barf, barfed, barfing

i can't remember now why i googled "image barf." i obviously had some kind of twisted idea for a blog post that had barfing in it. all i can say to you, who are innocent, is, never type image barf into google. never! you will be sorry (maybe for the rest of your life.)

i did find a few amusing pictures, though, that i downloaded for you. so i hope you enjoy them, even though i now wake up screaming at night. no sacrifice is too great for grandma.

hobbies!

what is it about the word "hobbies" that makes me feel like i'm about 12 years old? do you ever have to fill out a questionnaire (like in RS) that asks what your "hobbies" are? does the question sound to you like, "and what kind of useless little activities do you spend YOUR little leisure hours on"? or am i just cranky?

(sometimes sara joy looks at me out of the side of her eyes when i'm spluttering about something on the radio and says, "somebody needs a nap.")

sometimes i want to make up hobbies that sound important. like "hunting nazis." or "tracking the progress of the killer bees." "having a bake sale to raise money for the national debt." (what kind of a little face can you make with punctuation marks that would be appropriate here, besides *^&%$*&^%%$#?)

rather than actually lie about my hobbies (okay, you all know my deep dark secrets. i crochet. i make bread. i paint gourds, for pete's sake. so i can't lie to you.), i've decided to just rename them. after all, anyone who checked up could find out that i haven't left my property in 14 years, and that sort of lets out hunting nazis.

so what about "watching trends in merchandizing"? (i.e. sitting on the toilet looking at catalogs), or "food storage," (no one needs to know that i'm storing it "on the hoof"), or my favorite, "preserving memories" (i.e. watching those informercials for time-life 1950s CD collections, like "the teen years." i love seeing those great old washed up sad singers). there's also "standing for truth and righteousness" (disapproving of everyone), and "improving my brain age" (trying to be sure i DO remember my address and phone number before i go out. oh, and my name).

i'm thinking of writing a book, hobbies for zombies. or hobbies for slobbies. or bobbies, mobbies (might sell in chicago), or sobbies (for the depressed). (will somebody please take this keyboard away from me before it's too late??????????????????????????? what do you think?

not nat

i know some of you follow nat the fat rat, but this is jack the fat cat. jack is one of the largest cats in existence, as you can see from this photo (i have placed him next to a hippo for comparison).

jack never goes outdoors, he pulls corn silk out of the trash and eats it, and when he is thirsty he licks out the inside of the bathtub. i sometimes give him a glass of water, which he immediately knocks over with his paw, and then drinks the water off the floor. (he used to drink out of the toilet, but he is too big to do that now.)

other than that, he is pretty much useless, though i thought you might like to see his picture anyway.

p.s. he is our only inside cat out of the dozen or so cats we own. perhaps "own" is a misnomer. we are infested with any number of cats. that's what i meant to say.

stupid wasps

i want to make another confession here, which is that i murder wasps. wasps who aren't hurting anything. wasps who (like everyone else) are beautiful in their own way. wasps who are peacefully chewing up clothespins and my porch to make beautiful papier mache nests in which to raise their little helpless young (see above). and look how cute their little faces are.

the only reason this is weird is that i am the person who catches spiders in the house and puts them outside. after making them a lunch to take with them. spiders are our friend. as, no doubt, you know. i don't know why i feel like giving spiders a break. it's probably a genetic abnormality. women aren't supposed to like bugs or spiders. i look at the spiders, and i can hear them calling in their little squeaky voices: "help me! help me!"



so, obviously there is no consistency in the abyss of the human soul. i might be more likely to give wasps a break if they weren't so stupid. well, look at the size of their brains. and they eat wood, for pete's sake. but what i was referring to is that every year they come and start making those lovely nests in all the corners of the top of my porch. then they start annoying me. when i walk toward the end of the porch, they send out a scout to annoy me ("go annoy her.") the scout buzzes round and round my head and makes me run and scream like a girl.

i took out a highly poisonous solution. and without regard to saving the earth (the earth snorts with contempt every time we talk about saving her), genetic damage to my cats and dog, or my own health, i SPRAY THE LITTLE BUGGERS until they are dead. go figure.

retraction

okay, okay, even rush is only right 98.7%. i will admit that i mostly was looking at the "mormonism" seminars from a very limited point of view, and so, um, well, basically my opinion was ignorant. i believed, because i ran up against rude seminary students there, that they were all rude, and just because i didn't get any good out of it (which could have been for any number of reasons), that no one got anything positive out of it.

i got a response to my rant from a dear friend who was the brains, heart and soul behind the seminars, which i wanted to put here (with her permission). i have to say that anything she says about it comes from the hundreds and hundreds of hours she invested, blood sweat and tears, and a much clearer eye, directed by love and the Holy Ghost.

heeeeere's amanda:

And...here's a real correction: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The seminar actually lasted 14 years, and there were many Baptist visitors who were respectful even while disagreeing. There were always 5 or 6 who I could feel the Spirit working with as they listened. Both Rita and I were approached by an attender who wanted to talk with us personally and positively about the event. I also helped one man getting his doctorate by contacting former Baptists to take a quesionnaire about why they left the Baptist Church. And then, there was Dr. Braswell, who wrote a book and included the most positive chapter one in his position has ever written about the good things he saw in us as members of the LDS Church--in addition to all the" false doctrine" we believe, I'm sure. I didn't read it. Most importantly, I've never felt the Spirit more strongly than I did during each one of these events. (I think there was one that I didn't feel as good about. Maybe that was the one you attended.)

(murmur murmur maybe she didn't feel good about it BECAUSE i attended.) never mind. i so hate to be corrected when i need it. i don't mind so much when i DON'T need it. how about you???

okay, i feel better now.

okay, so here's the question

saturday i participated in the smithfield preparedness expo, given at the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints there, and open to (and intended for) the community. a lot of busy people spent their time planning, asking people to participate, and following up to make sure many areas of preparedness were covered. the participants gathered items for display, made handouts, and spent three hours during the expo answering questions in their areas of expertise. it was very nice and represented a lot of time and stress and taking time away from family and home. both the members and the community pretty much stayed away in droves (i talked to 4 or 5 people in the smithfield ward to were dutifully going from table to table), but that is another blog for another day.

it reminded me of a similar type of event that used to be held in a different stake (which shall remain nameless), in which members of the church of Jesus Christ of latter-day saints offered classes in "mormonism" to students from a closeby baptist seminary (which will also remain nameless). these students were studying comparative religion, and the event was set up at the request of the director of the seminary. the seminary students received 4-6 hours of classes on family home evening, the temple, the church's view of the Atonement, the book of mormon, etc. the students were even given lunch at church member's expense. having participated as a teacher in that venue, i know that members who taught spent hours and hours of preparation, trying to anticipate the questions they were going to be asked, and seeking the guidance of the Spirit in their preparation. the students were, almost without exception, disrespectful, arrogant, argumentative, and just rude. after five or six years the event was discontinued.

at the expo yesterday, a volunteer with the national guard (i think, or some emergency action group that wears uniforms) was a notorious anti-mormon (i mean notorious in clayton). in past years, he somehow managed to keep fnding out who was being taught by the missionaries and showing up at their houses with anti-mormon literature right before their appointments with the missionaries. when the missionaries arrived, of course, the people had been influenced by the negative literature or were confused by its content and sent the missionaries away. this happened so many times that the missionaries were actually pulled out of clayton and were gone for many years. they are back now, but this man's agenda obviously hasn't chanaged. this man was there at a building owned by the church, supposedly volunteering to help with the expo. what he actually did was to abuse our hospitality by giving anti-mormon literature to the young 19-year-old missionaries. did anyone raise a fuss? no. someone in charged asked him to not hand out any literature except the preparedness information.okay, so here's the question? what are we thinking? is being polite our greatest commandment? what do YOU think?

old hat, new hat

FIRST of all, i'd like to thank and also commend everyone for not commenting on my last blog (the 'before' picture). it was the right thing to do and your mothers would be proud of you. very polite.

SECOND, as another test, i decided to run a picture of the new hat for working outside i just bought. i have been looking at and dreaming of buying this hat for two years, so it is very important to me. and to you, too, of course, so please cast your vote:

IS IT:

too big, too small,
too flat, too tall,
too loose, too tight,
too heavy, too light,
too red, too dotty,
too blue, too spotty,
too fancy, too frilly,
too shiny, too silly,
too beady, too bumpy,
too wooly, too lumpy,
too kinky, too curly,
too wrinkly, too twirly,
too pointy, too straight....OR:
too much like a pith helment OR:
just right.
(apoligies to the behrenstains)

and i won't tell your mothers what you say.

viewer discretion advised

i WARNED you. i am doing a scientific study of mary kay cosmetics. this is a scientific photo of my face, totally unretouched by photographic magic (i couldn't retouch or do photographic magic if my life depended on it), taken in my own personal bathroom.

this is the standard "BEFORE" picture. i always thought those pictures were retouched to make them look worse. apparently not, since my scientific picture looks pretty, uh, raw.

in a month, (if i don't forget or get distracted by something more interesting) i will place my AFTER picture on this blog and you can be the judge of whether or not very high priced cosmetic products are worth the paper they're printed on. for that picture i plan to fix my hair (not that the pink do-rag isn't cute) and put on make-up.

by the way, i would never pay full price for mary kay cosmetics. got in on a half-price sale. half-price is still way pricey for me, but you see what i've got to work with here.

i wonder if it would work on reducing my waist..........

for maren and christalee

two people (that's TWO) told me on the same day that they miss my blog. it's a sign. i'm not going to go into what it is a sign of (my pathetic need for affirming words?)(or something else even more heinous?), but i will say that it worked.

i have blogged here about monarch butterflies, eggs and caterpillars, composting red worms, cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, and vacuum cleaners (well, the one about the vacuum cleaner was a lie), but i have a new passion for:

yes, our little pollinating, stinging friend, the honey bee. bees are our friends, right? didn't your first grade teacher tell you that? they're sweet and fuzzy. they make honey for us. they have the most complex social orders among living creatures, including humans. i'm surprised you don't know this.

tuesday night i had to interrupt my mountain trip to come home and hive bees. wednesday morning we picked up the bees in "packages," which are little flimsy wooden and screen boxes full of very ticked off bees. if you look up close (if you CAN look up close), you see thousands of little antennae, feet, and stingers sticking through the screen. you say, "WHAT was i thinking?"

then you bring them home (we got about 45,000 of them), open the top of the "package," and start dumping the bees into the hive. when you can't dump any more, you bang the package on something to get them to all fall down to the floor of the cage, and start dumping again. you thought they were ticked off before? i could actually hear them all humming "kill. KILL. KILL!" this is why you swath yourself in yards of canvas bee suit with a helmet on top, so they can't kill you. there was a little tag in my bee suit that said, (and this is really the truth) "these high-quality bee suits are sting-resistant but not sting-proof." NOW you tell us?

at the end of the bee hiving, i have to admit, there were no human casualties but about three or four dozen bee casualties. when i poured them in they all started climbing back out again, so i set the box on top quickly and squished all the ones who were making for freedom. i've got to get quicker with a bee brush.
and this is me practicing a new trick i'm teaching the bees. yes, i DO look younger. a shout-out to my new mary kay consultant, marie edmund.

want a sip? didn't think so.

pat yourself on the back if you voted yesterday. if you didn't, grandma will get you.

phone scam

okay, well, i picked up my phone today to check whether it was someone i wanted to talk to or not (don't you hate people who do that?)( well, don't you hate people whom you suspect don't want to talk to you?), and there on my caller ID it said, "PHONE SCAM." no, i'm not kidding.

i can envision the conversation at the telephone company when these crooks went in to obtain telephone service. yes, we'll have call waiting, and voice mail, etc. "what would you like it to say on caller ID when you are calling someone?" well, what do you think? hmmmm. something simple, i guess. "what type of business is it?" well, it's a phone scam. that's good, let's just put "phone scam" on, shall we? yeah, that would be good. "phone scam."

just in case you didn't know.....

before and after



i am 60, going on 70, i've grow up! just like a lump.
the floor makes me trip, i land on my hip,
i've fallen! i can't get up!

i am 60 going on 70, once i was sweet and young,
now wrinkles and sags and crow's feet and bags:
what once was tight's now sprung.

totally unprepared am i for my man to retire.
bear him at home all day? can i?
just light my funeral pyre.

i need someone younger and stronger
taking me to the loo,
he is 60 going on 70, who'll take care of who?

a-one more time:

oh, i have eight cats, i crochet hats,
it's what you're supposed to do,
when you're 60 going on 70,
watch out! it's coming for you!

ok, i'm back, don't talk about it

THE WONDERFUL DOCTOR OF OZ

"We're off to see the doctor, the wonderful doctor of oz.
We hear he is a freak about germs if ever a freak there was.
Wear gloves to the grocery, don't eat the dip,
Don't touch your face with a fingertip.
Why, oh, why, cuz Dr. Oz is scared, scared of the everyday things he does.
(and he wants to be sure we're scared too. so there.)
But all the women love him,
The wonderful doctor of oz.

p.s.

perfect southern biscuits

2C self-rise flour, martha white or white lily
(OR 2C plain flour with 1 T b.p. and 1 t salt)
6 T cold lard
3/4 - 1 C full-fat buttermilk

flour in bowl. add lard. mix the lard very quickly with your fingers until the mixture looks like coarse meal. your goal in working quickly is to leave behind small bits of lard, which will melt during baking and leave light "flakes." if you don't work quickly and with a light hand, you will melt the lard. add smaller amount of buttermilk and mix with hands, lightly. do NOT knead. handle the dough, all through, lightly, keeping those little bits of lard intact. if you need more buttermilk, add.

turn out onto a floured surface. shape lightly into a circle about 1 inch thick. cut with a floured biscuit cutter. a drinking glass of the size you want, with the rim floured, works, too. put cut biscuits on buttered sheet and bake in the middle of the oven at 500 for about ten minutes. if you're like me and your oven smokes at 500, 450 for 15 minutes works just as well.

biscuits should be lightly golden. if you wish, brush with butter when they're hot. cut open and spread with more butter. in fact, when the biscuits are gone, eat the butter plain! rub the butter all over your.......sorry, i got carried away. i do like butter.

lardy, lardy, darothy, aren't we farchanate to be marmans!

i've never claimed that my parents were especially well brought up or well-educated. but one thing i know for sure is that somewhere in the lessons of childhood they failed to learn the appropriate definition of the word, "lard." somewhere in their lives, they came up with the idea that the word "lard" and the word "buttocks" could be used interchangably. for example, "move your lard and let me sit down." "get your lard out of the way: i can't see the tv." "will you get me some ice cream? sure, lardo."

i never realized that lard was a real product, prized for many good reasons by the southern cook.



i moved to north carolina about 33 years ago. at first, i enjoyed having an attitude which i have come to call the "california" attitude, i.e. making fun of everything and everybody, more or less without pausing. once i was asked to give a farewell for a family that was leaving here, and i gave them a gift so that they could have good southern cooking after they moved. it was the item pictured above. i just told them to add it to everything, and they would never miss the south.

now, that was in my snarky years. (aren't you glad those years are over?) now that i've lived here awhile and gained a deep and honest respect and admiration for southern people, i have learned to love southern cooking and lard. but now i know the more subtle flavors of the south. for example, you never put lard in green beans. are you kidding? only fat back, bacon, ham or other smoked pig fat will do.

now you may have a moral and physical (or even emotional or spiritual) repugnance for lard, and i, like everyone else, am trying to eat more healthy food. but you will never make a good southern biscuit unless you use lard. or pie crust. or perfect fried chicken. you can make a very good imperfect chicken without frying it in lard, but why risk it? once or twice a year for perfect biscuits, once a year for perfect pie, and once a year for perfect fried chicken, is not going to kill anyone.




summary: repeat five times out loud: pig fat is our friend.

christy wins!!!!

christy won my contest for the best fibonacci poem. she wrote a great poem and deserves the prize. yes, okay, she WAS the only one who wrote one, but i had already decided that my readers are a somewhat rebellious group that doesn't take to challenges or suggestions very well. so that's not exactly my fault, is it?

so if christy will contact me, i will make arrangement to award her fabulous prize, a $5 Michael's card. yeah, you wished you'd written something now, don't you? tough.










oh, yes, and happy birthday to the first of three july birthdays in our family: my son-in-law, christian plautz.

no comment needed

what more do i need to say?