Tales from the sleepover…

As always, my house is slumber party central.  It’s not a matter of “if” we’ll have kids running around each weekend; it’s more a matter of “how many.”

This weekend’s guest told me her friend was really sick.  Her friend has “ammonia.”  God, if that’s contagious I hope it comes with a roll of paper towels and does windows. 

The same child also told me that she had a terrible rash after she got a vaccine for “chicken pops.”  If chickens start bursting out of her forearms, I’m fleeing immediately, do not pass go, do not collect $200.

The beauty of it…

…is that those of you who insist on posting mean comments (especially those of you that work and once worked in my office) don’t get that I am the moderator here, so DELETE, off ya go into neverneverland, it’s wasted effort to lay your hate down here.  I have the IP that you posted from and know who your ISP is and all that fun stuff, too, so cease and desist, really.

I’m all for you feeling however you want to feel about me.  Knock yourself out.  Love me, hate me, whatever.  The only comment I care to acknowledge is the one about how I’ll turn on a coworker in a nanosecond: I’ve never turned on a coworker, you don’t know the full story and you can believe what you wish.  There are always two sides to every tale, and I understand your allegiance absolutely, I understand the side you’re taking.  If you think I’m angry at anyone or chock full of vindictiveness, you’re wrong; I’m disappointed in some folks, yes, but angry, nope.  In more than one instance, something that was pinned on me had nothing to do with me; I didn’t start it or finish it, but I accepted the blame rather than the fan the flames or be misrepresented further.  Again, I understand the side you take–if I were you, I’d probably feel the same; we all choose our sides and that’s fine, but the insult slinging isn’t okay. 

If you want to talk to me in real life, let’s do this, but even in real life, I won’t sit through a name-calling session.  Facts and feelings can be conveyed without being nasty.  I’m not out there calling you names to anyone, anywhere.  You tell me your side, I’ll tell you mine, and if we don’t agree, that’s still ok, but I’d like for this to stop.  Over lunch or better still at Working Well, let’s just do this and be done with it, clear the air, agree or agree to disagree.

Chocolate Lounge opening on Saturday

Further proof that the world really does revolve around my whims:

The French Broad Chocolate Lounge will be opening Saturday at 10 S Lexington Avenue! (A’ville Citizen-Times has an article in today’s paper http://www.citizen-times.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008801300302)   Yes yes yes yes yes yes!!

 Chocolate, wine and comfy chairs, HOORAY!  Their French Broad Luscious Chocolates are fantastic–they’ve been available locally at places like Greenlife and Earth Fare for a while now and they are super tasty morsels, decadent and fresh .   Please support our local businesses, folks, and stampede on over to the French Broad Chocolate Lounge this weekend!! They do have a website if you don’t live close enough to visit the shop in person, and they can ship right to you wherever you are:  http://www.frenchbroadchocolates.com/index.html

Dear Dan and Jael, owners o’ the fabulous business: I live very close to you in West A’ville, so please feel free to drop off any mole negro truffles that aren’t pretty enough to sell on my porch.  :^)

I love this poem

Periodically, I like to share a fave poem–found this in my desk drawer this morning, so it must mean that I should share it with you asap:

THINGS TO THINK

by Robert Bly

Think in ways you’ve never thought before.

If the phone rings, think of it as carrying a message

Larger than anything you’ve ever heard,

Vaster than a hundred lines of Yeats.

Think that someone may bring a bear to your door,

Maybe wounded and deranged; or think that a moose

Has risen out of the lake, and he’s carrying on his antlers

A child of your own whom you’ve never seen.

When someone knocks on the door, think that he’s about

To give you something large: tell you you’re forgiven,

Or that it’s not necessary to work all the time, or that it’s

Been decided that if you lie down no one will die.

Chiquita Womb Watch Update

For those of you on womb watch with me, Chiquita and her Ninja are having a boy!  We saw boy parts on the ultrasound screen this morning, and Aunt KittyKat is beside herself with glee!  (and we’ll pause for just a moment to say: I told you so, I told you it was a boy!)  I’m super excited for them as they start a nifty new chapter in their lives.  I’ll teach him to play soccer and give him mosh pit etiquette tips!

In unrelated news, either Angelina Jolie is pregnant again or she’s smuggling orphans under that gigantic sack dress she was wearing at the Screen Actors Guild awards…

oh my gawd, valentine’s day is lurking…

…and i have no valentine.  who will send me flowersssssssss……………………….. i think it’s important that i completely freak the hell out over something as inane as not getting flowers on feb 14. 

bear with me as i freak the hell out for a bit

ack!

eek!

oh no!

woe is me!

what will i do?

no one loves me!

i should dye my hair red.  no wait, i was freaking out…

ack!

eek!

woe!

sigh.

now that i’ve gotten that over with, let’s think about this: i can’t be loveless on valentine’s day! i can’t! how will i fix this?  what should i do? how can i find a beau who offers flowers AND fine chocolates in less than a month’s time!?!?

in the words of LL Cool J, I Need Love! hey, is LL free on that day?

Whiskey in the Jar-O

Tonight was “Heritage Night” at Minime’s school, and the kids each signed up to bring a food from the land o’ their heritage.  Now somehow we missed signup day initially, so my plans to celebrate my Irish heritage with Irish coffee for the kids went down the drain (all school functions are better with coffee and whiskey, children!). 
England got taken.  I wanted to fake being Italian so I could just make spaghetti, but that was taken as well.  We ended up with
Scotland, as some relative or other is a Scot, so fine and dandy, it can’t be too hard to come up with something. 

I started researching recipes, and you can only imagine the foods from the country that brought us haggis are a little scary.  I found lots of recipes involving animal guts and whiskey that I opted to skip, so I thought perhaps we should look for dessert recipes instead…and found a lot of recipes with fruit and whiskey.  Whiskey is an important part o’ my pale heritage! 

Finally I tracked down a recipe for a sweet treat that didn’t involve sheep guts or alcohol, and woohooooooooo, the results turned out really, really good and it’s very easy! 

Oat Cakes

8 tablespoons butter

¼ cup sugar

2 cups quick cooking oatmeal

¼ cup white corn syrup 

Melt the butter in a 10 inch skillet over medium heat. Stir in sugar with a wooden spoon. Let it bubble together for 20 seconds, taking care not to let it burn. Add oatmeal and stir over heat until it is golden brown. Remove from heat, dump contents into a big bowl and stir in corn syrup.(Pause to celebrate your heritage and drink some whiskey.) Pack mixture into 12 muffin tins, dividing equally.   Really smoosh (we’re not smushing, we’re smooooooshing) it down so they stick together.Refrigerate at least 3 hours, or freeze 20-30 minutes. Loosen by running knife around edges, gently slide out.  

Now, at this point, the oat cakes are nice tasty little cookies, sweet and good with a cold glass o’ (soy!) milk.  Or whiskey. 

But if you want to kick it up a notch Kat-style when you make them, get some mini chocolate chips.  Throw a ¼ cup of chocolate chips in the bottom of the bowl before you dump your hot buttery oats in the bowl.  Throw your buttery oats on top of the chips, then throw in your corn syrup as above, and toss another ¼ cup of those mini chips on top of the warm sticky mess and stir.  Pack into the muffin tins and yadda yadda yadda as directed above.  Super good, I swear, whether you’re wearing a kilt or not.

oooo thanks for the ideas!

So many great ideas on what to do with my engagement ring! I think the best ring idea came from a gal pal that I lunched with this week: she thinks I should save my bling-y engagement ring for a while and later melt it down, take the stones out and have it made into earrings or something special for a milestone in Minime’s life, like high school or college graduation.  That’s a nice way to put it to use, so high five to Annie Oakley for that.

Annie Oakley is also to thank for the idea of tying said heavy ring to fishing line and twirling it around like a ninja weapon next time Mr. Kat 2.0 gets too flippin’ rude and mouthy again.   That idea makes me happy, too.

Botox makes me laugh until I snort

On Saturday, I was up in the gym just workin’ on my fitness, and since I was the only brave soul in the cardio room at the time, I flipped the channel on the tv to a marathon of “Real Housewives of Orange County.”  There’s nothing like a dose of this unreal reality show to help get you through the grueling “Alpine” workout on the elliptical machine.

If you’ve not seen it before, the show focuses on these ridiculously wealthy women who reside in a gated community in Orange County.  Their lives are full of drama like which million dollar home should they live in, which million dollar home should they give to their kids and which million dollar home should they put on the market for a multi million dollar profit.  They have Botox parties.  Someone’s always marrying or divorcing to upgrade to a wealthier man. They wear diamonds to sit around the pool.  They have personal trainers and luxury cars and fake boobs.

In the episode that I was watching, one of the women was preparing for her umpteenth wedding, which apparently was going to take place in the back yard of her palatial home.  She’s gazing out over the work in progress, and I think she’s trying to look concerned as the voiceover conveys her worry that all the work won’t be done in time.  She could be conveying a look of concern, or a look of great glee—who the hell can tell the difference?  Her forehead and around her mouth are absolutely paralyzed from Botox treatments.  As she tries to muster a tear, she looks sort of like my chihuahua when he needs to go pee as her eyes get sort of wide and dewy…and she makes some attempt to furrow her unfurrowable paralyzed eyebrow that really makes her look like my chihuahua and I start laughing so hard that I snort.  As the camera goes for a closeup of her glistening (chihuahua-like) eyes and smooth forehead while I sip my water, I completely spaz out and snort the water out my nose.  I am so cool!!!!!!!  And Botox is so wrong.