Peeps this, yo!

You see what I did there, with the pun?! Ahahahaha! I crack myself up. Anyshway, as I was blog hopping the other day (similar to bar hopping, but not) I happened upon these. What are they you wonder? They're s'mores bars in a jar! Say THAT five times fast...no really, I'll wait.

What I did was put about 1 1/4 C of Easter M&Ms in the bottom of a quart sized mason jar. Then I smooshed 8 Peeps around the jar inside. Next, I annihilated one sleeve of graham crackers and mixed it up with 1/3C brown sugar which was fun until the graham cracker packaging busted and my bedroom floor was covered in a nice graham cracker dust. I put a sandwich sized Ziploc in the middle of the Peeps and scooped the graham mixture in. Be sure to press the graham mix down and work it into the bag, otherwise it will NEVER FIT!

Ok, so what I haven't done yet is print up the cutesy little recipe card that will accompany these little beauties. What the recipient will need to do is take out the bag of graham mixture and mix that up with 1/2 C melted butter and 1 tsp. vanilla. Press into 9" square pan. Pour M & Ms and lay Peeps on top, bake in 350 degree oven for 15 mins! YUMMY!

I do plan on fancying the jars up a bit with ribbon or fabric or something.

Somewhere inside of me, a screw ball redhead is trying to get out.

Picture it, Sicily 1923... Ok, sorry. Just channeling Sophia from "The Golden Girls" for a second there. But seriously, picture it: me fixing dinner. The kids are in the living room playing, the windows are open, letting the gentle, clean breeze drift through the house. Uh-oh. The food is too hot for the kids. I don't want to put it in the fridge as I've got enough crap stuff in there already. Ah, the window sill over the sink. The cool breeze with gently cool their plates. CRAP!!! Gentle breeze became strong gust! Plates have fallen out of the window! I traipse outside to see if anything is salvageable...not so much. I look up to see our teenage neighbor and her boyfriend snickering. Oh well. Chicken nuggets and macky-cheese it is then.

Yeah, that TOTALLY happened last night. I had made the kids some yummy meals and they simply FELL OUT OF THE WINDOW. There was chicken stew with rice, grapefruit segments, green beans and nilla wafers all down the side of the house. It's of note that the kitchen window is near the road, and is also visable to a major street. Wonder how many people saw?

Go on, laugh. I would laugh too. This kind of thing doesn't happen to everyone folks, only me and Lucy Ricardo. I hope this somehow brightened your day!

How many different languages can I say this?

I' 沒懷孕的m. Je ne suis pas enceinte. Ich bin nicht schwanger. Δεν είμαι έγκυος. Non sono incinto. Eu não estou grávido. Я не супорос. I AM NOT PREGNANT!! Cheese and rice, man. It's getting to the point of ridiculousness. Every time I mention I don't feel well, or I'm tired, or something like that, Fifi responds with a snide, "You're not pregnant are you?" I swear. It feels like I'm back at the Naval hospital. All you military gals/military dependants feel me on that one? ANY time you go in to the doc at a naval hospital they give you a pregnancy test. Apparently, if something is wrong with you and you're of child bearing age, you're either pregnant or you need a Motrin. Female with a broken leg? Hmmm, you must have broken that cuz you're pregnant. Let's order a pregnancy test, STAT! Male with a broken leg? Here, have a gigantic bottle of Motrin. You're all better now, so leave.

She just cannot understand that no, I am NOT PREGNANT. There is only like a .001% chance that I could even get preggers right now, so I'm gonna go with the NOT PREGNANT theory. It's slightly annoying. She can blab all day long about her gastrointestinal problems but the INSTANT I complain of anything she jumps on the pregnancy thing.

I think I need to start wearing this shirt to work

Sassy, no?

Maybe I'll just start doing the same to her, despite the fact that she's 62 yrs old and has had a hysterectomy.

Flashback Friday

Can you spot this sassy blogger? Um yeah, that's me all the way to the left.
This was my, I dunno, 5th or 6th birthday? Probably 5th. I think we moved to California before I turned 6. Mom, are you reading this? Which birthday is this?
Rock on with your bad self lil Mamma Ducky! Also of note, my shirt has duckies on it!
Happy Friday peeps. Hope your weather is better than ours has been the last few nights (and will be again tonight).

Do I What?!

Ok, so I just outed myself as that "behind the times chick who doesn't GET twitter." Seriously, I just DON'T get it. Do I really need to know what people are doing at any given minute? Better yet, do I want to know?

While watching Good Morning America the other day the anchors were tweeting WHILE they were on the air. Um, what was the point in that? I can totally see you on TV. You don't need to tweet me to tell you you're about to do the weather.

I dunno, man. Maybe I'm just scared that if I delve into the world of Twitter that I'll never dig myself out.

I do know the story how Twitter pretty much saved some guy after he was arrested in a foreign country. As he was being arrested he twitted twatted tweeted about it and his friends got in contact with the American Embassy yadda, yadda, yadda, Twitter saved the day. So on that note, Yay for Twitter!

But still I resist. I really don't expect to find myself in a situation where Twitter would save my life. But then again, there is a chance. Why risk it, eh?

So, who wants to school this chick on the magic of Twatting?! Oh Stephen Colbert, how you make me giggle.

Seriously folks, I'm absolutely clueless. I DO have a Twitter account. I got that far but then I got scared and ran away like a little schoolgirl. Teach me, oh wise readers.

You say cheapskate like it's a bad thing.

I got a Williams and Sonoma catalog the other day. I love their stuff, but it's so friggen expensive! I spotted these CUTE cute cute carrot bags! Yeah, cute until I looked at the price tag. $24.50 for that! I said to myself, "Self, you can totally make those." So on my lunch break yesterday I hopped pun intended on over to Wally-World to check out their felt selection. Eh, not too great, but they did have orange and green. So last night I whipped up a little prototype. I say prototype cuz I hope-to-Bob that I can do better than this.
The top edges of the carrot are kind of a scalloped stitch. Not really happy with how that turned out, so I'll try another.
Notice I didn't even bother to trim the excess thread? Yeah, I was tired, lol.

For the name, I used fabric marker (the kind that you can wash off) to mark it, then took some embroidery floss and stitched over it real quick like.

I'm not completely satisfied, but plan to get this little project looking perfecto! I'll post the how to's once I've got it just how I want it.

I figured that I could make one of these for each of the girl's classmates for less than $4.00. Yeah, totally beats $24.50!

This is me whining....again.

I have nothing cute or sarcastic to say. I'm kind of in a downer mood. The Dude is in Houston on a last minute business trip. The kids are upset because they don't remember him coming in and kissing them before he left. I feel am fat.

I don't say that looking for someone to say, "no you're not!" thanks anyway Dude . I have mirrors folks. I can see it. I also have a scale that tells me I'm losing this battle despite my efforts. I really am making an effort! I've cut my portions in half (at least). I only drink the occasional Coke (for you non-southerners, that is any carbonated beverage). I'm moving more, hell, my 30 minute break at work is now occupied by the treadmill or exercise bike. Yet still, I gain.

Something is amiss. I'm extremely tired despite the fact that I'm getting more sleep these days. My muscles ache all the time. Every morning I feel like I've been hit by a bus. My joints ache too, which is odd and new.

This is just depressing. My sister in law's wedding is in a few weeks and I DO NOT want to be in any of the family pictures looking this way.
I have a family party to attend this summer. I'm looking forward to it, but then again, not so much. I was always the chunky one in my family, but this will be the very first time that I am actually ashamed to show my family what I have let myself become.

Meh. I'm whining. Sorry this is such a downer post. You know what would cheer me up and always does? Baking. But that would only make my waistline grow even more.

Blah.

Memories on a Monday

Memories, light the corner of my mind.

Misty water-colored memories...

Did I go too far, with the Babs lyrics? Sorry. Couldn't help myself.

This past weekend we took the kids down to the island and stayed at the inlaw's beach house. Beautiful weather. The bluebonnets were in bloom and their sweet smell filled the air.

I remembered, as a child, pulling over on the interstate once to snap some pictures of all us kids in the blooming bluebonnets. Being in a nostalgic mood, I insisted The Dude help me wrangle the kids over to a patch of the bright blue flowers. Pickles grabbed a bunch of the flowers and repeatedly insisted I "(s)Mell! (s)Mell!"

It really was a beautiful weekend.

Is It Monday?

It sure feels like a Monday. Perhaps I fell into some cosmic wormhole and skipped right to Monday?? Hmm, worth investigating.

For whatever reason, I slept like crap last night. Poor lil Pickles is still fighting some bottom molars, so he didn't sleep that great either. When I woke up, my whole body ached. Body...boday....booody...what's up with that? It just doesn't look right. Let me spell check right quick here. Interesting. Spell check didn't have a problem with any of my spellings of "body." Weird.

Wait, where am I? Where was this blog going? Oh yes, yes. Today isn't really Friday, it's Monday. Got it. Back on track here. So, crappy sleep, achy body. On top of those two things, my house cleaning gnome TOTALLY bailed on me last night. I woke up to a dirty house! The nerve of that little guy! I'm writing him a strongly worded letter. Can gnomes read?

Ugh, so I had to do the dishes, laundry, and pick up before work. The twins, of course, were in great moods. By great, I mean their heads didn't do complete 360s and they didn't spit split pea soup at me. They did, however, hide my hairbrush and sunglasses from me. I bet I look awesome driving down the road. Hair like a crazy person and all squinty-eyed from the lack of sunglasses.

The cherry on top of my morning was that my Tahoe wouldn't start. Damn. Called the dealership and they can squeeze me in...on Wednesday. Happy Friday kids!

Sweet Success

Apparently, when one pisses off most of the nation with a stupid-ass proposal to charge veterans' private insurance for care of injuries sustained in combat, and the entire country throws up the the bullshit flag, one backs down. The White House released a big "Psyche!!!" after deciding maybe that wasn't such a good idea.

There is still the point that the President even proposed this idea. Speaks volumes, eh? All of the, "it wasn't him, it was his advisers" can cry me a friggen river, mmmm-kay? You can't proclaim that he's a wonderful leader, then turn around and use the old "it wasn't his idea" poop-scuse. If he were, in fact, a wonderful leader he'd have given a melvin to the guy that shoved this proposal his way, and left a flaming bag of poo on his front porch. Well, that's what I would have done. Perhaps that's why I'm not the leader of this GREAT nation. It is still great. I don't care what anyone else says.

K, I'm done with my little jig on the soapbox.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I'm in a stellar mood today. Not sure why. Oh wait, I DO know why: the bane of my existence my boss is out of town till next week!!! Of course, he's on a trip to New York, that The Dude actually won for the company. Nice eh? Oh, oh! While he's away, The Dude and I get to care for his super high maintenance dogs. Seriously. One of the dogs requires a, twice daily, baby wipe-bath. You have to rub the sucker down with a baby wipe and then spray anti-itch stuff all over it. These aren't small dogs either. They're full sized boxers. Fun times.

I'm Mad as Hell and I'm Not Going to Take this Anymore!

This is kinda relevant again, no? The current economic situation is a roundabout reason for my pissed-off-idness new word, write it down. Yesterday I read about Mr. President's proposal regarding private insurance reimbursing the VA for treatment of veterans wounded in combat. Um, what? Let me get this straight, we're gonna send you off to fight for our country and if you get wounded we'll bring you home BUT we're gonna make your private insurance company pay for your treatment?! Wow, nice kick to the nuts there for ya. Not really surprised that the White House refused further comment on the proposal.

The administration is looking at it like private insurance companies are "getting free ride" by not having to pay for these veteran's treatments while the veterans pay the insurance companies premiums. Guess what, they're paying the premiums for everything else, not the combat related injuries. No one is getting a "free ride" here.

I think they're missing something here. Take for example our small, family run business. We offer insurance coverage to our employees. We pay part, the employee pays part. Standard, right? Say The Dude was injured in combat and needed medical care related to that injury for an extended period of time, or for life. If our private insurance plan had to pay for that care we, as a business, would probably NOT be able to afford to keep The Dude on our plan. The rates would be so outrageous that we simply could not absorb the premiums. So now, The Dude has to find insurance on his own. What insurance company is going to take him on, knowing they'll have to throw down a crap-ton of money on him (pre-existing condition much??!). OR, if they do take him on, how would we ever be able to afford the premiums? That is just NOT fair.

Mr. President essentially told the veteran's groups he met with that if they can come up with a better idea that would be great. Guess what to quote my Shasty "it's not my job motherfucker!" YOU, sir, took on this job with the promise of fixing everything. I realize it's a tough job. Personally, I would never want to be President. Perhaps this is the problem with having a Commander in Chief who never served in the military.

Oh! Oh! Pick me! Pick me!! I have an idea!!!! How about taking the 540 million the President is looking for, from the bailout money!! How much sense does it make to GIVE eleventy billion dollars not an actual figure to companies that made bad financial decisions, but try and TAKE money from those that this country should be caring for?

These young men and women sign up to serve this great country. The only thing they ask is to be cared for should they come home injured. Is that really too much to ask? It breaks my heart to read stories like my Shasty's. Troops should have better options available to them than a pat on the back, a "good job" and sent on their merry little way. Private groups are picking up the slack, or at least trying to, but how many veterans are suffering in silence. Too many I fear. Let's not add to their stress with passage of this bill.

Maybe we all should open the windows and shout like in the clip. Maybe the White House would sit back and say, yep, THAT was a stupid idea. What were we thinking??

This is it? Really??

**Crickets chirping**

Hmm, nothin huh? I was certain trumpets would sound and a choir of angels would sing, or at the very least a confetti gun would go off and I'd be stuck combing bits of paper out of my hair for weeks. But nothin'. I guess this being my 100th Post means nothing to John Q. Public. This kinda snuck up on me anyway. In my head I had intended to have a giveaway and all, but with the Spring Fling happening last week I'm tapped out for right now (p.s. Andy, I still need your mailing address, love). Sis in law's wedding is quickly approaching and we're ripping out our master bathroom (last Gustav repair, yay!!). I'm finding it hard to do much of anything besides complain ~ which I'm super good at. If there were an Olympic medal for complaining, I would surely take the Gold, Silver AND Bronze. I fancy the bronze anyway.

Ok, back to reality. I do have a little recipe and idea for you lovely peeps. Back in the day, when The Dude was in Iraq, he would long for some of my baking goodness. There was the slight problem that mail was taking a month or more to reach him (this was in the early days of the war). On some military wives/mothers chat room someone mentioned baking cakes in wide-mouthed mason jars. Oh man, it was on like donkey-kong.

I baked everything from muffins, to cakes, to brownies, all sealed and contained in little glass jars. I even did a "birthday cake." I did his favorite kind of cake in the jar, then sent a can of frosting and some candles along. Voila! Ah, but how did I keep the jars from breaking? Well, The Dude simply wore a pair of socks for several days before throwing them away (no washing facilities at the time), so he went through a lot of socks. I simply wrapped the jars in lots of socks! Those flat rate boxes were a god-send because those suckers got heavy.

I decided to pull out the old mason jars and bake away. I made a blueberry coffee cake (I guess that's what I'd call it).

I used half pint jars this time, but you can use larger ones. I used pint sized when shipping them to The Dude.

The ingredients:

*It should be noted that I decided to add a crumb topping AFTER mixing up the batter, so there is no picture of those ingredients.

1 1/2 C all purpose flour

2tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 C sugar

1/4 C butter, softened

1 egg

1/2 C milk

3 C fresh or frozen blueberries
Before you do ANYTHING, you have to sterilize the jars and lids.

Now, they have fancy-shmancy machinery that can do that for you. I am neither fancy, nor shmancy, so I just boiled mine. Take your biggest pot and fill it with enough water to cover the jars. Boil the jars and lids for 10 minutes. Remove jars and dry on paper towels. *While your jars boil, you can whip up your batter.

Heat your oven to 350 degrees. Sift together your dry ingredients onto a piece of waxed paper or parchment paper. In a large bowl, beat the sugar and butter until light and fluffy. Add egg, beat well. Alternately add dry ingredients and milk into sugar mixture. Fold in blueberries.

I've experimented with various forms of greasing the jars and I've found this method to work the best. Using a paper towel folded around your fingers, smear Crisco all over the inside. Be careful not to get ANY on the lip of the jar. If you do, just wipe it off with a paper towel.

Fill the jars about 2/3 of the way full.

At this point, I decided a little crumb topping was needed. I combined 1/3 C flour, 1/2 C brown sugar, and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Cut in 1/4 C butter. Sprinkle on top of your batter filled jars.

To catch any spill-overs, and it's just plain easier this way, put your jars in a pan and THEN into the oven.

I baked mine for about 25 minutes and they were done. Test them the same way you test any cake. Of course, you'll need a much LONGER toothpick. Since I couldn't get the giant at the top of my beanstalk to part with his, I just used a kabob skewer.

Carefully pull the lids and rings out of the water. Quickly dry them off with paper towels and set the lids on top of the jars. As they cool they will seal. You'll start to hear little "pops" as they seal. Once they're sealed and cooled, screw on the rings and you're finished.

This last picture was taken with my cell phone this morning. I brought one to work for breakfast. I just loosened around the edge with a butter knife and the cake slid right out.

Tears of a clown

The Pecan Street Preschool Mafia strikes again. I was, yet again, not let in on the latest school event. I was totally stoked to have a prime spot in the pick-up line today. I should have KNOWN something was up. As my little Twinkies walked up to the car, I thought it scary as hell a little odd that their teacher was dressed up like a clown. "Ummm, what a lovely outfit Ms. Debra has on today, isn't it girls?!" She gives me a half smile and loads my little people into the car.

Twin A has this look on her face that is just gut wrenching. She looks like I have just run over her cat. "Hey Mr. Grumpy Gills, what's wrong?" She doesn't reply. Alrighty, I'll just skip over this little incident in the making. "What did y'all do at school today?" I inquire.

"You didn't come to the circus. ALL of the other Mommies came. But not you."

First of all, I heard NO mention of any circus event at the school. When I dropped them off this morning they certainly didn't ask if I would be attending.

"What circus?"

"We had circus day today and all the Mommies came. Why didn't YOU come?" She was almost about to break into tears at this point. Then she hit me with the kick to the gut.

"K's Mamma came. She let us stand by her. K's Mamma came and you didn't." Motherf..."K's Mamma" is none other than Alpha Beauty Queen Mom. GREEEAAT.

Is this woman now trying to turn my babies against me now? Gah! Like TODAY I needed that.

How do you apologize to a 3 yr old and make her understand that I did not intentionally skip their "big" day. I tried to tell her that Mommy had to work, blah, blah, blah. She wasn't biting. Thank GOD there was a bag of cotton candy tied to her school bag. As I pulled her out of the car at the babysitter's house I told her that she could eat all of the cotton candy she could stand, then made the "I don't know where she got that stuff from" shoulder shrug to the babysitter. Sweet. Redemption, in the form of sticky goodness.

This is only partially related to the story I just told, but here goes. Alpha Beauty Queen Mom has pictures of MY KIDS on her iPhone yeah, even her phone choice is better than mine. I kinda feel like the kid with the Payless tennis shoes while she has the Air Jordans....CRAP! I'm WEARING Payless shoes right now!!! How do I know this you ask? She ran into The Dude out somewhere and got all giggly talking to him about the twins and showing off the pictures she had snapped of them. Gag.

We totally DIDN'T cheat!

This is sooooo gonna come off as us two being cheaters, but we totally DID NOT CHEAT! That being said, Andrea, over at Finding Fairytales won the giveaway! Here's the part that you're gonna think we cheated. If you go over to her site, you'll see that I won HER giveaway.

We both used http://www.random.org/ to select our winners. So if you need someone to blame, it's them please say you still love me!!!!

I have some other things to bitch talk about. That, unfortunately will have to wait till a little later. Our office is in the process of being audited (I've had to sit with the auditor and answer LOTS of questions: I know nothing! I swear!) , AND my desktop at work STILL has the nasty virus. Kill me now.

EZ Combs Giveaway!

It's Spring Fling at SITS y'all yes, that is my best Britney Spears impression. Anyway, The Dude and I were up late one night flipping through channels. We got sucked into an infomercial channel. On came the add for EZ Combs. Sweet! I have super thick, coarse hair. Finding clips and stuff to hold my hair is a challenge. These seemed like a great idea. The Dude suggested I run to the computer to order them straight away and I did. I think I was too excited because apparently I ordered 3 sets (Ooops!).

None of these pictures are of me you wouldn't believe how hard it is to take a picture of the back of your head by yourself!

Ok ok, so this is for 3 ez combs: one black, one brown, one crystalish whitish. You can do all kinds of hairstyles (even ponytails!). They work for thin or thick hair because twisting them not only gives it a cute look, but tightens up the hold. Click on the ez combs link to see videos.

Comment for entry (I'm not gonna ask you to follow me for extra entries or crap like that cuz I only want you to follow if you enjoy my blog!

**I will also send along the DVD with full instructions. Not that it takes a rocket scientist or anything, but ya never know. Enjoy the Spring Fling!

I love the smell of oranges in the morning!

The weekend in South Louisiana saw beautiful weather. It was the kind of weekend where you throw open all the windows and spend the day outside. Glorious I tell you.

Lil' Pickles played a little golf.

Twin A played Supergirl by catching a ride on Mommy's unmanicured feet.

Twin B lounged around on a blanket, watching the clouds roll by.
When I opened my kitchen window in the morning to let the breeze pass through, the overwhelming scent of orange blossoms took my breath away. I was used to smelling them in Southern California, but not so much around here. One of my neighbors has a tree or two, they must.
I glanced over at the enormous bag of California navel oranges on my counter and starting thinking. Mmmmm, honey orange pancakes sounded delightful!

I added the zest of one orange, replaced 1/4 Cup of the liquid with fresh squeezed orange juice, and approx. 1/2 Tablespoon of honey to our pancake mix.

Oh they tasted glorious and very SPRINGY. Is springy a word? It is now, note it in your dictionaries.

They smelled amazing while cooking too. I fell so much in love with the orange taste, I later whipped up a batch of my great grandmother's sugar cookies, with the addition of the zest of one orange and 1 tsp lemon extract. YUM!

No one ate just ONE cookie. It was more like three or four at a time. When I get home, I'll add my great grandmother's Lazy Day Sugar Cookie recipe. It is the best sugar cookie recipe I've ever tried (and I've tried A LOT!).

EDITED TO ADD RECIPE

Grandma Katcher's Lazy Day Sugar Cookies

1/2 Cup butter

1/2 Cup shortening

1/2 Cup granulated sugar

1/2 Cup powdered sugar (sift me please!)

1 1/2 tsp vanilla

1 egg

1/2 tsp. cream of tartar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

2 1/4 Cups flour (sift me too!)

Cream butter, shortening and sugars in large bowl. Add vanilla and egg, mix well. Sift together remaining ingredients, then slowly add to butter mixture. Roll balls of about 1 tsp. dough. Put a few Tablespoons of granulated sugar into a small bowl. Dip the bottom of a flat bottom glass into the sugar and flatten the cookies. Re-dip glass after flattening each cookie. Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven for 10-12 minutes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Let's not forget that tomorrow is the SITS Spring Fling! I'll have a small giveaway to join in on the festivities, so remember to stop back by.

Oh oh!!! We had a crawfish boil yesterday. I have loads of pictures and will pop up a recipe for ya so y'all can try a boil yourself (you can boil any shellfish using this recipe. Works well with crabs and shrimp too).

Move Over iPhone!

If the F-bomb, or any cuss word, offends you, do not watch this video. If they don't, watch on cuz this is HILARIOUS. It's from The Onion. If you haven't heard of that, you need to Google it and school yourself. Happy Friday!
Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work
I'm fairly certain most households in American have one, if not several, of these items.

The Silver Lining

Last weekend, I had to gleefully attended my sister in law's bridal shower. It was supposed to be a "floating" shower I know, I didn't know what the hell it meant either. According to my understanding of this type of shower, one was free to drop in, or "float" in I guess, at one's discretion, drop off the gift and float on out. I dragged went with The Dude's aunt (Fifi). We floated on in, about a half an hour after the shower was to begin. Mmm-kay. UNCOMFORTABLE. We walk in and realize we're horribly under dressed. We thought "church clothes" would suffice...apparently not. See, The Dude's sister and all of her friends have these delusions that they are akin to Carrie Bradshaw and the other gals from "Sex in the City." They dress in fancy, fashionable clothing, sport pearls, and ridiculously high heels. All of these girls are young and newly out of college. Their tiny apartments are decorated like they're the queens of Sheba. Some are still living on Mommy and Daddy's dollar. In fact, the shower was held at the Maid of Honor's Mom's house. Where was I going with this? Oh yes.

The only redeeming part of this event was the unbelievable strong Mimosas. Well, that and the super-fab pasta dish that was served. I poked around the food table and was truly unimpressed, until I spotted IT. I knew each of the bridesmaids had each brought a dish. A quick scan of the girls and I KNEW which one had brought the only good tasting dish. Amongst the waifish dolls stood one slightly plump girl. BINGO! I sweetly asked who had made the pasta dish and she shyly raised her hand. Ha! I knew it! 'Atta girl! Mmmmm, chicken pesto pasta dish, you were divine. I had two platefuls, washed down with, the tiniest, slice of fresh fruit Doberge cake (never let the skinny girl cut the cake slices...geez).

I knew I'd have to replicate it, and the flavors weren't that hard to figure out. Just to be sure, I asked the girl what was in it, and floated on outta there. It should be noted that no one else was doing any floating on out. Everyone just sat there, doing nothing...very odd.

Here it is folks:

The ingredients (not pictured is the pepper, which is simply to taste).

1lb Penne pasta, cooked and drained

1 Cup mayonnaise

1 Cup(ish) basil pesto *I was lucky enough to get that big jar of pesto from my friend! Thanks! P.S. I have your helping of the pasta dish in my fridge, so stop on by)

1Cup dried cranberries

1 Cup pecans (goody for you if you noticed I have walnuts in the pic. I was out of pecans)

3/4 minced celery

cooked chicken breast, chopped or shredded. Add as much or as little as you want.
In a good sized bowl, mix the mayo and pesto.

Add the cranberries, celery, nuts and chicken. Toss with pasta. Chill until serving.

A couple of tidbits of info. regarding this here post:

A.) I had to dig through this mess, sometimes called my purse,

to locate the thumb drive containing my memory card for the camera in order to shoot these pics. There was a lot of cursing involved.

2.) While I had no pecans with which to make this dish, I did have an unusually high stash of walnuts.

Go ahead, count 'em. Four, FOUR bags of walnuts! Why, I ask you, why?! I'm no big walnut fan, in fact, I don't even recognize the walnut bag on the far left. I have never seen that bag before. Weird. I must have little gnomes that stock my cupboards with walnuts in the night. Hey, at least it's better than the ones that refill mayonnaise jars (eeewww! Yeah, I TOTALLY just went there!).

Handbasket to Hell, party of one!

I try to steer clear of the whole idea that there is a "good" twin and a "bad twin." I used to chastise people who asked me which of my innocent darlings was the bad one. I'm starting to rethink my standpoint. Not that I would ever, ever admit this to anyone aside from you people and if you try to pin this on me I'll deny, deny, deny! , and I'll probably be sent straight to hell for thinking this, but seriously. After this morning's tirade, I seriously considered changing Twin B's character name on this blog to Rhoda.

Common people: Rhoda Penmark...the ORIGINAL bad seed! I totally own a copy of "The Bad Seed" and watch it a lot.

Perhaps I'm being a little harsh. She's not really that bad. She's just the difficult chi....holy moses! It just occurred to me why she is that way! She's (technically speaking) the middle child! Ding! Ding! Ding! Bells and whistles!! Hmmm. Not that this makes dealing with her during her meltdowns ANY easier, whatevs.

Just this morning we were having the shoe struggle...yet again. Twin A and even Pickles (well he tried) put on their shoes and socks and were ready. Little Rhoda Twin B ignored me, trotted upstairs and refused to come down. The Dude finally carried her down where she still refused shoes. After loading everyone up I came back for her. I find her standing there with her arms crossed with that "I'm not going to do a single thing you say" look on her face. Don't lie, you know you know that face!

After hysterics THE WHOLE WAY (2 blocks) to the sitter I ask her what the deal was. "You didn't let me brush my teeth." SERIOUSLY?! She's won again, dammit.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Our office is being audited next week. F-U-N! So in preparation, we I was getting all the necessary files ready. Fifi "tries to help" by pulling on some files above my head. Two problems here: I am taller than her so why is she doing this and she's pulling on the bottom folder which is under eleventy-million other folders. I look up just in time to see file folders crashing down. PAPER CUT TO THE NOSE! Who gets a paper cut to the nose? I do, that's who.

Ok, ok, so it doesn't look bad in this picture. Camera phone picture, what can I say. Maybe I'm just whining.

They Hate Me

The computer gods that is. I FINALLY got my work PC back up and running AND the Internet connection repaired. That being said, my Internet is working at about the speed of dial up.
Uh. Remember those days, pre-high speed Internet? How did we live?! I know, right?
Last night The Dude and I were watching the boob-tube (holla atcha Popscicle!), when a commercial came on advertising satellite Internet. I've heard tales of areas of the country that only have access to dial up to this day. Could that actually be true though? I thought it only tales told to frighten children and gamers. Apparently not. The commercial was specifically directed at people still using dial up.
Those poor people! Can you imagine waiting for your daily dose of YouTube videos to load? I mean my gosh! Can you imagine trying to surf through your favorite blogs at dial up speed? I shed a tear for those dial up folks. Poor souls. I had a nightmare about it, and this morning, my nightmare came true, sort of. All I know is that this crap better be fixed BEFORE the big SITS Spring Fling.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Now, on to more important business. My best girl, whom you know as My Shasty (aka Sassy Pants Wifey) has gone and created something wonderful. She's always trying to find ways to help people out. She has started a new blog called Care Across the Cities and I am so honored that she has asked me to be a contributor. The main point here is to help people! We all read blogs where the author seems to be a bit down. Maybe they got some bad news, stress at work, something. We want to cheer them up! We want to create a network of people willing to send cards, love, prayers, good vibes, comment love...ya feelin' me? We'll see where this all leads, but perhaps one day it will be more.
There will also be little suggestions on how to do more for your fellow man/woman. This country (and others for you bloggers from far away) could use a little more love and encouragement.
Spread the love people. Pay it forward.