Dustbuster Wars

I want a DustBuster.  Very. Badly.

Jethro will not let me have one.

Before anyone starts hollering about partnership, Jethro and I have an unspoken agreement about bossing each other around when it comes to our personal quirks.  Occasionally, Jethro needs a kick in the butt when it comes to motivation and keeping positive.  (He’s my widdle Eyeore with sexy arms.)  I, on the other hand, need to be reined in when it comes to my whims.  Sometimes I get a bit….*ahem* overzealous when it comes to my brilliant ideas and why we need to buy something RAIGHT NA-OW.  In the course of our marriage, if I had my my way, we would own a serger, two African dwarf frogs, a Prius, a Gazelle, one of each product in the Cricut line and every single puppy I’ve ever seen.  It works for us. Read More

February 23, 2012 38 Comments Short URL, , , , , Buy Me That!, Jethro, Need, The Fam., Want, WANT.

Cookin’ with Carol: Coronary Chai Spice Apple Cake

The thing about heart disease is that, like most diseases, it doesn’t happen to the just the patient, but the whole family.  In order to develop healthy habits, everyone has to pitch in for it to work.  How fair is it for someone to have to cut out sugar, salt and fats if your wife and daughter are sitting in the corner, eating Twinkies and corndogs.

So once Dad became Captain HeartAttack, Mom and I purged the house of pretty much all bad food.  And by bad, I mean all the fun stuff; cookies, chips, hamburger meat, chocolate.  It wasn’t too hard for them to adjust, my parents had already been pretty good eaters and only splurged occasionally.  I, however, was a college junior who lived off of Ramen, Spaghettio’s, Laffy Taffy and pinot grigio.  (I wish I were kidding.)  But this was for Dad.  So I happily noshed on broiled fish, brown rice, salads and grilled skinless chicken.  We were the picture of healthy eating.  The American Heart Association would be proud.

That is, until one day when my mother and I broke.

My parents live in the same house that I grew up in, which is about a half a mile down the street from a 7-11.  This location made for amazing trips as a kid, riding my bike down to the store to spend my 59 cents on a Suicide Slurpee.  (This is a Slurpee with all the flavors.  Since there were usually only four, this isn’t quite as gross as it sounds.  The trick is to put the yucky flavor, usually pina colada, on the bottom so you drink that first.  That way the Coke, Cherry and Grape flavors have time to mix in a sugar-laden mish-mash of unidentifiable icy goodness, guaranteed to give you a brain freeze and make you so hyper that your mom almost let you stay outside on your bike even after the streetlights came on, just to get you to calm the f*ck down.)

It was this 7-11 that I stopped at on the way home from Wal-Mart; grocery bags full of healthy eating, none of which inspired excitement.  This was 2002 and people still used cash or check, so while I was pre-paying, I looked to my left and saw something I’d nearly forgotten existed in my healthy eating cocoon – A Milky Way bar. Read More

February 15, 2012 4 Comments Short URL, , , , , , , , Cookin' with Carol, Health, Recipes, The Fam.

Grammy Moments…in the Messy Household

I must preface this with saying that I know how my marriage will end, and it will be with me beating Jethro over the head with the fancy Logitech Harmony One Universal Remote with Color Touchscreen that I bought him for Christmas and he can’t figure out how to use but won’t admit it. Jethro has a serious problem and his problem is that he is completely unable to watch television in real time. I’m fine with DVR-ing things (I almost said “taping things” because I’m old) and fast-forwarding through commercials, but he has to fast-forward through things he considers boring, like exposition and scenes without car chases. If he does get caught up with a live show, he has to go watch other things like Kung Fu Hustle or Ocean’s Eleven for the fortieth time, just to give it time to record so he can fast-forward with abandon. Which makes award ceremony viewing with him just a barrel of friggin’ monkeys. Thank God he gave up around 9:30 and went upstairs, otherwise how was I going to be able to Twitter-complain about the show if I was a half hour behind?

Anyway, here are my favorite Grammy moments. (Please note that I had loads of lovely links in here, but every single one of them is dead as of moments before I published this because the internet hates me.  Forgive me for my non-linkage, you can Google the performances yourself if you missed them.)

~ LL Cool J’s opening speech.   Great rally cry to get people excited, but much less effective because it’s LL and he CAN’T STOP LICKING HIS LIPS. I blame Jamie Foxx for this, he pointed it out in a comedy special and I can’t not see it whenever I see the man. It’s like Whoopi Goldberg and her eyebrows; once you mention it, it’s all you can think about.

~ Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt singing Etta James’s A Sunday Kind of Love.   Perfection. Love her, love them, love that damn song.

~The Twitter hate every time Chris Brown came on screen.   I wouldn’t spit on that boy if he were on fire.  (I’m totally not kidding about the Twitter hate, The Daily Beast said that his first performance “inspired #womanbeater to become a worldwide trending topic on Twitter.”)

[EDIT: I saw this on Twitter and thought it relevant; the police report from the altercation.]

~Beach Boys tribute   Not a huge fan, but my Adam Levine love knows no bounds. And you Foster the People kid? How’s about you take a tip from Adam and when you join the BB’s in the end, pull your mic away a bit and let the men sing their own song? He did look pretty excited to be there, so I’ll leave him alone. However, the off-key background singers during Adam’s set that made him pull out an earpiece to get on key himself? NO LOVE FOR YOU. Read More

February 13, 2012 11 Comments Short URL, , , , , , , , , , , , , , Rants, TV, WATCH THIS!

I am already a bad mother.

I am 17 weeks along, or just a little over 4 months.  Well, mostly.  Here’s the thing about pregnancy weeks.  Some people, like my mean doctor, like to count you as far along as you are—as in I am 16 weeks because 16 weeks have already past.  Some people, like my lovely pregnancy tracker, count the week you are in—as in I am in my 17th week as 16 weeks have already past.  Then there are the people who count thing like the exact days, as in I am 16w1d or 16 weeks and 1 day.  Until I am overdue, we are gonna ignore that sh*t.  Between that and the food you have to remember to eat and NOT eat, the myriad of doctor’s appointments and all the crazy acronyms that pregnancy boards toss round, no wonder women get pregnancy brain.  Too much crap to remember and you brain shorts out and you put your phone in the freezer.  (Don’t tell Jethro.)

So anyway, 17 weeks and I’m already a bad mother.

First off, I don’t think I’m drinking enough water.  Honestly, I don’t think anyone is drinking enough water, but since I’m sharing my space for the next five months, I should probably be more considerate.    But I just don’t FEEL LIKE IT.  It’s tough, trying to plow through 64 ounces a day.  I mean, that’s a butt-ton of water, y’all.  Yes, I can count other drinks as my fluid intake, but I JUST DON’T FEEL LIKE DRINKING.

Unless it’s a beer.  Because I really super want one of those right now.  I sipped one of Jethro’s crappy Coors Lights and it was like ambrosia dripping from the petals of a flower held by an angel.

Hell, if I’d had a Paulaner Hefe, my face might have exploded. Read More

February 8, 2012 37 Comments Short URL, I fail at life., Jethro, Maggie, Tater, The Fam.

Cooking with Carol: Bypass Orange Blueberry Bread

After the car ride from hell after Dad’s quintuple bypass, my parents and I made it home and proceeded to make Dad dinner.  The man will eat just about anything, so it wasn’t an issue of taste.  The problem was that while he was in the hospital, a side effect of his surgery is that he became diabetic.   (Sounds made up, is totally a thing.)  So in addition to having to create a heart-healthy diet for him, we had to do one that was according to American Diabetic Association’s guidelines.  But we weren’t worried.  But we were strong, we weathered his heart surgery, we could make one damn plate of food.  We had been given a pretty pamphlet that looked like it’d been drawn in crayon in the 70’s but it outlined things fairly well.  We had this in the bag.  We’d feed the cheery, slightly high man sitting on the couch and visiting with the neighbors and everything would be fine.

Mom and I decided we’d make a kind of quick and easy stir-fry as she hadn’t exactly planned for a week-long trip to the hospital and the food in the house was sparse.  First off, we heated up some canned salmon and made rice.  Now, rice isn’t great for diabetics, but we were new to this and the man demanded rice at every meal.  Things were doing swimmingly.  We measured out portion sizes, trying to make sure there weren’t too many carbs, counting out the numbers as if everything depended on it.  Because as far as we were concerned, it did.  (Diabetes is scary business.)

Next up was adding vegetables.  It was here that we were stopped in our tracks.  Not all vegetables are created equal.  Some were perfectly fine, while others had carb levels that would teeter Dad over into Bad For Diabetics food-territory.  The problem were the peas and corn.  We had a can of mixed veggies but they were full of peas and corn, which are starchy vegetables and need to be eaten sparingly.  Thing is, Mom hadn’t read the pamphlet like I had on the car ride home, so she wasn’t getting the whole starch/vegetable connection.  Peas and corn came from the ground!  They were good for you!  Peas and corn saved lives on a daily basis!  They were the heroes of the vegetable world!  Viva le peas and corn!

Meanwhile, I stood hunched over the kitchen table, eying this can of mixed veggies, trying to figure out how to add them to the pan.  If I picked out the peas and corn, would the other vegetable be contaminated?  Were peas and corn bad influences?  Could they infect carrots and green beans with their evil starch, causing them to smoke and talk back to their mothers?  How much of an influence did the devil carb bastards have?!?

So my mom and I, in our frazzled and tired states, both desperately in need of a shower and a nap, argued. Read More

February 2, 2012 6 Comments Short URLCookin' with Carol, Recipes, The Fam.

New Feature! Cooking with Carol: Recipes for Captain HeartAttack

Weird title, eh?  Don’t worry, all will be explained.  Eventually.  But first, some background.

So I have a dad.  We call him the Tyrant.  We are not being ironic.

He’s a tough dad, as dad’s go.  He’s not much taller than me and has a Guyanese accent that my mom and I don’t hear, but just thick enough to  make people think he possibly may have just cussed at them.  He used to rebuild engines, play racquetball, jog miles at a time and clean his gun — all on a Sunday.  He also watches more TV than is healthy, but can’t remember any of the actors’ names.  I got invited to prom my sophomore year by a friend, and my father scared him so bad that I came home early.  He also met Jethro for the first time while he was headed to work; Dad was wearing a flak jacket and carrying a pistol.  Jethro was sufficiently rattled.

He’s my dad.  He’s okay.

He is also the recipient of a quintuple bypass.  Yeppers, quintuple.  That’s five, for those of who for whom is it too early to think.  He has never been overweight a day in his life, used to run daily and was even part of the team that the military used to test out their overhaul of the PT program standards in the eighties.  (Any of you Army dudes that hate PT or think it’s too rough?  Yeah, that’s my dad’s fault.) But none of that matters in the face of genetics and unhealthy eating habits.

See, Daddy (YES, I sometimes still call him that.  Deal with it.) liked peanuts.  And chocolate.  And nasty things like gizzards and fried plantain.  These things, over time, add up.  And when you’re predisposed to heart disease, even if you are the perfect weight and have muscles and stamina and such, you can have some problems.  My dad had high cholesterol for years, but wasn’t prescribed any medication.   He changed his diet, mostly, and then went about his business.  Only fat people have heart problems, right?

It was the summer of 2002 and I’d just moved back from Arizona.  My dad had been using his inhaler a lot and had a little chest pain but his asthma tended to act up when he did innocuous things, like watch Sanford and Sons and laugh too hard, so we didn’t think much of it.  Problem is, his chest pain turned out to be asthma-induced angina.  He was scheduled for an angioplasty, until they took a good look at his arteries and found out five of them were clogged, some up to 90%.  It was June and without surgery, he probably wouldn’t have made it until Thanksgiving.  He was air-lifted to Austin for emergency surgery.

Yeah.  That’s a f*cked up phone call to get when your biggest concern is how you’re going to balance summer classes with copious amounts of drinking.  (Don’t worry, this gets more perky as the post goes on.) Read More

February 2, 2012 11 Comments Short URL, , , , , Cookin' with Carol, Health, Recipes, The Fam.

Spamalicious

SPAM. I thought my previous post was just a one-off, but the hits just KEEP ON COMIN’!  And by hits, I mean hilarious awesomeness, best evidenced by this:

Submitted on 2011/11/19 at 2:46 pm

There is a critical shroatge of informative articles like this.

A comment on the previous spam post. How meta!

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HostMonster Coupon might be Lizzie in disguise..

HostMonster Coupon Submitted on 2011/11/10 at 3:34 am

Who did you pay to do your website? Its really nicely designed I bet that is why you get so much traffic!

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conan subtitles download Submitted on 2011/11/09 at 7:26 am

Thanks for the good writeup. It actually was a entertainment account it. Glance advanced to far introduced agreeable from you! However, how could we keep in touch?

No, no, sweetie. Let’s just leave it like it is. Don’t cry. We’ll always have the music.

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audiograbber Submitted on 2011/11/08 at 5:11 am

Together with every thing that appears to be developing within this specific area, all your perspectives tend to be relatively radical. Having said that, I beg your pardon, because I do not give credence to your whole suggestion, all be it exhilarating none the less. It appears to everyone that your remarks are not entirely validated and in actuality you are generally yourself not even entirely convinced of your assertion. In any event I did enjoy looking at it.

Ummm…..r? Does that mean you like me, or not? I’ll let you go to second base either way, I’m just askin’…

Read More

January 30, 2012 12 Comments Short URL, , , , , , , Rants

Baby Freak-Out No. 1*

So, I’m truckin’ along, finally feeling human enough to get some cleaning done (some as in very little) when I discover an information card from an old wallet of mine. You know, the kind you get with your wallet that you can list all your personal information on in case you lose your wallet or purse? Or, after your sh*t gets stolen, the piece of paper that makes it easier for someone to come by and finish the job? Anyway, one of the listings on there was for allergies. I don’t really have any, but as I was thinking about that, I suddenly had a flashback to when I was about 8 or 9 and got a brand-new purse of my own for the first time. I had the same kind of card and filled it out, and in the “allergies” section, I put “Chocolate.” Somehow my mom saw that and was like, “Um, you’re not allergic to chocolate.” And I distinctly remember arguing with her, saying, “Yes I am! You TOLD me I am!” and she’s all, “No I didn’t!” and I’m all “YES, you DID!” and she’s like, “DID NOT. Now shut up and go clean your room!”

Because that’s what parents do when you’re annoying them and they want you out of their face.
Read More

January 27, 2012 19 Comments Short URL, , , I fail at life., Jethro, Maggie, Musings, Tater, The Fam.

I aspire, aspire, aspire…

Aspire is a funny word. It means not only to seek to attain a goal, but to also ascend and soar. Who doesn’t want to soar, to rise to the heavens and shine like a star? Well. As long as you don’t crash and burn.

I don’t aspire as often as I used to. I was an aspiring actress for a while, then an aspiring director and playwright. I guess I could be considered an aspiring writer, but everything I write get published online or turned in for an assignment…maybe an aspiring published in a real life book I wrote all by myself writer? Am I an aspiring mom since I’m growing Tater, and why don’t I like the sound of that? (The aspiring part. The mom part I’m getting used to.)

I know that I aspire to be more organized and clutter-free. That seriously might be a pipe dream. (I have PILES; deal with it, Jethro!) Read More

January 20, 2012 11 Comments Short URLMusings

Before and After

As much as I’d like to think that pregnancy hasn’t changed me, my first trimester done messed my world UP.  Aside from the constant weirdness physically —”I’m hot!  My boobs hurt! I’m cold! Hug me! I’m gonna throw up! My head hurts! GOD, I’m so tired! Don’t touch me! Why is it so HOT in here? You’re ignoring me!  I’m starving! OH GOD, I’M GONNA HURL!” — there are some other definite changes goin’ on in the Mess household.

Before: Jesus, Jethro; X-Factor again? God, I hate this show, all they do is bitch at each other.

*half an hour later* Thank God that’s done.  Is NCIS on?

After: BWAHHHHH!! Why did they kick Rachel off?!? SHE’S JUST A BABY!  Look at her, she’s sooo SAAAAADDDD!  *SOB*  WHHHHYYYY??

*half an hour later*

*SOB*  WHHHHYYYY??

~~~~~~~

Before: Gee, I’m hungry.

After: I swear on all that is holy, if you do not decide where we are going to eat RIGHT THIS SECOND, I will stab you and leave you dead in a ditch.

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Before: *sniff*  Ew.  Dog, did you just fart?

After: *sniff*  DEAR LORD IN HEAVEN! Release the beasts the occupy thy bottom, fair canine!  Such a smell can only be devil’s work! BEGONE, DEMON!!!!!

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Before: Aww, that Freebirds worker is so sweet, flirting with me when I’ve got no makeup on and I’m all raggedy.  You earned your tip, you charmer.

After: CHOP, CHOP HIPSTER!  Less talkey, more burrito MAKEY.  If I do not get steak and rice goodness in my hand POST HASTE, I will rip that goddamn plug out of your ear and shove it up your ass.

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Before: Ooo, I’m nauseous and vaguely vomity. I should not have drank so much last night.

After: Ooo, I’m nauseous and vaguely vomity. It must be a day that ends in “-y”.

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Before: Ooo. A Popsicle. What a cool and delicious treat.

After: Eat my last Popsicle and I WILL END YOU.

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Before: Hmm. Jamba Juice? Only if there’s booze in it! Ha ha ha!

After: *driving* La la la…Wait. Was that a JAMBA JUICE?!? *screeching tires, breaking glass, yowling cats sound as I u-turn* Orange Carrot Karma, I need you inside me!!!!

~~~~~~~

Before: Oh, it’s only 9:30 pm. Let’s start the movie!

After: *SNORE*

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Before: Oh, it’s only 5:30 pm. Let’s run to the mall!

After: *SNORE*

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Before: Oh, it’s only 12:30 pm on a Saturday. Let’s take a drive somewhere!

After: *SNORE*

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Yup.  Pregnancy – 1, Alyssa – big fat stinkin’ zero.

This kid better cure cancer, otherwise we will be in a fight.

January 18, 2012 15 Comments Short URL, , , , Health, I fail at life., Pregnancy, yo., Tater, The Fam.

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