A spoonful of peanut butter helps the medicine go down

Most people don't believe me when I tell them my mom baked cookies every day, or every other day, depending on how long a batch lasted, but the fact remains that I had a home-baked peanut butter chocolate chip cookie available to me every day of my childhood. And even better, she let us eat the dough as she was making it. That's right, no bowl-licking for us, because we were allowed to pinch two spoonfuls of dough before the rest of it got rolled into balls and baked.

I make those cookies myself now, the exact same recipe my mother used, only I let them come out of the oven slightly underbaked, so they're gloriously soft, and I use bigger chocolate chips (milk chocolate, even though my mom insists on using semi-sweet), but at their core they're the same cookies I had as a kid. Optimistic., who loves all things peanut butter, didn't know I had this cookie recipe up my sleeve when he married me, and he claims it is the best surprise of his life.

Well, I certainly don't make these cookies every day, seeing as how there's just the two of us, but every few months or so I whip up a big double batch to put in the cookie jar. Months back I was making a batch, and, remembering how much I loved stealing spoonfuls of dough, I thought Optimistic. might like to lick the spoon I'd used to measure out the peanut butter. He was is the office watching sports, just a few feet from the kitchen, so I called out, "Want to lick the peanut butter spoon?" Spoon in hand I peeked into the office to see him with his mouth gaping wide, awaiting a spoonful of peanut-buttery goodness, so I walked up and stuck the spoon in his mouth. He immediately gagged and spluttered, and pulling the spoon from his mouth asked "Why did you do that?!" Turns out he hadn't heard me ask if he wanted to lick the spoon at all, and his mouth was coincidentally agape due to having just witnessed some sort of amazing sports play.

Pinkies out.

This Friday I went to a tea party-themed baby shower, where dainty and fragile were the watchwords of the day. Real china, gourmet cupcakes, and of course, that quintessential shower food, the crustless cucumber sandwich. (How crust went out of style I'll never know.)

The question I pose is this: Was there ever a stranger juxtaposition than eating a dainty crustless cucumber sandwich off of fine china while the women at your table describe what it sounds like to have your uterus vacuumed out after a C-section? I declare that there is not. If I ever eat another cucumber sandwich it will be too soon.

An early-morning encounter with a Ouija slug

Yesterday morning I made my way downstairs to go to the bathroom, flipped on the light, and immediately noticed out of the corner of my eye that there was a dark blob in the shower. What was it, a giant beetle, and should I squish it? I didn't have my glasses on, so I edged closer to discover...a slug! Okay, squishing was out, because although slugs look squishy they are actually unpleasantly firm, sinewy, and sticky. (A fact which anyone who has ever stepped on a slug in their bare feet can attest to.) What to do? Salt it? Set it free? While I was making up my mind the slug started moving.

Slug: (squirm squirm squirm)

Me: Ah, you're making an "S." Well, all slugs can do that.

Slug: (wriggle wriggle wriggle)

Me: Oh, a "W." Now that's pretty impressive. I didn't think you were long enough for that. What's that you're doing now?

Slug: (writhe writhe writhe)

Me: Is it a "C"? No, a "J." Or is it an "A"? I feel like you need some vowels if you're going to spell something. Is that what you're doing?  

Slug: (flop flop flop)

Me: Of course, it seems to me you'd have a hard time doing really angular letters, like a "T" for instance. How could you possibly make a "T"? You couldn't, could you, and what if that were your next letter? 

Slug: (sludge sludge sludge)

Me: What is it boy, what are you trying to tell me? Wait a minute - S,W, A...T. SWAT! Sweet jeepers, is that it? Are they watching the house right now? You can just nod your head or something, you don't have to spell it all out.

Slug: (slalom, slalom, slalom)

Me: I think I'd better put you outside, otherwise they'll know we had time to talk.

And with that I tore a page out of a magazine, scooped him up, tossed him and the paper out the front door, and went back upstairs to bed, where my last thoughts before sleep consisted of wondering whether or not the slugs were trying to contact me, and if they were, would Hermione Granger be willing to relinquish her title of Queen of the Slugs to me?

I hope to make dozens of dollars

Friends, family, blog stalkers, my Etsy shop is now officially up and running. Tell your friends.

My Ting-A-Ling

We recently switched phone providers and had to buy new phones while we were at it. This was for the best, because Fact: my old phone actually had to be plugged in for me to use it, somewhat defeating the purpose of owning a mobile phone. Anyway, we're now with Ting (which you all should seriously consider looking into). There was some initial irritation on our part when they accidentally mailed one of our new phones to the wrong state, but all is forgiven. Do you want to know why? Because today when I called in to get my phone activated and was briefly put on hold while he looked something up, some familiar music started playing. Some very familiar music. Fact: it was the theme music from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension. I couldn't do anything for a full minute but laugh, I was so pleasantly surprised. Ting, you've won my allegiance.

In short, if you want my new number, or think I ought to have yours but don't, shoot me an email.

VHS tapes OR How I spent My Summer Vacation OR I Think It Might Be Love

For my sixteenth birthday my parents bought me a little TV with a built-in VCR, and man did I love it. Suddenly I could tape shows and watch them whenever I wanted. And if someone was watching TV upstairs, no biggie, I could go downstairs and watch something else. My TV even had a timer setting that would turn it on automatically, so I used it as an alarm clock, sleeping with the remote under my pillow. That's why I was so confused when I learned that John Ritter had died. I heard it on the early morning news when my TV turned on, but then I fell back asleep, and it worked its way into my dreams. So when I heard the news later that morning, I was sure I had made it happen. I dreamed he died, and then he was really dead. Heaven help us, no one was safe!

Mostly though, I watched a lot of TV and TV on DVD. That Christmas I got the second season of Gilmore Girls, and so during the post-present-opening-lull that comes Christmas afternoon when you've already given up on leaving the house because it would mean having to shower, my brother Rough Draft and I watched Gilmore Girls. After nine straight hours spent loafing in the dark watching the the antics of Rory and Lorelai, we agreed to take a break in order to get something to eat. Five minutes later, having consumed some crackers and water, we re-glued ourselves to my little TV screen and finished off the season.

Then there was the time that M-Lite started cleaning her room. With her bed a mess of clothes and items to be sorted, she came downstairs to sleep in my room where I had not one, but three beds set up. It was only supposed to be for a night, but it somehow stretched into a month. She kept all her things upstairs, but every night she'd come down to my room to watch TV (we tried to get into Cold Case) and end up staying there.

Nearly ten years later, I still have my little TV. I keep it in my craft room so I can have something on in the background while I work on things, which means I also have a small collection of VHS tapes. Too small, in fact. Because while I don't mind popping in and out of the room to rinse out paintbrushes during entertaining-but-mostly-just-stupid movies (Center Stage), there are others that I'd feel guilty for missing a single syllable of (Little Women). It's a problem of both quantity and quality, and the only solution I could see was getting my hands on more VHS tapes.

Today I was at Goodwill looking for a dresser, and while I struck out on that front (only ugly couches as far as the eye could see) I came across a bin of movies on VHS being sold for, get this, 10 for $0.99! At that price it was all I could do not to fill up my trunk!

Shall I tell you what I purchased? In no particular order, here are the gems I saw fit to buy:

1. Fiddler on the Roof (tradition!)

2. His Girl Friday

3. Great Sports Moments of the 80's (for Optimistic.)

4. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Rings

5. Titanic (a total guilty pleasure movie)

6. The Great Escape (I've been wanting to watch this for weeks, and there it was!)

7. Mouse Hunt (Optimistic.'s family hates this movie (for obvious reasons), so the look on his face when he sees that this wretched movie has crossed the threshold of our house will make it ten cents well spent.)

8. Hook

9. How The Grinch Stole Christmas (I would touch this film with a 39 1/2 foot pole)

10. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (an absolute classic)

11. Hockey Fights & Big Hits (also for Optimistic.)

12. Grease (also one I've been meaning to watch, not because I like it, but because I got a line from it stuck in my head and I won't be able to get it out of my system until I watch it through.)

13. The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (This is a collection of four episodes and it's a big deal that I found this, because on the back cover there's a picture from my all-time favorite episode of Dudley Do-Right, where Snidely Whiplash makes a suit out of Marigolds and gets away with committing his evil deeds because Dudley's allergic to him. I might die from happiness, people.)

Not purchased (through tremendous self-restraint) were Gargoyles ("What could make claw marks in solid stone?"), Blank Check ("It says all you can eat, not all you can eat here"), and Rookie of the Year ("Hot ice! That's right, I heat up the ice cubes. It's the best of both worlds!"). All in all, I'm very pleased with the mix I ended up with. And now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I've got some movie-watching to do.