Mo' Better

I think that Dr. Oz has been watching too much Honey Boo Boo, Reader. While I was packing for my New York work trip last weekend I had the telly on and caught an episode of Oz. Luckily this time he wasn't harking any expensive stupid diet pills, which catches me at my weak spot, also known as Miracle-Promise-at-Midnight for the low low price of $150, and I whip out my credit card and purchase a six months supply, which currently resides in my kitchen cabinet. 

Nope, it wasn't expensive. But it was intriguing. The whole story was about getting the most mileage out of your cuppa coffee in the morning, to avoid the slumps that come throughout the day. And the way you avoid that, Reader, is by putting a big ol' hunka butter in your cuppa morning coffee, avoiding the middle-man, also known as Bagel or Piece of Toast. So see how it's really saving you calories right there? Dr. Oz is a genius. So is Honey Boo Boo. 

Everything's better with Mo' Butter. 

Anyway. 

I've been thinking about the whole add-butter-to-your-coffee thing since I saw it and decided today was the day to put it to the test. For YOU, Reader, so I could report my findings and you could learn. Because I'm like a scientist. And a teacher. And like a sweary Mother Theresa, constantly giving back to The People. 

I brewed up a fine cuppa Maxwell House in the Keurig this a.m. and threw in a pat o' butter.  

It looked like this. 

It looks so much better on a bagel. 

But then I stirred it all up and it looked like this:

And even that didn't make it look better, but I tested it anyway, because I'm very daring with what I'll put in my mouth. I'm not sure if that's a good trait. But that's another thing I do for you Reader. 

The verdict? Well, it wasn't horrifying, because Mo' Butter, Mo' Better. Mixed with the nutty coffee, it sort of tasted like a cuppa buttered toast. 

I did end up adding a splash of vanilla creamer to it, because I didn't enjoy the oil slicky look first thing in the morning. 

The bad news is, I'm not able to report on the long-lasting effects until tomorrow. So you'll have to wait with bated breath, Reader, to find out if I had increased va-va-voom all day, or if my 2:00 p.m. nap time came anyway. 

Nominate me for Sainthood, Reader. The Pope needs to know about me. 

Just A Moment On the Lips

It wasn't all that long ago when I professed my undying love to another and even made plans for Happily Ever After.  

And now, Reader, I'm just a whore-y liar with an unfaithful mouth.  

That's the trouble with cheating. Once you get a little taste on your lips, you want it again. And again. And again. 

That is, if it's good. Sometimes you can get a taste of something new and you do not ever want to put that on your lips again. Sometimes. But sometimes it's the opposite, and it's all you can think about, putting your lips right back where they belong. 

Since Friday, it's been all I could think of. Well, not exactly all I could think of, but it's been hanging out in the back of my brain since Friday,  and when the opportunity presented itself today to meet up with my mouth again, I did, without hesitation. My lips wanted it so badly. Because my lips are unfaithful and whore-y. And my tongue, because it did a lot of the work, too. 

I thought Mitchell's Sea Salt Carmel and me could never be broken up. How wrong I was, Reader. How wrong indeed.  It was a fleeting love affair, and at the first sampling of another, it became my go-to selection - Lavender Honey. 

Maybe Lavender Honey and me are just a sweet and delicious love affair that will shine too hot and fizzle by Fall, and I'll be back with my beloved Sea Salt Carmel by the winter. Or maybe this is just the start of random samplings of other flavors. 

Never trust a girl with a whore-y mouth. Or at the very least, keep her around for a good time, but probably don't marry her. You learned, Salted Carmel, when she passed right by you at the ice cream window and didn't even give you a second thought.  She had moved on to the flavor of the moment.

There's Always a Catch

Tiny Town has been as hard this week as I feared it would be.

Too many meetings.
Too many projects.
Not enough me. 

Not one, but two folks bitched at my face because of projects I was late with. My response? Go tell my boss. Please. Please please please go tell her how I haven't met your deadline. Because I've been in meetings 7 hours a day. 

They didn't take me up on it. 

So I had this conversation with one of the people who's deadline I did not meet, he also happens to be a pal. 

Me: "I've decided to quit. I'm gonna sell the house. Move to Florida. Become a hobo." 

Coworker Pal: "Hm. If you move to Florida, that makes you a beach bum, not a hobo."

Me: "Well, I don't want to put on fancy airs. I'm fine with hobo-ing"

Coworker Pal: "But to be a hobo, I think you have to ride the rails."

Me: "Dammit. I'm fairly certain I cannot jump on - or out of - a moving boxcar. I guess I'm going to have to go with beach bum. I wonder how I'll look with dreadlocks."

Fool Me Twice, Shame On Me

Oh, Reader. Reader, Reader, Reader. ~punctuates each word with slow shake of head~ 

This is NOT the blog I had bottled up in my fingers to write tonight. No sirree, there was a whole 'nother story that thought it was going to be told. But sometimes life just writes 'em for me. 

Today was Spontaneous Friday. Meaning, I had no plans for this evening other than squandering a Dog Days summer evening in my pajamas watching Orange Is The New Black, because I miss Piper. 

Then I emailed one of my Bests, a.k.a. The Healthy Hoff, and was promptly invited to an adventurous dining experience of a Vegan Meet Up Group. So a bunch of people I don't know eating a bunch of food I probably won't like.

Of course I promptly said, "Yes!" to the invite, because The Hoff, and also because my other friendie Katie whom I haven't seen since For.Ever. was going, too. I figured I could enjoy a salad. And the menu was offering up a beet ravioli in some sort of a cashew sauce. Which, I have no idea how you make a sauce out of a cashew, but I was game., despite the all-too-recent memory of my last vegan meal, a.k.a. one of the Very Worst Things I've Had In My Mouth Lately. 

Plans were made. Despite a very long Friday at Tiny Town, I made it to the other side of the world to meet up with my Badass Plant Eater friend at 7:00 p.m. 

That shirt takes me right back to Pulp Fiction.

"Which one is your wallet?" 

Jules: "It's the one that says Bad Motherfucker." 

Anyway. 

The meal. Well, first off, each table had a platter of crudités  and something that looked like a hummus. Safe enough, right? Wait a second! First, first off, the menu did not include beet ravioli in a jizzy nut sauce. That was a trickster menu on their website. Motherfuckers. 

There was also fresh baked bread, which how can you go wrong with that,  and something that very closely resembled butter. In looks, Reader. I was skeptical about the flavor, but I smeared it on the bread and shoved it right in my mouth. Because I'm daring that way. 

I ordered a strawberry salad with some sort of a homemade vinaigrette dressing.  The Hoff ordered the Popricosh, which was a veganized version of Chicken Paprikash, only without the chicken or sour cream, or anything that makes a Paprikash a Paprikash. It had vegan spaetzles in it, which were floating around in some sort of a grinded-up nut sauce. 

Pretend this meal is a clock, with the bread & not-butter at the top. Then at 3:00 you have the how-can-you-fuck-it-up salad, at 6:00 is the this-isn't-paprikash-at-all, and then 9:00 brings you the this-is-some-kinda-hummus-for the crudités.  

The hummus was good. The bread & even the not-butter was palatable, because the bread was really good. The misspelled Popricosh? Meh. It was not the worst thing I've had in my mouth, but I didn't need to go back for seconds. 

Surprisingly, the worst thing in that little rock-around-the-food-clock image was the strawberry salad. The dressing was a water blah that slid off the lettuce leaves. This was the one time I wished some chef would have jizzed in my food, because surely it would have improved the taste.

Next in the dining sampling line up were an order of crab cakes.  VEGAN crab cakes, meaning ZERO crab or crab cake flavor. 

They had an interesting consistency, we deduced it was hearts of palm chopped up there for that crabby meat feel, and the jizzy sauce may have had actual jizz, because it had some flavor to it. But it probably wasn't jizz, and was more likely horseradish, and probably more ground up nuts. Because apparently nuts are a sauce. 

The Hoff ordered a bagel pizza to test. 

Doesn't that look delicious?? 

Katie ordered a real pizza. Well, let's be real - not a real pizza. A vegan pizza. Vegan pizza is not real pizza. At. All. 

I tried it. Oh, Reader, that would have been the time for a movie right there. 

Because Vegan Cheese?? The Worst Thing I've Had In My Mouth lately.   

After Vegan Meet Up Dinner Night, we headed to Mitchell's Ice Cream. I needed to cleanse my palette with some full-dairy caramelized chocolate and lavender & honey ice cream.

It did not disappoint me at all, and almost made up for that really horrible other stuff I put in my mouth tonight. Almost. 

And now I'm drinking a nice glass of merlot, so I can hopefully drink that meal offa my mind. 

How was your Friday night, Reader? I hope you put better things in your mouth. Tell. 

Chez Bang Bang Mysteries

Here's a little puzzle for you, Reader. About a month or so ago some dudes wandered into my yard while I was enjoying company on my deck. They offered up some cheapish yard services, trying to get a little repeat biz started. 

Always a sucker for a hard-workin'-man story, and living at Chez Bang Bang with it's yard just chock-fulla-nature-that-needs-maintained, I employed said dudes to trim my bush. Er. Trim my bushes. And pull some weed. Weeds. So the three of 'em got busy with my bush and weeds. Bushes! Fingers, stop making me sound all whore-y. 

Now, as an aside, I did tell the boys (they were in their mid-twenties or so) that if they took my cash and didn't do my yard work like they had promised I would dickpunch 'em all. They fell a little in love with me at that point, and the next thing I knew they were offering to be my chauffeur any time I wanted to go out on the town and tie one on. I haven't had to utilize those services, but it's nice to know the boys have my back. 

Anyway. The guys did their thing around my yard for an entire day, trimming back some trees and weeding the entire front and back of Chez Bang Bang, which is no quick or easy feat, made less so by the possibility of wayward snakes in the grass. They worked their nuts off for about five solid hours. They had this place looking tight.

And then one day I noticed in the landscaping by the side of the garage, they had pulled out two little square boards, which where in between some bushes at one point, and set them next to the drive. 

And then one day, a pair of shoes just appeared on these boards. 

Like, one day the boards were just boards, and then some other day shoes were sitting there. Right out of the blue. 

They look like water shoes, and at first I thought maybe they were our water shoes from the horrible adventure of West Virginia rafting, but I have all those shoes and these don't look like anything we've ever owned. 

Instead of moving the shoes or tossing them in the trash, I just let them sit there, and every time I'd pull in the drive I'd notice the shoes and ponder where they came from and how'd they end up just taking up residence in my yard. 

Today when I came home I glanced over to do my Shoe Check Routine, and noticed that only one shoe was there. 

I looked around in the bushes - well, let's be honest, I glanced in the vicinity of the bushes, there's no way in hell I'm actually climbing around in the landscaping because Snakes - and didn't see the other shoe nearby. 

It appears to have magically disappeared, as weirdly as it arrived, only it didn't take it's matching friend with it.

Reader, do you think I'm going to see a deer walking around the yard with one water shoe on?  How did they get there in the first place? Do you think the lawn dudes had something to do with it?? Would you have just left them there to ponder like I did, or would you have tossed them in the trash when you first noticed them and not given it another thought???  Now what should I do with the lone remaining shoe????  Leave it????? Or wait and see if it just disappears, too?????? These are the questions that rattle around in my brain and keep me from solving issues like World Hunger. 

We both know what's going to happen. I'm going to leave that shoe and track it's progress daily. Maybe I'll create a blog for it, and we can see what the Mystery Shoe is up to on a daily basis. Because that would be fun. Oh, you scoff (I can hear you), but I used to follow the trials and tribulations of a puddle on a  blog called Puddle Blog. And it was highly entertaining. Or maybe I need to find some real hobbies. Maybe. 

A New Day

Today was a really good day, Reader. In no particular order, a rundown of the day's events:

1. My co-worker, who I really really like a lot, quit. She got a better job. Her last day is Friday. I will miss working with her. A lot. I anticipate I may get extra work in the interim, which means even longer hours at Tiny Town and an extra heaping-helping of stress. Probably without more pay, because why. 
2. Kenny's 94 year old grandma Margie had surgery today to remove three fast-growing tumors from somewhere in her insides. She's in recovery. She needs to make it because another season of Dancing With The Stars is right around the corner, and they need her cheering on the sidelines. It's her favorite show. 
3. My asshole cat peed on the kitchen cabinet right in front of my eyes when I got home from work tonight. Because he is apparently pissed off about something (see what I did there, Reader? I looped the whole peeing thing right back around. You're welcome). 
4. The garage door stopped participating in it's job of closing today. Just out of the blue, decided not to close. So it had to be disengaged from the automatic garage door thingie and now I have to call a garage thingie repair person in the morning. I'll call them right after I call the Drain Guru for my slooooooow bathroom drain that I can't get to fast up, no matter what I try. Homeownership is awesome. 
5. I sort of got an apology from New Grass for being a dickhead, but it wasn't really so much an apology as it was just a statement of "I'm sorry." Is that an apology? I think when "I'm sorry" is used, it's an apology, although I can see how it could just be a statement of fact. I'm not clear. Regardless, whatever it was, it was fine and no hard feelings, despite the ridiculous dump-by-text-while-I-profess-to-love-you maneuver. I'm just not really into harboring sour grapes about it, what's done is done. So while it still stings, it's not as sharp and bitey as it was yesterday. Time wounds all heels or something to that affect. 

Do all those things sound like a really good day, Reader? Because while none of it sounds like it should amount to a really good day,  it was a really good day. The sun was shining. I went for a 2 mile walk, which I couldn't do a month ago before my magical new arthritis medication. I'm still feeling good about my Framily weekend, and I know my worth and am loved by those who matter to me in this world. And that, Reader, is a good day. 

Right Where I Need To Be

There's been a lot of sleeping around lately, Reader.  

Drinking & sleeping around, to be more exact. And it's been a whole lotta fun, natch, because Drinking & Sleeping Around = Fun. 

All this drinking & sleeping around has been coupled with spending time with those I love, including my friendies who moved to C-bus a year & a half ago. I drove down last weekend and slept around at their house, ate a really good meal and drank a most fantastic bottle of wine. Not necessarily in that order.  And I had this nosed in my crotch a time or two throughout the weekend:

I didn't say it was right, Reader. Only that it happened. 

It was really good to catch up with my friendies and get reground in what's important in my world. 

This past weekend was spent also drinking and sleeping around, only I had the pleasure of impromptu houseguests doing the sleeping at Chez Bang Bang. 

My sis-in-law, who is really divorced from my brother so she's an ex-in-law, but will always be Family, stopped over Saturday with my nephew & his girlie. Because my nephew is home on leave from the Air Force and we needed Family Time.

My sis-in-law & I drank. A lot.

We pretended to be on vacation with Jamaican Rum & Pepsi, that I brought back with me from Jamaica. The rum, not the Pepsi. That would be a long way to haul Pepsi.

The bottle was full when we started. Ahem.

We also split a bottle of wine. Wine we didn't even really enjoy because it was too dry and tart, but we drank it anyway because Wine. 

Stop judging, Reader. It's impolite. 

I wondered why I felt a little tweaked out this morning, and started to blame my new arthritis medicine for my queasy stomach and then remembered a jug of rum and a bottle of wine and oh, maybe that's the reason. Maybe. 

My nephew who is home from the Air Force is here with his girlie friendie and his favorite auntie, a.k.a. Trixie B-B.  I mean, I'm just going out on a limb and proclaiming to be the favorite auntie, because how could I not be - I'm sweary and drunk most of the time. Translate to Most Fun Aunt. Ever. 

And I've got a great rack, which that would be totally weird for my nephew even to notice.  But I mean, look at those things. They are real. And they are spectacular (see: Seinfeld). 

So all that drinking around led to a lot of sleeping around, but this time I was doing the sleeping around at my own house, and everyone else was drunk and/or just tired at my house and decided to camp out on the Porn Couch for the night. 

Today I realized that I am exactly where I need to be in my life - with my Framily. My friendies who I visit, or who stop in for a popover visit, which I've enjoyed the hell out of lately and often, and my family who are so comfortable at Chez Bang Bang that they pull up a blankie on the Porn Couch and call it a night. 

This is my Tribe. And where I belong.