Jeremy

This isn't a happy post, unfortunately. Nor is it a sarcastic or a witty one, because that would have been a lot more enjoyable for me to write. Actually, this particular blog post is kind of an "in memorium". And it probably won't be important to anybody, but for some reason it is important to me.

I went through a miscarriage this month. Jeremy is the name that my husband and I picked out for our baby. We don't know for sure that it was a boy, but . . . that's just what we feel. And we've been calling it a him.

I got pregnant in April after about a year or so of me being off birth control. I'm not really surprised it had taken us so long, since my husband's job requires him to be away from home literally almost 90% of the time, and we actually had to make special arrangements for me to go with him so we could conceive. And I did.

I took a pregnancy test in May which confirmed I was pregnant, and my husband was absolutely thrilled. He couldn't stop smiling, he posted it immediately on Facebook, and told everyone in the family that he was going to be a daddy again.

About a week later went in for my first prenatal appointment. I was almost 9 weeks along, and despite me being so early in the pregnancy, my doctor did an ultrasound anyway. And there it was, just a tiny little shape tucked in there, and yet despite him being so young we still got to hear the heartbeat. And due, of all days, on Christmas Eve.

All this time, and over the next couple weeks, we made plans. I had the names all picked out if it was a boy or a girl, although we and most everyone else still thought it was a boy. We figured out where to put the crib in our cramped bedroom, got it figured out how to work around Pete's work schedule when it got time for the baby to be born, and even got it settled with my doctor that since I'd had problems with my last labor and delivery, this time we'd just schedule a c-section.

Long story short, I started spotting and then cramping about a week after my appointment. I called my doctor in a controlled panic when the spotting hadn't stopped after a couple days, and I was put on bed rest for the weekend. Unfortunately, at that point it was already too late. After a very long afternoon of tests and ultrasounds at my doctor's office, it was confirmed that I had miscarried. The baby was too small for me being 11 weeks along, and there was no heartbeat.

I had called my mom the day before to have her come and be with me for my appointment because Pete was at work. And I had bawled to her on the phone when I did, because I just had this horrible, sinking feeling that I had lost our baby. I sobbed about it, trying to be quiet so I didn't make Pete worry, but he caught me anyway and just told me over and over that it was ok, and I tried so hard to try and be hopeful for him.

Telling Pete that it was a miscarriage was one of the hardest things I have ever done in my life. I didn't want to tell him. He'd been texting all day, asking how things were going, keeping up with what was going on, and for a few minutes I just didn't have the heart to tell him that we'd lost our little one. When I talked to him on the phone a little while later when I had some privacy, it was undoubtedly the worst phone call I've ever had. The sheer . . . grief in his voice made my heart break, even more than it already had broken.

I had let myself get excited for our baby. With our first child, it was easy to hold back a lot of the emotion and attachment, to wait until she was here until I let myself fall in love with her. I wanted to make sure we would actually get her before I loved her, just in case. So I wouldn't be so hurt if we lost her. But we got her, and I loved her, and she was perfect and healthy, and she still is. It was harder this time to keep emotion out of it. I had already had a baby, I knew what to expect and I had already gone through this before. So it was easier to love the little life I was growing inside me, the little piece of me and my husband that we were looking forward to.

So it was devastating for me to have lost him. It hasn't hit me as hard and as abruptly as it hit everyone else. Pete was still talking about it as if everything would be fine, even the night before my appointment. But I was very worried long before I got confirmation from my doctor that I had miscarried. I had an entire week to dwell over the possibilities, and due to my extremely rational, often pessimistic mindset, I had plenty of time to consider and even expect the worst. Even though I hoped, and prayed, that everything would be ok, I still tried to prepare myself. Just in case.

I was doing ok, and Pete was doing ok, until this week when my sister in law had her first baby, a little boy. Pete got to see and hold him yesterday morning before he went back to work, and I got to hold him yesterday evening. It didn't surprise me that both of us have suffered a sort of relapse. Pete mostly. I've been so overwhelmed from my body going through this and even being in the hospital because of it last week that I haven't had a lot of time to be able to just think about it. To just let myself feel the emotions I need to feel to be able to move on again.

I guess this post is a part of that. I tried to write it over a week ago, I tried to just get it all out, but I couldn't. I couldn't find a way to say what I wanted to. But last night, Pete and I were talking, and something he said made it easier for me. Both he and I have been independently struggling and wondering if, with how young the baby was, if he really was someone or if he was still just an empty body waiting for a spirit. He died shortly after my first appointment with my doctor, so that heartbeat that we heard in her office ended within days or even hours of us hearing it. And both times, he was very small, and only measured about 7 weeks. Is that long enough for a body to exist before they are a real person? Did we actually have a little child in there, a baby with an identity and a mind and a character all his own, or was it just an empty shell waiting until it was more mature before it got its soul?

We don't know. And that was what was tormenting my husband the most. So he asked me if we could name him. For me, it gives a little bit more of something, I don't know what, but something to my own grief and mourning, to be able to miss and feel the loss of a real person, not just the possibility of someone. Someone real, with a name, that I can wish I could have known and held and been able to watch grow up.

We named him Jeremy. I suggested two names to Pete, and we both liked Jeremy. I had actually thought of this name before, on the day of my appointment with my doctor, and had considered writing it on the ultrasound pictures we got during my first prenatal checkup. And now I can for certain.

We had a son. A little boy named Jeremy that we never got to actually see or hold or have as our child, but we was ours, and we miss him. And we loved him. We were looking forward to having our Christmas baby, and we would have given a whole lot to have been able to have him. I just wish he could have been able to know his daddy. To have that relationship with the most amazing man I know. That's the worst part of the whole thing, is that he is missing out on a family that would have loved him dearly.

We love you, Jeremy. And I'm so sorry.

The Evaporated Milk Miracle

I am going to share with you possibly the most life-changing cooking secret I have ever stumbled upon. And I wish I could say that it has been my new trick that has been keeping me away from my blog for so long, but sadly that would be a lie. I just haven't had anything to write, honestly. But I do now, yay me! And so . . . the secret.

Anyone who cooks regularly and is on a budget, like me, has a certain set of skills that are necessary for their kind of cooking. One of them is looking at a recipe, and depending on the list of ingredients or the number of steps it takes to get to a finished product, lots of recipes go on the "Psh, that's not happening" list. Another skill is being able to see the shortcuts or cheats in a recipe, or even the ability to look at the picture, the ingredients, and be able to kind of wing it on their own without needing a recipe. And then there's this skill: the inconvenient ingredient spotting.

You know what I'm talking about. Shallots, pecans, buttermilk, puff pastry, weird herbs, wonky mushrooms, phyllo, milk of camel, eye of newt, you get it. Those ingredients that, yeah, you could find at most grocery stores, but honestly, you don't keep them in your house. And you wanna know the number one reason? You don't use them a lot, and they don't keep.

If you're buying yourself a pint of buttermilk and only using one cup and two tablespoons of it, what the crap are you supposed to do with the other cup? It would be immensely convenient for me to have a complete recipe database where I could look up things like "Recipes that use buttermilk" and then I'd be ok because I'd end up being able to use all my buttermilk. But I don't have that, and frankly, the thought of making one gives me a headache despite how much I would love it.

So, you find a recipe you want to make that calls for one of these pain in the butt ingredients. Sometimes you're already planning a trip to the store with enough money, so getting this ingredient is no problem. But then there's those times that you either just went to the store and you're not wasting the gas to drive there again for one stupid ingredient.

Half and half or heavy cream is one of those ingredients for me. And for good reason. There is no practical use for cream on a daily basis, there just isn't. I don't drink coffee, and that's honestly the only thing I can think of that would justify me keeping cream on hand. Which means that unless I buy it specifically for a recipe, I do not have it in the house, because it will spoil before I get around to using it, even though I have several recipes that call for it. So I've been suffering without these particular recipes simply because I was missing that one dang ingredient.

Well, folks, just recently I discovered the magic secret that has changed my cooking life. And I didn't even find this intentionally, I literally stumbled across it in an article or blog or something that I was reading. And it is this: a substitute for half and half or heavy cream in a recipe is . . . evaporated milk.



*Heavenly glow of light* That's BRILLIANT!

I seriously had a complete *DING* of awe when I read that! It's so simple, yet so genius! I have evaporated milk in my pantry, I use it enough that it's on hand all the time! Because, this is the BEST PART, it's CANNED! Which means, it lasts for a long time! I can buy four cans at Walmart in April, and they're still good at Christmas!

I'm serious, I almost had an aneurysm over this. Ecstatic fit. And that very night, I made one of my new recipes that I'd found and discarded at first because it called for heavy cream. It was a peaches and cream overnight french toast, incredibly easy to make (once I found out I could use evaporated milk!), and it was DELICIOUS. I'm going to make it again, it was so yummy, and I had every single ingredient on hand in my pantry. *Boogie dance*

So, ladies and gentlemen, that was my wonderful discovery that I just had to share with the universe. The magical substitution that changed my life. So many avenues are now open to me, I can do whatever I want! Who knows, maybe someday soon I'll learn how to FLY! (Ok, maybe this has gone to my head a little).

Now . . . if only I could find a good substitution for cream cheese . . .

The Wonders of Pinterest and the World of the Internet

It is really no surprise that I, practically an internet addict, am now also addicted to Pinterest. Really, it was just a matter of time.

For those who don't know and have been living under a rock for the past year, Pinterest is basically an online pinning board. You find pictures or blogs or sites off the internet that you like, and "pin" them to one of your boards on Pinterest.

It sounds useless, huh? And you know what, it pretty much is. It is purely frivolous, although I have found it handy in some situations. It gives you some boards to start with, six or so, with categories like "I can do this", "My library", "For the home", stuff like that. I, occasionally and even often one to flout tradition, changed all mine to something else all my own. I started with six or so, and I've extended that to fifteen. Ranging from "Someday Dream House" to "Purty Jewelry" to "Fandoms and Favorites". I have a board dedicated to shoes and clothes, of course. One for crafts I mean to do. All sorts of things.

It kind of reminds me of flairs on Facebook, in the way that it really is something completely meaningless, but I take joy from it all the same. It's like having a physical testament to what kind of a person I really am. What I like, what I think is funny, things I want to do. I guess it's just kind of a way to give yourself some meaning in the world. Having a footprint in the vastness of the internet that is all your own, a Facebook profile you don't have to apologize for if you're being yourself and someone doesn't like it.

Blogs are like that too. I figure, if no one's gonna read it, why bother pretending? Same concept. The internet is full of ways to lose yourself, people stealing your identity, or even just getting so sucked in on your computer that you forget to have a flesh and blood life. But there are ways to find yourself, too. Through things like Pinterest, blogs, DeviantArt, all these places where you can be an anonymous face in front of a person with incredible depth. Without having to apologize or be ashamed of everything you are. It's a curious sort of freedom.

Finding easy recipes to make dinner for the rest of the week or cute picture of fluffy animals doesn't hurt either. And someday, when the apocalypse comes and all the power shuts down and the internet is no more? I am going to go through withdrawals.

Because no matter how silly it is, parts of my life are in the endless void of the internet. Even if no one else ever sees it or reads it or even knows if it exists, it's still there. And I always know where to find it. And some days, it's like coming home.

The Feminization of Ken

When I was a little girl, Barbies were kind of my life. Well, toys in general were my life, but Barbies were in that special zone of versatility where anything that could happen to a person could happen to a Barbie. Barbie had lots of fun clothes, tons of shoes, accessories out her cute little wazoo, she had a bunch of friends, and she could drive the pink Barbie Jeep Grand Cherokee even though she always seemed to lose a shoe when she did.

But the best thing Barbie had? A boyfriend. Oh yeah. And not only did Barbie have a boyfriend, but she had options for a boyfriend. There was (these are what I named my Barbies, by the way) Michael, the first Ken doll I ever had. Michael was a blonde, blue-eyed teenage basketball Ken that came with a cool jacket, sneakers, the nylon shorts, and a basket ball. In later years, Michael's head would come off and have to be glued back on, so he never was able to look to the side, but Michael had the glorious status of being my first Ken.

The next I got for my birthday when I was six or so, and I got a Belle and a Beast Barbie set. This Ken doll was *dun dun dun*, our villain, Daniel. Because he had long, "real" hair, and he was ugly. Or at least, nowhere near the Leonardo DiCaprio-like cuteness of Michael. But let's face it, that particular Disney prince never did have the looks like the other ones did, although I have warmed to him more in my adult life.

Next Ken in line was actually named Ken, but he was my sister's first Ken doll. With his hard plastic hair and good looks, he got to be boyfriend to a whole host of desperate Barbies. We had a lot of Barbies, mind you. A LOT of Barbies. I can't even remember how many now. But I can tell you all of them had names, we had an Evil Stepmother/Villainess Barbie, and we even had Skipper and a whole bunch of Kelly's.

And then . . . then we got the real deal. Mr. Hottie himself, the cream of the crop, the Supreme Hunk . . . Facial Hair Ken. *Swoon* This Ken had it all. "Real" but normal guy length brown hair, wonderful blue eyes, he smelled vaguely like Old Spice, and the best part . . . he had facial hair. A beard and mustache that just screamed masculinity. There was a new Ken in town, and he was taking no prisoners.

His name was Kevin, and with his arrival the dating lives of Michael and Ken suddenly became not quite as exciting as they'd been before. They got shuffled off to the side and set with permanent girlfriends, Michael got Melissa until her head popped off and then he got the redhead cowgirl Amber. And Ken got to date the two blonde twins. Daniel dated Martha, the older lady who was our villainess, or she was his mother. Different plot lines, different days.

Kevin was a total dreamboat. His adventures with prettiest-Barbie-of-the-moment were the stuff of legend, and his skills of wooing were incomparable. Romantic dinners in the kitchen of the Barbie house my Dad built with real linoleum floors. Boat rides at sunset in the pink Barbie boat with an attachable sun shade. He was the sexiest, most sought after man alive, the Johnny Depp of the Barbie world. It was a very, very dark day when Kevin's story ended. The boy I had a major crush on came over with his family, and in a fit of tantrum at his younger brother, threw Kevin across the room and broke his leg off. I almost cried. I almost got mad at the boy I had a crush on. It was that bad.

Fast forward about 18 years. I'm a mommy with a Barbie-loving daughter of my own, and the Christmas before last I decided that she needed another Ken doll to go with her three Barbies and lone Ken. Such a momentous day, Sammy's first Ken doll that she would remember, since her first one she got when she was something like two years old. I have never stopped loving Barbies, and I sometimes find myself wishing I could sprawl on the floor with a Barbie and a bag of clothes and shoes and just start off with, "And then let's say Ken came over and asked Barbie on a date."

I went into the Barbie aisle, filled with a familiar sense of glee, getting a big old eyeful of that unearthly hot pink color that is Barbie's and Barbie's alone. I practically pranced down to the dolls, my husband dragging along behind me only because we were stopping at the Legos next. I found the dolls, grinning like a seven year old as I saw the pretty dresses and fluffy hair and sparkly eyes. I looked for the Ken doll I had in mind, Steven, a surfer Ken with brown skin and fuzzy dark hair. It would be so great to have another boy to even out the odds at home.

I looked for him by the beach Barbies, but he wasn't there. A little put out, I decided to keep looking, figuring that if nothing else, another blonde Ken couldn't hurt. I looked and looked. And do you know what I found?

I found Ellen Degeneres wearing flip flops and a pink and plaid black shirt, that is what I found. They were trying to pass off the most ugly boy doll I had ever laid eyes on under the name of Ken, and he was horrible! This Ken doll had a face that was so feminine, it almost passed as Barbie! But it wasn't even a pretty feminine, it was like a woman who'd had WAY too much plastic surgery and her face was going to fall off from all the plastic in it! Which is ironic, since Barbies are made of plastic.

To make matters worse, this "Ken" who would have done better with the label "Drag Queen Ken" all over the box, had the most awful hairstyle since Robert Pattinson in Twilight! They combed the hair on the crown of that doll's head straight up, practically glued it there, and then lopped it off to create this totally bizarre flat plane of hair sticking straight up. And then the rest of it was combed down and likewise practically glued in place.

The worst part? Do you want to know the worst part? HE WAS WEARING PINK!!! Who in their right or wrong mind, would put Ken, the hero of Barbies and little girls everywhere, in PINK?! I was shocked. I was horrified. I stood there in the Barbie aisle at Walmart at eleven o'clock at night mere days before Christmas, and gaped at that horrendously ugly Ken doll. I said, out loud, a number of times, "What did they do to him?!" Pete just kind of stood there and rolled his eyes while I got the attention of a few shoppers that were passing by, clearly not understanding that my childhood was practically being gang-raped in front of my eyes. It was awful.

I bought the stupid doll. I think it was the 23rd of December, so it's not like I had time to do a any more shopping before we were down to the wire. Even so, for the next couple months I kept my eye out for a Ken doll that was actually Ken, not Barbie's weird second cousin Bertha who'd had a sex change. No dice. And I haven't had the heart recently to go Ken hunting again. I just don't think I can handle it if my childhood gets violated like that again.

I think from now on I'll do my Barbie shopping online. Somewhere out there, there has to be a Ken that is more like Kevin was. Handsome, manly, attractive, maybe with facial hair, just anything other than the pink-wearing freak of nature that is shoved reeeeeally far under Sammys' bed right now. And you know what, even if he was in the box with all the other Barbies, Sammy doesn't like him. I think he confuses her, with his what-a-joke hairstyle and "I need more Botox, doctor!" face. Not that I blame her. She has good taste in her fake men.

And someday, I pray that we will have a return of what Ken should be. Because honestly, last time I went to the Barbie aisle, I saw a pale, glittery Edward Cullen doll. And I went home and vomited. Kevin, please come back!

My Head Feels Like A Dead Squid

I shall attempt to explain. I'm dyeing my hair. This is not nearly the first time I've done this, although I've only been dyeing my hair for fun for a few years now. I was, for the most part, a hair dye virgin for most of my life. I did do highlights a couple times in junior high and high school, and once or twice after that, but I didn't do a full on dye job to a different color until about two years ago.

My natural hair color is kind of a really dark blonde/light brown color. Since I highlighted it when I was a teenager, it looked golden/dark blonde. Which worked out great, because I truly am a walking blonde moment. My sister actually calls me that, and I have an MSN Messenger emoticon specifically used for blonde moments, too.

I love being blonde. That's me all over, my personality and everything. But after I had Sammy and had been married a few years, I started wondering what I'd look like as a brunette. My sister-in-law was a Mary Kay consultant at the time, so we played around on the virtual makeover site all the time and I played with hair colors. And on the computer at least, I looked good with dark brown hair.

So I was talked into it, but instead of going way dark, I went with a medium chocolate brown hair color. And my hair takes a dye really well, so it turned out great. And it was even a few shades lighter than the picture, which worked out fine, since it was my first foray into the dyeing world.

That opened the way for me. Next I went red. And we're talking fake fakedy fake bright red hair that looked truly awful on me, but it was a hoot anyway. I did it for the Fourth of July, and went swimming the day after I did it, so a good deal of the dye faded out in my day in the chlorinated pool. Which was ok, since we went from a truly garish shade of bright coppery red to a more muted copper blonde color.

Going blonde next was probably not my best idea . . . I'm sure you can imagine. Orangey strawberry blonde anyone? Oh yeah. But at least that one looked better than my bright red attempt. And it faded out a bit and looked decent.

Next was another shot at blonde, which went just fine, and that brings us up to tonight. Now, it's been at least six or seven months since I dyed my hair, and tonight I took my two boxes of champagne blonde Revlon dye to my brother and sister-in-law's. Aside from making my brother a pretty darn awesome t-shirt to wear to work for the midnight release of the new Twilight movie (Team Van Helsing, we're Twilight haters), I got my sister-in-law to dye my hair for me.

And so, after a good half hour or so of gooping up and trying to untangle my hair when it was roughly the consistency of hair covered in half-dry glue, I was pronounced done. So I wrapped my head up in a plastic bag, and I was totally rocking the I Love Lucy bandana look. Hard to imagine, I'm sure, but trust me. I was a fat Lucy.

I had twisted my hair up and smooshed it down on my skull, and since it was basically like chilling Jello, it stuck really well. And since my gooey hair was kind of in gushy dreadlocks, it felt like I had a cold, dead squid on my head that kept dropping tentacles down over my face. It made for some pretty hysterical giggling on my part, and I finally got all the tentacles tucked up nicely and secured inside the plastic bag.

And now, I'm fresh from the shower smelling strongly of the special dye treatment conditioner that came in the boxes of dye, and the jury is still out on results. My roots look strawberry blonde and my ends look maybe a few shades lighter than they were before, so I guess only morning will tell. And when I emerge from my little bed cocoon with my dry hair twirling out of control in Roman-esque curls, we'll have to see what color of the rainbow I'm sporting.

Anyone want to take a bet?

Things Pete Does That I Find Annoying/Endearing

I couldn't resist. I really couldn't. After the post of things I do that are annoying/endearing about me for Pete, I just could not help the snickering and immediate sense that I am the devil when I started thinking of doing the same, vice versa. So here it is.

Things Pete does that I find annoying:
#1 - This is the biggest thing, hence, #1. You know how people, men and women young and old, tend to kinda leave things on the floor or bed or whatever, especially when they're getting undressed? Yeah, everybody does it, no biggie. Um, to a point. OMG. This man . . . sometimes I honestly think he looks over at me, dead to the world in sleepytown, and just gets this evil grin on his face while he leaves his pants and shirt from the night before on the floor, drapes his robe over the end of the bed, ditches his shoes right in front of the bedroom door, AND LEAVES TO GO BACK TO WORK. Oooooh. *Strangles* We've discussed this before. You know what he did? He smirked at me. SMIRKED! I threw something at him.

#2 - Puts the clean, folded blankets and/or sheets . . . on the floor. The FLOOR! The floor that the dogs lay on and shed on all day long! And I swear, it does not matter how much I sweep and vacuum, there is no escaping the dog hair. And the dogs know it, too. So then Pete, my darling beloved husband . . . puts the freshly washed and perfectly folded blankets on that grody, hairy carpet. It makes me want to gouge my eyeballs out with a rusty spoon, I swear. Also under this category . . . putting the towels on the floor in the bathroom. Same problem, only the towels are often damp.

#3 - This relates to the first one. My husband has this bizarre problem, I swear. It's like he actually has no physical ability to clean up after himself as he makes messes. Take, for example, something simple like having a bowl of cereal. There are four things involved, cereal, milk, bowl, spoon. I cannot list one single time in my memory where all four things were cleaned up within an hour of that cereal being finished. I'll always go into the kitchen afterward, sigh loudly, and demand for him to come fix it. He does this with Spaghettio's all the time. The bowl will likely make it in the sink, but there will be a thick layer of dried tomato sauce the next morning that has to soak for awhile until it comes off. Can we just mention how nasty that is to look at? Kinda like the condensed, scummy 1/4" layer of Nesquik goo in the bottom of his chocolate milk cups.

You know, those ones actually cover just about all of it. I'm sure later I'll remember a dozen other things he does that annoy me, but the majority is in those three infractions.

Now for things that I find endearing (there are way more than I could ever fit in a blog post, but we'll do some favorites:
#1 - His laugh. Pete's mom has one of the most distinct laughs I have ever heard, you don't even have to know if she's in the room, as soon as you hear that laugh, you go, "There's Rita." Pete is EXACTLY the same way. I've never heard anyone with a laugh like his. It's part Mozart's laugh from Amadeus (YouTube that, seriously), part normal man laugh, and part giggle and snort. Usually when I hear it, I'm laughing harder at his laugh rather than what was funny.

#2 - This would embarrass the crap out of him, but he'll never see this, so it's ok. So, he does this one thing when I'm doing whatever in front of the mirror and he's taking a shower. Out of the blue, he'll all of a sudden just do this whale call, and then I don't know how he does it, but somehow he poofs a spray of water (sounds exactly like a whale doing it) over the curtain and all over me! I have no idea how, since he's at least a foot lower than the top of the curtain, and I'm a good two feet away at the sink, but he still does it!

#3 - He has the worst potty mouth in the world when he is playing video games with friends. Every word in the book, from A to Z (if there is a Z), usually shouted at the top of his lungs when he gets a good shot or dies. It is hysterical to listen to. Especially when he plays with his sister and they are both running around the screen during Halo toting big guns and swearing like sailors.

#4 - This is one that he hates, it drives him crazy when I point it out. His facial hair on his right cheek on this one spot grows in a circle. Seriously, it looks like some kind of UFO alien crop circle in his beard. It is HYSTERICAL! He hates it, and he'll always bat my hand away when I sit there and trace it with my finger while taunting, "Growing in a circle." But I think it's awesome. Really, who else has crop circles in their facial hair?

I really could go on for ages, like about how his feet are like twice the size of mine and when I wear his shoes to take the garbage out I feel like I'm wearing clown shoes. And how he snores like an epileptic with sleep apnea and a head cold. How he, like me, beats his clothes and shoes into the ground but still clings to them like a baby to his blankie. And how he sneezes a different bizarre way every time. And he gets SO HIGH on even simple drugs like Lortab or Ambien, and once he tried to take our dog out in the middle of the night, in December, stark naked, while hopped up one some pills he got from the doc. Like I said, I could go on. But we'll stop me now, shall we?

Is This Fudge Still Good?

Today and yesterday have been purging days. What are we purging? We are purging Christmas from the house. It has been a bittersweet process, since it is always sad to see the sparkly and shine go down, but since this year just did not feel like Christmas to me, it wasn't too bad. And it was nice to be able to see the living room again, now that the seven trees are down (yeah, you read that right, we had 7 Christmas trees).

And in the midst of taking down my tree and packing up my decorations, I also started throwing out the Christmas goodies that have been picked over and left to go stale. We got a good haul, everything from fudge to some kind of relish to sugar cookies to a box of fancy nuts. A good portion of the stuff eaten (and thrown away) was stuff I made, since December seems to signal to my inner baker that it's time to have fun. So I did. Ho boy, did I have a billion calories worth of fun.

First up were chocolate cake batter cookies, my first attempt and it was a glorious success. Fabulous. I added in Andes mint chocolate chips to make them festive, and those cookies were polished off in no time. I didn't even have to take any to work, I was so impressed.

Next up were molasses cookies. Easy peasy, no odd instructions or anything. About halfway through sifting together the dry ingredients, I realized something . . . We didn't have molasses. *Facepalm* I KNOW I bought molasses, at least within the past couple years, and honestly, how many recipes call for molasses? But not a drop was to be found anywhere, so I substituted what Google told me to substitute. And bought molasses on my next trip to the grocery store.

On that same trip to the store, I remembered that I had several recipes that called for chocolate chips, and recently had noticed that we were out of chocolate chips (that was a bad day). Normally I always have a stash of two bags of chocolate chips in one fridge or the other, so being out was incredibly disturbing to me. So I bought four bags to compensate.

Upon arriving home, I put groceries away, and when I opened the drawer in the fridge to toss in the chocolate chips, I burst out laughing. Apparently on my trips to the store that I had taken in the week or two before that, I had remembered to buy chocolate chips then as well. With my new addition of chocolate chips, I had a total of nine bags of chocolate chips in my fridge, 6 Hershey's, 2 Nestle, and one Andes mint. Suffice it to say, we are set on chocolate chips.

Upon acquiring my precious chocolate chips, I also added to my cart that day rice Chex and powdered sugar. Oh yes, my friends. Muddy Buddies. The reason Chex cereal is still in business, in my opinion. Sure, Chex Mix is good, but Muddy Buddies . . . heaven. I made three batches this year, and probably consumed at least one full batch all on my own. I love those things. And my shirt loved them too, because by the time I was done, my nice black shirt had powdered sugar streaked and puffed all over it, with a really nice chocolate peanut butter smudge all over my stomach. I need to stop leaning over the bowl.

With the list of clothing I dirtied up while baking, we can also add another shirt generously sprinkled with oatmeal bits from making No-Bake cookies. And a pair of pants dripped with batter from maple bars (too dry, couldn't figure out why). And I got the toe of one of my white tennies when I dropped a little chunk of warm, gooey, and green colored Rice Krispie treat mix on them.

Like I said, I went a little bonkers. I think the most popular were the Muddy Buddies (duh, I mean really) and the chocolate mint cake batter cookies. For some reason, the maple bars didn't get touched except by me, and the green Rice Krispies ended up in the garbage because they dried out too fast. It was a shame, really. But all in all, I made a whole lot of delumptious holiday treats, and I've got the chocolate still under my fingernails to prove it. And the powdered sugar all over the counter. And the Pam spray on the floor. And the flour in my hair. And the chocolate chips under the edge of the cupboards on the floor.

Now it's New Years, and despite still being in an insane sugar coma from all the treat-bingeing I've been doing over Christmas, I can't wait to tackle the traditional New Years food. Little smokies in their special sauce. A cheese ball with crackers. Shrimp cocktails in that sharp red sauce. The classic vegetable tray. Who knows what else! All I know is my holidays are planned around food, and in a whole lot of ways, dishes and mess notwithstanding, that often makes it feel the most festive of anything.