, looks like you-know-who has quite the brown nose this year. Sorry to all you kiddies who got .99 cent chocolate that feels, tastes and smells like wax. SURE maybe the Easter Bunny ignored some of us to the point of risking some of us having a small mental break down but when he made a come back he did it with style. And with fancy pants chocolates that some of us had only read about in Nora Robert's novels and seen on trashy female sitcoms.
Ya know, revenge is pretty sweet....but I gotta admit a box of high falutin Godiva chocolates is a hell of a lot sweeter. (and legal)
Love from me
p.s. I only sign off with love in a completely normal amount of affection a woman should have for a giant rabbit, plus I'm married so don't go getting any ideas, my husband has seen enough karate movies to lay a good whooping down on your furry behind should you ever bring me anything more than chocolate.

The rabbit shaped hole in my heart.......

(This rabbit is hollow and empty, just like me on Easter Morning)

We were heathen hillbillies. So forgive me but when I think of Easter my first and only thought is "Why the hell did the Easter bunny stop bringing me chocolate?"
Seriously?
What's up with that? Did I do something to piss the E.B. off? It's not like I was enjoying rabbit stew or pie every other day, its not like I ate his kin or something.
For many a year this freakishly large but painfully shy rabbit hopped his way through our neighborhood leaving treats for all the kids. I never saw him but I'm no idiot, I saw the evidence of his visit. Chocolate rabbits, chocolate eggs and jelly beans don't just manifest themselves you know.
I mean there's a lot of things in this world we're expected to believe based on heresay and faith but the rabbit...he left some evidence. A little "I wuz here" in an edible form, occasionally he'd even display a sense of humour and leave a few non-edible treats. Pink rubber boots one year, a stuffed bunny toy (perhaps in his own likeness???), another year he left me a Star Trek:The Next Generation Collector's plate with Data's face on the front...my God, it's like he was looking right in to my soul. Chocolate AND Star Trek??
Maybe the Easter Bunny was in kahoots with Santa. Maybe he was paying the old guy off with pastel coloured candies in return for the dirt on all us kids. But unlike Santa who's all judgey judgey about whether we've been good or bad the Easter Bunny just wants to know what kind of candy you'd like, what size boots you wear and which Star Trek: The Next Generation character was your favorite.
Until he stops coming.
Parents are pretty sadistic if you think about it. When you're a kid it's all Easter Bunny this, the Tooth Fairy that, Santa Clause every Christmas and then....they wait...until your eyes have reached the soft doe eyed expression of a true believer, your world is full of magic and make-believe and sweet candy and Star Trek: The Next Generation collector plates....they wait until they have you just where they want you. Expecting the Easter Bunny to make his yearly deposit of sugary goodness in a pretty little basket and hop away to the next place and then.......
He doesn't come.
The parents stay in their room snickering at the bewildered howls of the 20 year old in the kitchen who is sweeping her busted illusions off the linoleum floor. There's no taste of cheap rabbit shaped chocolate for her any more, just the salty bitter tears of reality.
Oh yeah.
No one ever explains AWAY the Easter Bunny.
The adults take great pride in their skill of weaving the reality of old dudes in red coats who have magic powers that let him fit down any chimney. They craft incredibly detailed accounts of what the tooth fairy shall do with the tooth she collected under your pillow, and they lure you with sweet promises of a giant rabbit who for no apparent reason at all in the dull tail end of winter, when spring is still a distant promise of green away, will sneak in to the house at night and bring you.......CANDY.
Just like that, free candy and you don't even need to slather an inch of makeup on your face and go begging at the neighbors for it all night like on Halloween. FREE candy from a GIANT Rabbit.
Until......it stops.
There's no funeral to go to, no graduation ceremony, no party wishing a giant, grizzled old hare a happy retirement. Nothing, zip, nada, zilch...no more......the end.
I never give up hope though, perhaps the Easter Bunny lost my address. Maybe he and Santa were using the same database and it crashed, these things happen you know, and would conveniently explain away old Saint Nick's lack of appearance these last few years. And of course I have a moved a few times.....that could have muddied the waters.....
I'm not quite ready to set any snares in my yard just yet. I'd give the hairy old hare a chance to explain he and his lack of chocolate away for a least a full minute before I had me one hell of a pet rabbit chained up in my garage.
So I sit, and I wait, one on eye on the clock and one eye on my growling, barely restrained craving for bunny shaped chocolate, trying to hold my stomach and emotions in check.
Sure I can buy it in a day or two for 90% less than it's price right now but it's not the same.
I don't want store bought chocolate, I want it from HIM...
Every year I wait........fingers drumming on my desk....until sleep knocks me unconscious for refusing to go to bed. And every year I awake to bright morning sunshine, a new day and a decidedly depressing lack of any rabbit deposited chocolate.
Do I cry?
Maybe a little, till I tuck those tears away in to a hard little ball of revenge that resides under my heart. Where I will harbor and nurture and grow my anger like a dark and lovely plant that's riddled with thorns and poisonous berries and one of these years....one of these years...... I won't be waiting by the door for a damn rabbit and his crappy chocolate.
I'll be out there.....he won't need to come find me cause I'll be looking for him.
And in the immortal words of our beloved Elmer Fudd..
"It's Wabbit season, and I'm hunting wabbits, so be vewy, vewy quiet!"

Why we carry 200 granola bars in the car.....

I snapped the photo of this handsome lizard when he was sunning himself out on the patio the other day. I think we had a moment, I looked in to his eyes, he in to mine and suddenly I remembered something....

Once upon a time, a few years back, my husband and I drove through the desert. And no it wasn't on a horse with no name, and anyways you don't drive a horse you steer it...ride it???
What ever.
We rolled along through seemingly endless desert. Great seas of sandy rock and scrub brush. ACTUAL tumbleweeds were seen. Blackened stone that looked like it was more than done, baked under the heat of the sun.
Why is the desert hotter than other places anyways? Is it because there are no trees? If you added up all those little scrabbly brush things shouldn't those equal a few trees? Maybe the desert is being punished, or maybe we are. Maybe there's something really ultra cool in the desert if we just had the stamina to withstand the insane heat during the day and freezing temps at night. (Damn.....I wish I had me some desert stamina right about now so I could get me hands on what ever it's hiding out there........)
Anyways driving through the desert does weird things to one's mind. You start wondering how you'd survive if the car suddenly broke down, the bottles of water in the back seat suddenly evaporated and the cell phone ran away with to make sweet cell phone love with a signal it picked up in a sleazy cell phone bar......
See, desert makes a person think strange things!!!!!!!
How would we survive?
Food and water and shelter are the obvious things to be concerned with. Being found quickly is all well and good but if you're all dried up like those tumbleweeds I mentioned, drifting across the road, a dehydrated version of yourself...that's not gonna be good.
Shelter seems the easiest. I swear I could build a decent shelter better than most. Having the woods as your playground when you're a kid means a) you can curse a lot and not get in trouble cause no one's gonna hear and b) you build a lot of *cabins*.
Maybe some kids were swimming in pools, riding horses and coloring in useless coloring books (probably even staying inside the lines), but my brothers and I built cabins. Sure they were made from fallen branches and twigs but show me an adult who knows his way around a twig cabin the way we did and I'll show you the copyright paperwork on twig cabins...oh ha ha, o.k. we didn't invent making cabins out of twigs. Every one we knew did the same thing. Kids in the boonies make cabins, kids in town make gangs.
Sure I might be bragging it up now how I could survive in the desert in my lovely 3 bedroom tumbleweed cabin I could probably construct in half an hour but I'd probably be disastrous at starting a gang. Like first off I'd ask my mom to join and I'm pretty damn sure that's a gang *no no*.
Alan said we'd have to worry about food and water as well.
And that I could decorate the hell out of my multi level 3 car garage tumbleweed home all I want but if we didn't have food and water.....well........I'm basically making a kick ass tumbleweed mausoleum right? (By the way did you notice how my tumbleweed 3 bedroom cabin turned in to a multi level, 3 car garage tumbleweed home by the next paragraph? That's how expert at twig cabins I am. By the time I get through my ramblings here I'll have built a twig city and named it Ralphie the Third.)
We considered all the possible nutrition available to us in the desert. How much protein is in a rock anyways? Is it measured in ounces or grains?
Now I don't hunt, unless it's mushrooms and then it's not really hunting it's just sneaking up on unsuspecting shrooms in the woods and popping them off their little stems. I guess that makes me a mushroom mass murderer. Does it help if I say they were chanterelles, it's been at least 8 years since I went on a spree and they were soooooooo tasty? It does? Good.
Anyways I don't hunt and neither does Alan but we both agreed that if we HAD to we could do it. We could catch some wild game and make a meal, and start a fire by rubbing sticks together (I'm sure we could do this, we've watched so many episodes of survivor I could probably rub sticks together in my sleep and create a cozy fire. I've also watched politicians so I can be both president of the united states as well as Prime Minister of Canada and once I saw this dude on a motorcycle jump over a canyon so I can probably do that too. I have a PHD in watching TV.)
After miles of desert scenery whizzing by in a dully coloured blur as we both pondered what sort of wildlife lay in wait for us should we need to partake of them Alan announces "A HA!"
"NOT SNAKES!" I say.
"Oh.....oh...o.k." He says.
Silence.
Alan announces again "A HA!"
"what? You found something?"
"Lizards!"
I was impressed, I hadn't thought of them, surely the desert was ripe for picking, bursting at the seams full of ripe juicy lizards. Hey I don't wanna eat a lizard but if you're stuck in the middle of Godforsaken no where in your sprawling 2.3 acre twig mansion with built in twig movie theater and twig bowling alley you'll eat what you can get.
Alan has other plans.
"We wouldn't actually eat the lizard."
"Ummm......so we....name it and raise it as our desert dwelling child?"
"No." he says.
"Oh." I say. "Well what do we do with it then?"
You know those silences that descend like a heavy cloud of expectation? The kind that are so thick you can practically see the silence, the shape and colour. If you were to open your mouth (which you wouldn't cause you're in the desert and you can't be evaporating moisture for no reason) you could even taste the silence? Well one of those silences happened then and I hushed in anticipation.
"We'd suck on it."
Ewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
But I listened as he was obviously serious and we still had some zillion and a half miles left to go before we passed through the desert back into the populated land of sanity and could get a Starbucks with a side of reality.
So I said "ewwwwwww, but please, elaborate."
"Well if we caught a lizard and popped it in our mouth we could leave the head poking out so it could breathe etc and we could just sort of suck on it. I'm sure we would gain nutrition or at least a little flavor from the skin which would slowly start dissolving a tiny bit from our digestive enzymes in our saliva and instead of consuming our most likely hard to get food supply all at once, it could last for days before we'd need to get a new one. DAYS! Kids suck their thumbs all the time and you never see them with dead thumbs. Think of it, we could survive and so could the lizards!"

• Please note we don't suck on lizards. we don't even eat them. We don't get lost in the desert and we dont build mansions out of twigs....though I could build one so fast your head would spin. Also this is an idea from a former vegan so you know how unlikely lizard sucking really is even if we were stuck in the desert. By the way lizard sucking is copyrighted by me....yeah......uh huh, I keep them papers right next to my imaginary twig cabin copyright papers.

"Alan you're.................." What could I say.........?
"BRILLIANT!"
That's my sweetie, always thinking to the next level. Lizard lolly pops for us as we kick back in our new hometown "Ralphie the Third" waiting for help to arrive as I weave us an espresso machine out of twigs.

(please note that I note that some people might find the fact that I had a mini breakdown....er..rant about gross bacon ice cream sort of conflicting with my whole sucking on a lizard plan should we get stuck in the desert. Some might say, gross is gross right? Well all I have to say is I wouldn't put the lizard in ice cream, cause that would be wrong. It makes sense in my head....Also the circumstances are different, if I was in the desert with nothing to eat I might eat bacon ice cream if it was the only thing available, it might even be preferred over lizard.....depending on the lizard.)

Drawing on a Coin Flip....

Wow, what could be more exciting than 366 days of running my virtual mouth off on the internet via my very own blog....I mean besides the obvious (which is a Ben&Jerry's ice cream truck breaking down at the end of our drive way leaving all the little cold Bens and Jerrys in a state of vulnerability I find highly desirable.)
Well how about 370 days of the blah blah-ing!
Today is the day I announce the winners of my drawing that I held in honour of my big mouth. Every one who left a comment on my post 366 Days of a Publicized Big Mouth, before today was entered into a little drawing for a TREAT. And to be extra fair I had two drawings one for strangers and one for relatives. Though in reality it was less of a drawing and more of a coin flip. 2 comments from strangers and 2 from relatives (excluding Mary, my Mother-In-Law, not cause I'm a supreme bitch of a daughter-in-law but because I already awarded her a treat for leaving the most comments in a year!)
Alan offered to be the coin flipper extraordinaire and is off mumbling now about turning this into a full time gig, coin flipping. I'd like to see how that pans out.
We were very scientific about our coin flip, we assigned the heads to the first person who commented from each category, strangers and family, and tails to the second person.
It was an exciting moment for us, the sun set, Alan had fished a nice big toonie (Canadian 2 dollar coin) outta his desk drawer, we shivered in the night air that was sweeping in, replacing the heat of the day.
We did the strange people first. (how many people can say they've said that in this life time?)
And the winner determined by the power of the coin flip is Ginny!
Thanks for your comment I will email you for your address so I can send a TREAT to you post haste.
But we weren't done yet.......
Despite the darkening skies we persevered and found out the winner for the family member comment coin flip is.....my Mom!
Congratulations commenters, Mom I already know where you live (insert ominous laugh here) and I shall send a TREAT out to you post haste as well!
Thank-you to every one who participated in my little celebratory drawing, Alan and I had a lot of fun. Can't wait till next year's Blogiversary. And remember we can't all be winners but we can all be whiners.....
(Alan's whining he never got entered in to the family draw, well I love him and all but he didn't leave a comment now did he? He shall make do with homemade pizza and can only stare longingly at the TREATS we will mail out this week. I would like to take this opportunity to publicly thank him for performing the mind boggling coin flipping task as if it had been me I'd still be scrabbling in the bushes amongst the creepy crawlies trying to find where the coin landed.....)

I Scream.....

I like shock value. It's thrilling, we the people, we like thrilling don't we. Who cares about a walk down the street we want diving behind trash cans, rolling away from the wheels of an oncoming semi and hurtling through the air over grey haired grannies and their walkers as you skid to the cross walk and THEN...cross...against the red light.
Excitement we love it.
But I don't get bacon ice cream. Is that wrong of me? I don't get it and I'm a wee bit heart broken to hear of so many people apparently *getting it*. I think what they need is an ounce of reality up side the head. Bacon is meat. Therefore IT NEVER TOUCHES ICE CREAM.
I don't get this sudden rash..make that rasher (ha ha) of bacon ice cream recipes etc. It's every where, I can't turn around the ice creamy goodness parts of the world wide web with out bumping up against bacon ice cream. It's worse then accidentally opening an email that your relative sent out to every one in their address book that was obviously and graphically intended for their significant other only....Worse than innocently clicking on a web link for a site that seems like it's going to be about striped mittens but it turns out it's people who like to wear striped mittens...and that's all. Hey, what ever blows your bubbles, but it don't blow mine and I don't like the idea of bacon in ice cream.
I'm ok with it touching pancakes (bacon that is) as that love union was made ages ago. But it shouldn't even enter in to the thought of ice cream. Some things are scared. You can make all the jokes about God, your Mother and the President/Prime Minister but you sure as hell don't F*#K around with ice cream.
I mean I don't care if it tastes good, it's wrong. And I'm fully admitting that it might taste good, bacon ice cream *shudddddddders* to some people but I'm sorry it's still wrong.
If I want ice cream that means I'm having a dessert, a sweet treat not an astronaut-ish all in one meal kind of thing.
Hey here's an idea if bacon is so damned great why don't y'all slap some in your shampoo, cause mmm bacon smells good and we want it every where we can get it. Do they make bacon scented personal lubricants? Well apparently they ought to. Bacon flavored baby teething rings? Genius!
And ladies, nothing says romance like a triple layer chocolate wedding cake with copious amounts of bacon sprinkled through out. Why even crisp it up? Why not just leave it all fatty and nasty, so you can get a real good bacon experience. Why sugar coat it and pretend it's something it's not. Let it retain a little slime factor if you really want the bacon experience.
Hey, I like bacon. But we have rules in this household, no hitting, no hissing at our cats and NO PUTTING BACON IN THE FRICKING ICE CREAM!
Have they made a bacon flavored vodka? Go ahead ya bunch of sickos go ahead, whip up your bacon flavored vodkas see if I care. It makes more sense than ice cream I can tell ya that. Maybe, just maybe I could sort of come to an understanding with a bacon flavored vodka but my ice cream is precious to me. Ice cream is a treat, if done right it's a bit of a pricey treat. Pricey compared to the artificially flavored, preservative filled .33 cent candy bars I could get instead at a grocery store check out. Why would I need to add bacon to that?
When I have ice cream I'm not just filling a void in my diet I'm having an experience. I don't eat/gulp ice cream. I don't want to be so dazzled by anything while I'm having it that I mindlessly shovel it in and forget to relish every taste. Are you telling me that if you eat bacon ice cream you're not gonna be constantly going,
"wow, bacon ice cream, I'm eating bacon ice cream. Who'd a thunk it? This taste better than I would have expected. It's funny, I don't feel weird at all."
Clank. The spoon hits the bowl, treat is over and you've haven't truly experienced a oneness with the marvel that is ice cream because you were so damn focused on eating bacon in it and not gagging.
There's a good slogan
"Bacon Ice cream : It doesn't make you gag!"
I'm all about experimentation, I too have heard the siren's call of the kitchen muse who whispers sweetly in your ear. Try a little salt on that chocolate, try a little cayenne on that strawberry...what will happen if you switch white flour and use whole wheat instead........ Usually I'll give the kitchen muse a whirl around the dance floor and try the suggestions, as extreme as a little dried pasilla pepper in a mega chocolate cookie even....but the day she comes slithering up to me slyly suggesting I put smoked pig belly in my luscious homemade ice cream is the day I bitch slap her ass back to muse-ville where she can dang well stay until kingdom come and I sit back here savoring REAL un-tainted ice cream.
I don't mean to sound harsh and unforgiving like a total kitchen bitch who thinks every thing should be done her way.........that's what I am, but I'm trying not to come across that way so my point can be sharped to a fine honed bit that will pierce the veil of infatuation with bacon.
In a sandwich...good....in a pie...maybe..IF it's a potato pie, in a sweet pie, helllll no. In a sandwich, yes, in a cookie.....have you learned nothing??????? NO NO NO NO NO!
Maybe it's because I have such special memories of ice cream. Maybe because when I was a kid we were far from rich and ice cream was reserved for special occasions, birthdays and...ummmm...that's about it for the most part. We did have ice cream at other times and it was like a miracle, ice cream and no body got born-ed on that day that we know? Hallelujah. Non-birthday ice cream tasted ever the more sweeter for it's rarity and surprise. You EXPECT to get ice cream on your little brother's birthday, you DON'T expect to get ice cream on a Thursday night in the middle of May.
Oh poor me, only getting ice cream on birthdays, well there were other occasions like I said the rare Thursday plus I aligned myself early on with fellow ice cream addicts who appreciated a non celebratory cone in the summer as much as I did. I thank my lucky stars I had such an addict in my life who made ice cream an event, the way it ought to be. Buying a 2 liter tub of it to eat, scooping it up with cookies, no dishes or utensils of any kind. Sitting on the side of the road over looking a lazy river. Silence but for the occasional crunch of cookie. And every crunch was an accidental bite cause no one in their right mind eats the cookie spoon on purpose, it literally was the transportation unit to allow ice cream to travel to our mouths with out freezing our fingers. We were at once with the ice cream, we savoured every taste, letting it melt in cool, sweet glory on our young tongues.
What sort of ice cream does one bask in on a lovely grey day on the side of the road with a fellow ice cream addict.......Liverwurst and onion.
A HA!
Did you flinch???
Of course you did, that sounds disgusting doesn't it. It was Neapolitan, a simple and humble flavor that satisfied every kid, as there was something there for every one....apparently though there were some kids who were jonesing for a little bacon to be tossed in the mix as they grew up and created just that.
Maybe that's the problem, they grew up.
Maybe they forgot how special ice cream is.
One time, actually one of the last times I visited my Grandma while she stilled lived in her home she had an ice cream cake. One of those super hard, pre-made sorts that has an eerily good layer of chocolate crumble between the top layer of vanilla ice cream and the bottom layer of chocolate. You hear that? Vanilla ice cream, chocolate crumble, chocolate ice cream. There was no layer of BBQ steak anywheres at all in there. If there had been Grandma would have raised an eyebrow and flung the thing out the kitchen window...ok she has more class than that but I don't. I'd have flung it. Then I'd have cried.
Another time when I was a really young kid my Aunt and Uncle took my brother and I to get an ice cream cone at a local joint. I ordered something creamy white with swirls of pink and big gobs of red in it. I ordered based on what I saw in the tub not the label.
"Are you sure that's what you want?" My Uncle wisely asked.
I was undeterred, it looked marvelous, it looked rich and delicious, a little fruity and oh so decadent I was practically drooling like a mad dog on the display case.
The scooper handed me the cone and I took that first lick and my heart literally broke. I can still remember the pain. It actually hurt to have another bite. I was a half decent kid so I didn't sob and whine for another cone. Nobody we knew was rich so there was no "buy me another cone cause I decided this flavor doesn't suit my palette."
I was stuck, trying to eat this weirdly sour...crap.
I couldn't understand it. What in the hell sort of ice cream did I get? Finally I did what I should have done in the beginning and I read the label.
Strawberry yogurt.
For a kid, whose ice cream cones were much too scare for her liking this was literally the most painful ice cream experience of my life. I ordered YOGURT ice cream. (As an adult I acquired a certain taste for it but it's not ice cream. Who are we kidding, it's tasty as all heck if you get a good brand but it's NOT ice cream)
I will never order frozen yogurt if there's the option of ice cream. That's like choosing a tootsie roll over a homemade fudge brownie. Nothing wrong with a tootsie roll...but it aint no fudge brownie.
By the way before I forget, how about a nice batch of bacon yogurt? Maybe it ought to be bacon strawberry yogurt. Breakfast in a tub. Friendly bacteria for your innards with a dollop of fried bacon in every bite. Oh boy.
If there's one thing I've learned in life so far it's that every one is different. Every one has different tastes. And I've learned mine sure as heck doesn't run to bacon flavored ice cream.
Y'all go ahead and enjoy it, if you really, truly are enjoying it more power to you.
I'll save my bacon for a BLT and I'll have a bowl of sweet homemade chocolate fudge ripple ice cream afterwards. Or maybe I'll have a scoop of rum raisin. Of course it's always hard to choose between cookie dough ice cream and Irish cream liqueur ice cream. There was that peach pie ice cream that was pretty tasty, that and an accompanying scoop of raspberry cheesecake ice cream would be soooo satisfying.....oh shoot I forgot about the pecan praline..hmmm...oh man pecan praline and a double scoop of coffee ice cream with a drizzle of hot fudge sauce and a wee scoop of pure vanilla ice cream on top.
Mmmmmm
but y'all go ahead, have your bacon ice cream.
More of every other kind for me!

How to Get Fried!

French fries have such a bad rep, poor little oily buggers. Is it their fault they've been turned into fast food dietary demons? Is it their fault that suggesting French fries for a meal is akin to asking if you wanna snort a little whiskey and jump off a bridge into a vat of lard and live there for a week? Becoming little lard fish people that will triple their size in an hour and eventually become one with the lard, where you and the lard will bubble and burp and belch in blubbery bliss forever after.
French fries aint all bad. It's like anything, moderation.
Mod-a-what?
I know, that never sounds fun but trust me I do know about moderation. Just because I don't apply it to coffee, ice cream and chili gravy doesn't mean I don't KNOW about it.
I like to reserve my moderation for the really important things, like bacon, flour and exercise. I'll have a little of each but not too much, I don't want my life to become all about bacon, flour and exercise. Borrrring.
I think French Fries if made with good potatoes and good oil aren't so bad. Not to mention the way I make them uses barely any oil at all. It's pretty dang cool. I start with a half a cup of oil and I end with just barely under a half of a cup of oil, I measured!
I get crispy, yummy French Fries made in healthy coconut oil and I don't have to swallow a load of guilt at the same time with them.
Plus if you're clever (like some people I won't name, ok ...it's ME) you have a big ol' green salad on the side and you end up with a filling meal that's actually pretty good for you!
Some days though we just have a plate of fries. Just so that we can thrill in the complete tastiness of a darn good fry. Saturating our taste buds in salty, crispy, moisty potato delight. And also because we were lazy and too hunnnnngry to wait for anything else and too tirrrrrrrrrrred to whip up a 3 course meal that would fill the belly hole as completely and happily as a plate of fries.
I have my fry making down to a science, I could probably make them blindfolded but I don't want to blog about my experience chopping my finger off and going to a hospital and finding out if cayenne pepper jammed into a bleeding wound really stops it fast. (We read about that and have been curious ever since. It works on wee little cuts but thank goodness we haven't had to try it on any big cuts.)
Anyways I shall share with you my oh so awesome method of preparing perfect fries if you'll promise not to get all up in my face if you use a different oil, different potato or different temperature than I and end up with horrible little carbonized fries instead of golden delicious ones.
Also my disclaimer is that not all ovens are created equal, not all their temperatures the same, use common sense. It's free after all, so use as much as you want.

Perfect French Fries:

• preheat oven to 475 F

• Get a 1/2 cup of coconut oil and put on a big baking pan that has sides so the oil doesn't run off the edge or your potatoes run away.

• melt oil if needed (coconut oil gets solid at cool temps so you might need to pop the pan with oil on it in the oven to de-solidify it. Don't let it get too hot, you're gonna be handling it soon)

• Get 4 or 5 potatoes

• Cut them, ignoring all little potato screams as you gouge their eyes out. I like slightly thick French fries, I haven't tried this method with thinner fries, I imagine the baking time would be shorter.

• Dump the cut fries in to the pan, roll them in the oil, till well coated, spread them out in an even single layer.
  
• sprinkle with sea salt and black pepper
• put on middle rack of oven for 17 minutes (I use a timer that beeps annoyingly and gives me a near heart attack when it suddenly starts beeping cause I forgot I set it)

• The fries will be pale after 17 minutes but will be cooked
• Now to brown them up like a California beach bunny.
• Turn oven to broil and with the fries left in there on the middle rack leave them for exactly 5 minutes or until brown enough to your liking. (yes I realize that sounds funny, exactly 5 or longer...that makes the 5 un-exactly, so what?)
  

• Then remove them from the oven and carefully tip the pan so that the oil pours off into a heat resistant bowl or what ever.

If you want your fries even browner you can put them on a rack closer to the broiler at this point now that the splish splashy oil is gone and give them another minute. Keep a careful eye, some people have been known to start small fires in their oven from forgetting they have something under the broiler, hence the reason SOME people have a timer that beeps when things should be removed.
And voila, perfect French fries with barely any oil left on them!
This recipe makes a nice plateful for 2 people so if you divide the oil that was used between two people it's a ridiculously small amount. See, I start with a half a cup of oil and end up with....
Woohoooooooo, remember the missing oil is divided between two people as well. Alan and I are now jonesing for a measuring device that is heat resistant and more accurate so we can get our geek on in the kitchen and measure stuff more precisely. You don't want to know the amount of time we spent discussing measuring oil.......lets just say it was a revealing amount.....as in it revealed how odd we are. Entire conversations have been had for hours about measuring the oil.......We figured out at the end of it all as conversation dwindled down, silence crept back into the household that it looks like we used approximately 6 or 7 teaspoons of oil. We theorized there was about a teaspoon of oil left in the baking pan, covering the whole thing...we moaned and groaned at our inability to measure that. We sobbed great heaving sobs as we held each other tightly and realized we know the math, we have the oil but just not the means to say 100% for sure how much was used, we decided it was probably 6 teaspoons, that gets divided by 2, so 3 teaspoons per person per giant ol plate of fries......
Psssssst......Sometimes we sneak up on the pretty little French Fries and smother them with chili and cheese and red onions. YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMY!

366 Days of a Publicized Big Mouth

"...its like wow she had a lot to say just about that one lil thing"
Yes, yes I do.
I think my sister said it best. Though more politely than I would have.
I have a lot to say about any little thing, because...I....am a big mouth.
Which is good actually, very convenient for cramming such goodies as cakes, donuts and baked potatoes into, AND for holding the umpteen million words that flow from my brain in a mad rush to get off my tongue and into the free world.
Usually there's a verbal traffic jam around my lateral incisor. Words like "dang it" and "frick" not to mention "rump" tend to get caught on the edge of that tooth, causing a crazy pile up of nouns and adjectives, usually I can sort them out though before spewing unintelligible blather upon the public. Though occasionally a few still lurk in there unbeknownst to me.....I can't tell you how much I hate rinsing my mouth out at the end of a day and spitting a few choice words in to the sink, I'm always like "dang, so that's where all my pleases and thank-yous ended up. Damn you lateral incisor, damn you." It's not ME who's the inconsiderate un-thanker, it's my damn tooth in my big mouth.
Today is the one year anniversary of my revealing my amazing big mouth to the world. One year since I starting adding my own 7 cents (I'm worth a hell of a lot more than 2) to the internet instead of just reading every one else's thoughts and ideas. There's nothing wrong with all those other blogs out there, I enjoy many of them tremendously but none of them are written by me and therein lies the problem.... I want to be a blogger tooooooo, I want to share my amazing meals, crazy random ideas, my rants about things that really tick me off, photos of my wine, lips and hair, memories about my childhood, wild schemes to hide from God, poems about dead monkeys, my occasional threesomes and how to's, like fixing a saggy seat. I wanted a place to showcase the 48 rolls of toilet paper we buy at a time, our forays into rotten cabbage, drunk cookie videos, recipes and lessons I learned from Super Mario. And this, like so many other kazillion people before me, this *blog* thing is the place to do that. (call me crazy but you all better keep an eye on these *blogs* I think it's really going to catch on)
Ya see the thing is you can't walk up to people on the street and launch into a description of what you had for supper, complete with snapshots hauled out of your pocket, slightly wrinkled as you forgot about the bend affect of jamming pics into your jeans pocket and then sitting in a parked car on the side of the road for 2 hours until you see a likely candidate who looks like they could use a freakishly detailed accounting of your meals. I have found, that either people don't care or that wrinkled photos detract from your humorous commentary on apple pie. People are less likely to run screaming if you have nice digital photos on a computer screen then wrinkled ones pulled from your pockets....I guess.....I couldn't say for sure....I don't make people run screaming.......perhaps there's been the odd time or two where COINCIDENTALLY some one ran screaming and I had wrinkled photos of my French fries....but that was NOT my doing. Perhaps they saw a spider and were deathly afraid of spiders...yes that's it....
A blog solves all of that, now I can just roll with style down the street calling out a casual yet elegant "read my blog at www.StuffByTace.com" to persons waiting at the bus stop. There's no screaming, no running, and even if they were doing any of that what do I care? I'm rolling down the street to the next bus stop.....
I love my blog.
Plus I'm sure all my friends and family can't get enough of me and a tiny peek into the inner workings of my mind could be a joy and a cheap thrill not to mention satisfy that little piece deep inside their hearts that wants a voyeuristic peek into our lives with out committing to getting a damn passport and hauling ass down here for a visit.....(this portion of the blog entry is brought to you by relatives who like to guilt other relatives into hauling ass down for a visit while turning a blind eye to their own negligent hauling ass duties)
Remember folks, hauling ass goes both ways.
So here I am, lil ol' me splattered all over the world wide web for all to enjoy and roll their eyes at. Go ahead, eye roll all you want but I'm pleased to be contributing original content to the internet, mind you some of it is hopeless drivel and most of it is examples of the world's most longest run on sentences but it's all original. Call me kooky but I get a peculiar little thrill out of announcing a blog update to people in my address book, I suppose I could just forward the "missing iguana/dog/whatever" emails, the "funniest thing I ever saw" emails or the Viagra spam I keep getting...but...I just can't bring myself to do it. You can be damn sure if I ever send you Viagra spam I'll have written it myself, I don't care if it's long and hard and takes all night, I'll write it myself.
There are a few things I've learned from my year of blogging though. (That's 76 posts in 366 days, that's a NEW blog post every 4.81578947 days. Wow, I was a prolific/blabbermouth wasn't I? I mean sure there's people who blog every day but I also gotta eat, bathe and get a little sun every once in a while so as not to turn in to a bag of dirty bones mole person.) But anyways things I've learned:

• Number one is that I am my biggest fan. I have an unhealthy amusement with my own writing and will snort most un-lady like at my own words until my husband looks up from his work to ask what's so funny.
• Number two is that you have to use your common sense, all uncommon sense should relegated to the back of the closet, buried deep in the sub folders on your computer or to secret blogs that you anonymously write. Common sense is the most essential thing in a blog, no ranting about Aunt Petunia's predilection for sniffing nail polish, no giving away secret Canadian knowledge that we're all sworn to keep when we reach the age of 10, no photos of cleavage, rear ends or middle fingers unless tastefully done. No slacking off from household chores just so that you can write another blog entry about coffee or ice cream, like the world needs another long winded love letter to dairy.
• Number three, and most importantly quadruple check your facts, don't be running your mouth off about how great a dancer you are until you video yourself trying some of the moves from "Dancing With The Stars" and see for yourself just how fricking *great* you are. Also don't tell amusing anecdotes about relatives who could beat you up for revealing a secret recipe, secret dog or secret love child. If you should reveal such things you should ensure there's a few thousand miles between you and them not to mention you should get a one day head start.
• Another thing (aka number four) I have learned during my year of blogging is that comments are gold. No better than that, they're chewy pink edible gold! Meaning, woohoo they're great BUT, first and foremost I write my blog for me and for my sweetums. If you rely on comments to fulfill your blogging satisfaction you just might turn into a dried up, puckery old prune who can only write scathingly cruel posts about un-commenters. And I have a sworn oath to only pucker up from a lemon or for a smooch. Though like I said, comments are great and I'm not above leaving subliminal messages on my blog for people to leave them, such as barely visible text or just going ahead and leaving myself comments.

Nothing warms the cold parts of my little heart more then getting an email with an announcement that myself left me a comment. Aww shucks self, you're too good to me, and most often myself has been quite kind in it's complimentary and flattering comments. I think I might like me!
I've been kicking around the idea of what I can do to celebrate my entire year of blogging. At first I considered getting the words "I rule the blogging world, oh yeah, uh huh, that's right!" tattooed on my arm but there's no room there what with the "honk if you love Jesus" and image of an apple pie already holding a place of honor there.
Then I considered having a wild party, you know with all my friends and relatives and fellow bloggers but I'm not a people person. I'm more of a sit in the corner and watch every one else with a mild look of disgust on face, sucking down coffees sort of person.
I also considered writing a poem but all I could think of to rhyme with Blogger was hogger, flogger and snogger. Trust me, you don't want to read the sort of poem I could write with those words.
Finally, I thought I'd do something I've observed other people in the blogging community doing. You don't need to start getting scared and begin covering one eye in preparation of anything nasty. What they do is award a little treat to some lucky reader/commenter to celebrate their blogiversary. Usually by a random drawing, entering every commenter who leaves a comment between a specific set of dates. Well sounds cool huh?
EXCEPT......
What if there's been a commenter who has been faithfully commenting all this time and some yahoo I don't know from Adam happens to stumble across my blog on the day of the contest and leave a comment and win the little treat I'll send...is that fair?
Hell no!
So first thing I did was look over the number of comments I have had on my blog for the past year. By my calculations, as long as my fingers weren't too jittery on the calculator buttons from the overdose of celebratory caffeine, I have had a whopping 173 comments!
Wowsers!
Who knew? Then I tallied up the comments to see who left the most, so that I could award their faithful commenting, their generous spirit, their kind words and often visits with a treat.
The number of most comments left by a single person is an astounding...(can I get a drum roll from the people please? thanks)
119!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Congratulations to the lucky commenter who must seriously enjoy what I've been writing...umm...er.....what's that? Ahem, seems I'm that commenter. Wow, I ought to get myself something really fricking nice huh? I had been thinking along the lines of a really good chocolate bar or some such thing but now I'm thinking I ought to be endowed with magical powers or at least the ability to turn water in to port. I suppose I should admit that at least half of those comments I left myself were actually in reply to real comments people had left me...makes you wonder about the other half though huh? *grins*
In the interest of fair play, since no one could be as big a fan of me as I am, I then looked to see who came in second. A much more reasonable number of comments totaling 18 by a single person. My Mother-In-Law! Wow, thanks Mary you can expect a little treat in the mail before too long!
NOW, if I do a random drawing I've already taken care of the fairness side of things. Myself and Mary will be excluded from the drawing. Leave a comment on THIS post between March 4th and March 11th and you will be entered in a drawing, the winner gets a little treat and my conscious is clear because it'll be fair to all involved...*howl erupts off screen*
Ah shoot, my sweetie pie howls a good point. A lot of my commenters are family members....soooo...it's gonna look pretty suspicious if I have a random drawing and my dear sweet mama happens to win, even if it's completely random...I mean I wouldn't even buy that. So I will have TWO drawings, one for the strange people...er...I mean strangers and one for family. The winner from each category, strange people and family will be announced on the 11th (as long as there's nothing good on tv and then it might have to wait till the 12th)
You can only be entered once and every one who wants to participate for a surprise treat can! (and I can avoid having an angry mob on my doorstep....again)
Holy cannoli I'm glad this only happens once a year, it's fricking exhausting trying to keep this all straight.
It's been a fabulous year, though I expected nothing less. I became a permanent resident of the united states, I co-wrote an entire novel with my husband (maybe we'll get it published some day, a whole book full of run-on sentences, cool huh?) I only bought 3 or 4 loaves of store bought bread (that I recall) because I made all the rest, I learned to start the car, made my own Marmalade jam, did NOT get a cow, drank a hell of a lot of coffee, made our own Halloween costumes and not once did I ever scream bloody murder at who ever the heck it is at the grocery store that's been fondling the cilantro so much it's falling out of it's bundles, I resolved a few personal wrapping paper issues, and I turned 30!!!! All that PLUS 76 blog posts.
*pats self on back*

Dancing Around Reality....

(This is an amazing picture of me dancing, drawn by my husband, on a MagnaDoodle. Who can draw that dang well on a MagnaDoodle? I mean that's insane! A good kind of insane, some people's mediums are oils, acrylics or clay....my husband's is MagnaDoodle!)

I've got something to confess and I feel rather....guilty..no, not guilty. Ashamed maybe? Plain ol' embarrassed perhaps? It's just, what do you do when you find out a little, previously unknown, fact about yourself that you hadn't realized was there? Some tiny, dark corner of your brain that housed a secret desire that's been dormant until....now.
Sheesh, I've got rug burn on my derrière, the cats are hiding in fear and I'm running around the house like a mad woman with my husband in tow and all because of it.......
It just happened one too many times. One too many times and I became the victim of modern advertising. O.k. promo people, are you proud of yourselves? Do you go home all smug and happy at night because you did your jobs well and I've sold my dignity for a few minutes of......yet another reality tv show.
Holy Hannah, I'm such a sucker.
But I was bombarded by the same advertisements for the same show over, and over and OVER again. THEN to make matters worse, as if the television schedule and the BBC were conspiring against me I'd flip on the ol' telly and see...THAT show. At first I tried to deny my fascination.
Walking to the kitchen, rubber necking like mad so my eyes could stay glued to the screen. In the beginning I suffered a few bumps, bruises and odd looks from my husband who was wondering if I'd started secretly drinking during the day. (HA, I only secretly drink at night) Of course I had to lie and say I was hitting the sauce before supper just so I could have my pride and my secret romance with reality tv.
*hangs head in shame*
So many people thing reality tv is crap, and I think some of it is too....but not all of it. There I said it, I don't like the *crying and sobbing and my life sucks so have a super nanny, super cop, super fricking chef come in to my home and fix it up with corn bread and hand cuffs* type shows. But there are a few others that I do enjoy. You wanna make something of it?
Often I've found myself part of a conversation that winds itself around to subjects I have a hard time listening to. In the old days people had it easy, some one tells a prejudice joke, you just knock em up side of the head and be done with it. Some one says something about God you don't agree with you just slap your arse and holler "bite me"
Simple, easy solutions that were most effective in curtailing conversations that wandered into the gray zone. The murky area that lurks between two strongly differing opinions, love it or hate it. But what if you like some, love others and are mildly amused by a few more? Accckk!
So here I am, sucking it up, going to admit.....I watch.......
"Dancing With the Stars."
Damn Jerry Rice for hopping and bouncing all over my television screen, damn those professional ball room dancers for wiggling their asses so fast it's a wonder I didn't get an eye cramp trying to keep up.
At first I couldn't admit what I was doing, a day time drinking problem will only cover so much. Not to mention the fact the television is right behind where my husband works. Now I'll tell ya the man is a fricking genius at tuning out distractions like......oh I don't know...say some one is belting out show tunes, horribly off key, in the kitchen about 20 feet away. He barely bats an eye at screeching and hollering done by the same person as I...er...she makes yet another un-holy mess by spilling coffee grounds all over the counter, stove, floor and cat. He can even do his work while his wife watches yet another episode of the "Golden Girls" on Lifetime, even ignores the fact she's speaking in sync with all of the character's lines, cackling whilst simultaneously acting out Blanche Devereaux's part. (Yes, I love the Golden Girls, you're thinking "this she's not ashamed of but Dancing With The Stars she is???" Well it's easy, the Golden Girls is the MOST non-evil, amusing, and inspiring sitcom I have ever watched, then and now. So bite me. If you could put Blanche, Dorothy, Rose and Sophia in a blender and make a Golden Girls smoothie, that's who I want to be when I grow up...er....grow up more. A Golden Girl's smoothie. Sick...but tasty.)
Annnnnnnyyyy ways. The point is I can watch what I want and he doesn't really notice.....usually....until one day as I'm only about 12% committed to watching "Dancing With The Stars" season 2, which means I am at the couch but not on it. Rather I am standing behind it, draped casually over the back, eyes glued to some of the craziest dancing I have ever seen and I snort.
A small un-lady like snort as Jerry Rice stiffly hops about like a bunny rabbit. I hear an echoing snort.....I turn my head, slowly, my eyes meet my husband's. He's turned round backwards in his computer chair (which he stole from me but that's ok, I stole his) and he's watching the show as well. A HA!
We both straighten up, again slowly, as if moving through cold molasses and our eyes never leave each others. Neither of us cracks, neither of us admits what we're doing. And so we begin a dance of our own, a long slow dance to the tune of "you admit it first". We circle each other in ever tightening spirals, dizzy, the show forgotten momentarily, but it's ok it went to a commercial break anyways.
How long we would have circled I can't say, because the theme song for the program returns, and our feet start tapping a beat in unison, we stare, unblinking until...I can't take it any more. I crack like a bad paint job and run to the couch so as not to miss a moment more of my new best friend "Dancing With The Stars".
Alan settles beside me, I draw comfort from his warmth and we link hands, and everything is ok with the world because if I am one sick puppy for enjoying a reality tv show that has supposed stars bebopping all around a dance floor then I'm not alone. Alan likes it too.
Now about that rug burn. You can not watch a show that has cha cha's, rumbas and God knows what else with out leaping off the sofa during commercial breaks to whirl around the living room at break neck speeds trying them out.
Things we have learned, we can wiggle our butts pretty dang good and in sync too, we can't do the "one partner takes a flying leap into the air and the other catches them and spins them around their neck like a boa" Maybe I ought to have been the one playing the part of a boa....hmmm....anyways I highly recommend "Dancing With The Stars" or at least season 2 though I give you fair warning that parts of you are going to pop and crack like you aint ever heard before when you start trying to do what you just saw George Hamilton do on the tv screen.

• Definition of "Dancing With The Stars": the most fun you can have that doesn't involve coffee, a Nora Robert's book or a laser. Supposed *celebrities* team up with professional dancers and compete against each other, learning some freaky cool dances, sweating a lot and showing more of their navels than a California orange. I say supposed *celebrities* because...I'm sorry...Jerry Rice who? So yeah, it's that kind of show, you won't be finding the cast of StarGate on there or the latest block buster movie hero/heroine but dang....I'd pay at least 30 bucks to watch Samantha Carter, Jack O'Neil and Rodney McKay do the fancy dancing on that show....by the by if you don't know who those characters are then that means you must not watch StarGate and that must mean I hate you. Sorry, thems the breaks. O.k., I forgive you now. I'm fickle that way.