La la la...

Once again there is a list of unpublished Draft entries sitting on my Dashboard, but whenever I open them up, I just decide they are too boring to publish and anyway there is some crappy reality show on that I need to watch. But now the State of the Union Address is on and damn it, I need to find some way to distract myself lest I punch a hole through our new plasma.

(I wonder if my little brother is sitting in some rec hall watching from Iraq...)

Anyway, I have discovered a new favorite method of cooking, and that, my friends, is the FOIL PACKET!!! Dude, if you put whatever you want to eat in a foil packet, and stick it in the oven, you can have a real-food-meal in like 30 minutes with virtually NO clean-up! Tonight, I cut up the only vegetable we had in the whole house, a green bell pepper, and threw a pre-marinated chicken breast on top, and the result was mmm-mmm-good.

And in even MORE exciting cooking news (did you even consider that there could be something more exciting than chicken and bell pepper in a foil packet?!?!) I came home on Friday to a brand new KitchenAid mixer on my door step, thankyouverymuch,Grandma! I called to thank her, letting her know it was unnecessary, but much appreciated, and she said, "well, I was shopping online, and when I saw it I thought of you... you mentioned that you didn't have a mixer..." (Alex's reaction: "Hm. Yeah, you know what else we don't have? Surround sound speakers. Just mentioning it...") On Saturday, I made real key lime pie with homemade whipped cream, (By the way: NEVER going back to prepackaged...) and on Sunday, Alex made pancakes. Sure, the pie could have been made with my hand mixer, and the pancakes... well you know, a wire whisk always works, but the mixer is fun and makes me feel like I'm hosting my own show on the food network. It would be called, "Hm... It Looked Better on That Other Show."

*****

Kid-Bit

Appropriately, ChowDownKid has taken to saying "Awwwww SNACK!!!" whenever he thinks someone has been told off.

*****

And for lack of anything else to talk about, photos of the dog. You know you want them.


What? You're not into day-old coffee drippings??


Where is it that Garfield always tries to send Nermal?

Smokin'

I made meatballs on Wednesday night. They came out sucktacular, with a side order of Grease All Over My Oven. I blame this on Alton Brown, for telling me exactly how much each meatball should weigh, and then telling me to bake them in mini muffin tins so they will brown on all sides and the fat will drip into the bottoms of the muffin cups, but then not mentioning that the diameter of the meatball is actually more important, because if the meatball does not suspend itself atop the rim of the cup, but rather just sits inside the cup, there will be an overflow of fat drippings and they will have nowhere to go but up onto the top of the tin and over the sides (because a muffin tin does not have a rim, as a cookie sheet does), setting off your smoke alarm and scaring your dog.

Alton also failed to mention that should you have an inch-thick layer of grease on the bottom of your oven, running the Self Clean feature is probably not the best idea, for the grease shall smoke to such a degree that your entire house fills with smoke and your eyes water and for the love of god you will not be able to breathe!!! You will end up having to open up every window and door to let in some fresh air, run every fan and vent in the house (and this will make it very hard to hear the TV) and despite the unseasonably warm weather, you will be freezing.

Itchy

In my last post I mentioned the little skin issue I had been having. The day after I wrote that post, I went out and bought some sensitive skin moisturizing body wash. This consequently gave me hives on top of what was already there.

I took a sick day today so I could get myself to the dermatologist and get all this biz taken care of. The hassle of getting a referral so quickly is a whole other story, of which I will spare you the agonizing details. All you need to know is that my appointment was at 8:30, so technically, I could have just gone into work a little late, but I didn't because I will use the extra time to get some stuff done around the house.

BWAHAHAHAA!!!

Thus far, I have cut the lemon bars I made last night (This recipe put me in the mood, but relax: I actually made these.), and vacuumed the living room.

That didn't last long. (My dog is a slob.) (She takes after me.)

The Bird: A Three Part Saga, and then some more whining

This morning, Coconut stayed outside for an unusual amount of time. I peeked out at her a couple of times, and she seemed to be happily chewing on/tossing in the air/pouncing on a stick, and so I left her out until it was time for me to leave for work. Except when she finally came inside, she brought the "stick" with her. She dropped it, and I realized it was not a stick, but I wasn't sure what it was. I had to corner her, and when she finally dropped it again, I snatched her up and put her in the kitchen while I examined the strange blob.

Then I ran gagging into the kitchen to get something with which to pick up what I could only assume was a bird. It was kinda hard to tell, but I thought I could make out a feather.

The whole thing was so disgusting, but I thought it was over.

It was not.

I came home, let the dog out, went to the bathroom myself, and when I went back downstairs to let her in, she was tossing around a gigantic bird with no head and one wing!!!!! GAH!!! I ran in to get a plastic bag, figuring if I could get her, I'd take the bird with the bag and then just turn it inside out. But Coconut had other plans. Our yard is big, people. There is plenty of room to run away, should you be a dog who doesn't want to give up the best treasure you've ever found, and there are plenty of trees that are in perfect humans-can't-get-me-here! positions close to the fence.

I spent about 5 minutes chasing her around the yard, until I finally called Alex freaking out that our dog was running around with a possibly diseased dead bird whose bone she might chew out and choke on. Then, when she let it go (and I don't know what got her to do that) and went inside, I could not bring myself to pick up the bird. Yes, my hand was in a bag, and my skin would not have made contact with it, but ug! I couldn't bring myself to do it. I kept gagging and thinking about what it would feel like to have the nasty thing in my hand, and screamed in girly disgust (similar to that when I smoosh a bug with a napkin and can feel the crunch underneath) until Alex finally yelled at me to just get the shovel, duh.

I shoveled the bird into the bag, put the bag into an empty shoebox, and put the shoebox into a trashcan outside, with a lid. Thank god that's over, I thought.

But oh, no, there was more to come.

The other wing, to be exact.

Coconut found the other wing; third verse, same as the first. I got her to go inside without it, and was able to get the wing and add it to the bird box in the trash can.

Physically, I think the bird is gone now. But apparently its spirit, or at the very least, its scent, still remains in our yard, because now every time I let the dog out, she runs around with her nose in the grass barking frantically. So frantically, in fact, that I cannot allow her to stay outside for fear of making enemies of my neighbor. This means I have to get her to come inside before she actually goes to the bathroom, which means the whole song and dance happens again 10 minutes later, which believe me, is not long enough for her to forget about the bird and just go outside and take a shit.

Outside barking alternates with time spent standing on the back of the couch, sticking her head between the slats of the hideous vertical blinds and, and barking some more at anything or nothing, but probably mostly reflections of self on the window.

The only way to stop this cycle was to put her in her crate, which I usually only do at night when I'm sleeping. I have since been getting 5 minute intervals of peace and inner-crate digging.

*****

Also? We have no food in this house. We are about a week overdue for grocery shopping, and all that is left is pasta and rice, and the Lean Cuisine I settled on made me gag because I kept thinking about the bird.

*****

And, I have this weird rash on my thighs and my butt.

You're welcome.

It is similar to the rash I get on my hands when they are extremely dry, so when I got home from work I slathered it with Eucerin, but that made it itch even more, so I tried Benadryl cream, which inflamed the whole thing even more and stung so badly that I had to take a shower to wash all the creams off.

Feeling slightly better.

*****

And one more complaint: My house is a mess, and I just don't feel like cleaning it.

(Surprise, surprise.)