Happy Halloween from Phook and Pals

Phook would like to wish everyone a very Happy Halloween. She has also requested that I share the following information.

She will consider looking inside a pumpkin:

She will get very close, actually:

But really, she'd rather stick out her lip and hang onto Daddy, because those guts are squishy and mostly uncool:

Tap dancing in guts, however, is semi-acceptable:

Big K is a pumpkin ninja. Here we have him applying the Dremel tool to his pumpkin:

Here we have him in a moment of intense concentration, working on his masterpiece:

Here we have the finished product, which is insanely detailed and wicked cool (please note the reaper's skeletal hand, in particular):

Here we have Big W's effort, which was rated an "easy" design, but which I contend should qualify for "moderate":

Here we have Phook in costume for one of the several thousand Halloween-related social engagements she has attended lately. She is not a strawberry, thank you very much. She is a chili pepper. Duh.

Tonite she will be trick or treating, and then you can add the weight of her haul in candy directly to her mom's ass. That'll be neat.

So, Happy Halloween. And just for fun, let us reflect on last Halloween:

Oh man. How on earth did this happen?

Our earth's bounty is resting comfortably in my basement

Most evenings of late, if you're looking for my sorry ass, you can find it parked quite resolutely and guiltlessly in front of the television. I'm enjoying a lot of trashy programs*, and I'll probably have to resort to telling you my useless thoughts on them during NaBloPoMo, in which I will be, surely to the detriment of this blog, participating. The reason I've really thrown myself into this new television season of drivel is because I spent about 70% of my evenings over the last four months doing this:

I've mentioned this little hobby before. I'm not dicking around. This is preserved foodstuffs. This is what your great-grandma spent her summers doing. This is serious commitment to turning tomatoes into Jesus. Allright, I probably don't need to get all sacrilegious about it, but I'm telling you that putting a bit of summer in a jar results in mid-winter miracles. Not to mention a reduced need for Christmas shopping...you tie a festive ribbon around a jar and that shit is done. So let's reflect on what I believe I made this summer, ranging from the audacious to the mundane (this record is according to the stained post-its flagging recipes I made from the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving)**.

• Apple Pie Filling
• Applesauce
• Balsamic Red Pepper Jelly
• Blueberry Butter
• Blueberry Syrup
• Bruschetta in a Jar
• Cherry Chutney
• Cherry Jelly
• Cherry Pie Filling
• Chocolate Raspberry Sundae Topper
• Cranberry Sauce (whole berry)
• Dilled Beans
• Fresh Vegetable Salsa
• Jalapeno Salsa
• Peach Salsa
• Pears
• Peppery Pear Salsa
• Strawberry Lemonade Concentrate
• Strawberry Sauce
• Taco Sauce
• Tomatoes
• Zesty Salsa

Now, people, this represents a massive time commitment. It also represents solid evidence that I should be committed. But anyhow, the time commitment. The thing is, anything involving a fruit generally involves peeling...that includes tomatoes, peaches, pears, apples, etc. So step 1, before you even get to chopping anything, is blanching all this type of shit and then getting in a death match with it to get it to surrender its skin. And many times we are dealing with recipes that call for things such as 12 pounds of tomatoes. Not a small job, the skinning of things. So there is a lot of time there. Then there is the chopping or other preparation of the food. There are times when a food processor comes in handy, but you've got to be careful. And most of the time, the food processor does not come in handy, because I find that it chops too finely for things like salsas. I want salsa, not soup. And since this stuff requires heat processing, it's gonna break down and get a bit soupier than fresh salsa no matter how you slice it, so starting with wee food processed bits is gonna give you veggie puree, not salsa. So anyhow, there is the chopping. And the seeding. Oh, those godforsaken peppers. When something calls for 4 cups of chopped, seeded jalapenos, you've pretty much locked yourself down for a good couple of hours, and you're going to come away with hands permanently stuck in claw-like positions and some burning mucus membrane that you accidentally touched even though you were wearing gloves as directed. Do you know how many sonofabitchin' jalapenos it takes to make 4 cups? Just stop and think about that for a minute. Please do. So anyhow, yes, many of these recipes require a vast amount of prep work. And then there is the cooking of the stuff on the stove top for some quantity of time, and then the relatively quick part of the process, the actual canning. I guess what I'm getting at is that your average venture into the dark underbelly of food preservation is going to take you about four hours. Accounting for the multiple batches of some of the items in the list above, I basically gave myself a part-time job with this shit. As I reflected on this as the canning season came to a close, I made a commitment to sitting on my ass a lot this winter. I'm on hiatus. I won the Super Bowl, I'm going to Disneyworld (and by that I mean the grocery store), and I'll probably try to keep in some semblance of shape during the off season (and by that I mean I will lift fork to mouth, and whatever is on the fork will be topped with chocolate raspberry sauce).

Now, I do want to say something about this canning that makes me feel legitimately proud. I grew a serious amount of the raw materials for this stuff myself. And I hand-picked and/or locally purchased another good chunk of it. And a mighty good quantity of it was given to me by good friends and relatives with bounteous gardens. When I really think about it, this is as close to free as food can get. And I canned it all when it was at its peak. When I first started canning, I just looked through the cookbook, picked something that sounded good, went and bought the ingredients at a pricey store, and did it up. I didn't fully appreciate that canning isn't about buying ingredients. It is not about obtaining peaches in April or strawberries in September; it is about canning the earth's bounty as it makes itself available to you. And that is what I did this year. Where I live, if you casually mention to one person that you wouldn't mind some extra tomatoes, you are going to come home to a porch full of tomatoes at all hours of the night and day. People here grow stuff, more than they can use, and they share it. Not to cheese out on you all, but this is my utopia, a place where food is grown in backyards and ends up on back porches without a note or a word. This is the stuff that affirms my faith in God far more than any church service I attend. A porch full of tomatoes. God provides. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

Sentimentality aside, yes, I would like to declare the canning season complete. I would also like to pour one out for my good-sleepin' homie, my Phook, my sous chef who is totally cool spending an afternoon rolling around in apple peels with Momma:

Now that you're all going to comment on how cute Phook is and totally disregard the awesome red power that is my achievement in food preservation for 2007, I'm going to say goodnight.




*Currently, this is the Dancing With the Stars results show. I would like to suggest that JLo take the monies she is currently investing in professionally engineered frocks to "disguise" her quintuplet pregnancy and donate them to deserving charitable organizations.

**If you are going to attempt this shit, do follow recipes in a well-tested cookbook specifically designed for home canning. Do not throw your favorite jambalaya recipe in a jar. You'll die. This is chemistry, people, not Rachael Ray throwing handfuls of chorizo and other miscellaneous shit in a pot.

Just a bunch of old shoes

My husband and I are having a serious fight. Not with each other, but with our shit. Our crap. Our things. You see, our home is a tad over 2000 square feet. We have a full basement too, albeit a not entirely watertight and not entirely flying-rodent-free zone. We have a 2+ car garage. There are only three of us who live here, not counting the cats. It seems absolutely ridiculous that we should be having storage and space issues. But we are. While that may make the apartment-dwellers among my readership scoff or perhaps even fall down in a frothing rage, I've gotta tell it like it is. When we moved into our house four years ago, we cockily rolled around in all of our closet space and extra bedrooms, spewing such sentiments as, "We'll never be able to fill all of this space!!!" Idiocy. It started slowly, I suppose. Realizing something was not being used but wasn't trash, and casually stashing it in a closet or spare bedroom. Thoughtlessly placing something on an out-of-sight pile thinking we'd pick it up later. You know, standard issue undesirable behaviors. But somehow, it turned into sedimentary layers of shit. In every conceivable storage space. Closets, spare rooms, drawers. We somehow filled an entire garage and an entire basement, in addition to the actual home.

This is disgusting. It's so freaking American of us to have this kind of problem. But we have it. Now, let me just say off the bat that I'm not a dirty person. Quite the opposite, actually. I'm not a hoarder either, at least not in the sense that you see featured on talk shows. We are not walking through faux hallways made of newspaper stacks. We are not drowning in prescription pill bottles containing one last penicillin from strep throat in 1994. But we do keep shit around unnecessarily. For Big K, well, I believe I may have mentioned in passing that he is the fourth generation scion of a junkyard clan. His father actively owns and operates a junkyard. While he isn't particularly interested in taking over the family business, he most definitely inherited the salvage gene. (Researchers need to get their acts in gear and try to isolate that crazy bastard, by the way.) What I mean by the "salvage gene" is that he sees potential uses in every piece of shit on the planet. Cases in point include the base of the shitty blender I broke because it has a motor in it that could theoretically be used for some future purpose (an exact parallel with an auto salvage yard, I'll note), and every single computer component he has ever owned, found on the side of the road, been "gifted" by the fools who give him their scrap rigs, and much, much more. So the basement had pretty much been overtaken by cords.

For me, well, I feel pretty strongly that what I am saving is of incalculable value. Of course, every crazy motherfucker who is saving their old shampoo bottles would make this claim. I know this, so I have been involved in a serious campaign on clutter for many, many months. I hope to some day add at least one additional human to the K Family, if not more, so something has to happen. And Phook is seriously developing her own shit arsenal that can no longer be kept in a charming basket in a corner of the living room. She needs a real space for her buffet of amusements. We have to beat this asshole, this shit demon. We've had some successes. I've cleaned out almost every conceivable drawer and closet in our home. I've assembled shelving units in the garage to store my gardening supplies in a more space-saving manner. I have read the organizers' tips for decluttering that you can find everywhere, since trendily simplifying and color-coding our closets is supposed to make us feel more at peace when we get home from work, what with our cell phones and our little electronic devices that send an electric shock rocketing up our asses whenever someone from our place of employment even thinks about telling us to do something. (Oops, didn't mean to segue into social commentary just there. Forgive me.) So, anyhow, yeah, there are some moderately valid tips out there and I have consumed them. This has resulted in a near-weekly trip for me to donate stuff that I have successfully downsized over the last several months. I have parted ways with a lot of shit, but I can't even think of any examples right now, which is probably a good sign that it was the right shit to give away. Big K has recently gotten on the bandwagon too, woefully chipping away at his basement o' horrors. Futzing around in the garage, theoretically doing something related to cleaning and most definitely listening to Pantera at a just-shy-of-illegal volume while wearing (only) shorts and a stocking cap.

So, yes, we are working on it. In this vein, I found myself on my hands and knees in my bedroom closet the other day. I sorted two giant baskets of socks and managed to put one pair in the donation bag and one lone ranger I'd been toting around for several years into the trash. (As an aside, I'd like to share that Phook thoroughly enjoyed throwing socks in and out of a basket, and even said "sock" four or five times during the process.) So anyhow, I was happily whittling away at my closet floor when it happened. I stumbled upon them. And by "them," I mean the twenty or so pairs of shoes I've been hauling around for a decade, plus or minus three years, never having worn any of them. I was ready to just shove them back where they came from, but something made me stop, collaborate, and listen. It occurred to me I hadn't worn these shoes in a decade. This made me consider the option of giving them away or trashing them. But I couldn't, not these shoes. I might wear them some day. No, actually, I won't. So, yeah, there it was. I was forced to note that I had toted about three cubic feet of shoes around from my parents' house, to three dorm rooms, to three apartments, and to my current home, without ever wearing any of them or considering unloading them. Hmm. And then I really looked at the shoes, what they really are. Let's look together, shall we? (Provided, of course, that you not hate on your friendly neighborhood Big W for her stylistic choices of eras past. If you can agree to these terms, you are invited to read on.)

Oh, wait. Before we get started, I should probably mention that this is a bit of a freak show. I wear a size 12 shoe. You probably know someone who wears a 10. Or maybe even an 11. But I have never encountered another she-12 in my life. Surely, ladies, you are out there. But most of you are trannies. And that's cool, really, it is. But that's the situation. Just throwing it out there.

Okay, so let us start with these sweeties. Espadrilles, black, cheap. The last time I wore these was the day I graduated from high school. Everyone tries to wear funky shoes because they're really the only form of expression available with the whole tent/gown thing rocking, and I thought these were sweet. I've tried them on a few times since then, but they've always seemed silly. So, like I said, high school graduation day. I sobbed a lot that day. I, unlike the rest of planet earth, liked high school. Not "sure, I'd go back," but it wasn't hell. My friends and I had a lot of fun. I loved them. And I knew it was the end of an era. I sobbed a lot that day.


And these. Broken down. Hilariously flattened and heel torn. Yup, wore these puppies when I was Homecoming Queen, circa 1996. Now, I'm sure you hated the Homecoming Queen at your school, because she was definitely a dumb bitch. And that's cool, but I just have to throw it out there that it meant something to me. I mock myself for it, but I mention it enough even now that it did matter to me. I was certainly always in the "cool" crowd, but I was never the hottie that everyone was in love with like your standard H.Q. Some people were in love with me, but not everyone. And the entire school got to vote for it, not just my class. So I always felt like it was some kind of affirmation that I was actually nice to people and that people genuinely liked me as a human. That's utterly ridiculous, given that high school was involved, but still, it mattered to me and I can't deny that. We only get a few very short moments in life in we really truly get to feel like the center of the universe, and this was one of mine. So I cling to it, a little, I do.


Here we go. Prom, sophomore year of high school. With my big old teenage love. The one that dragged on for six years in a dragging oneself behind a moving truck sort of way.


While we're on the prom theme, I hereby present junior year. I was on prom court. The girls all wore huge white dresses at our school. Mine was actually a wedding dress from some casual wedding collection. Pathetic, I know. The shoes:



And, well, what do we have here? Senior prom. Dyed to match the dress. Heels miserably scuffed. Probably my funnest prom, as I was in an "off" with the truck-drag scenario described in prom scenario #1, and my date was nice and fun and actually let his guard down enough to bust a move with me on the dance floor, causing peers to follow suit and resulting in some dance-off shit in this little weird wading pool thing we'd somehow managed to set up on the gym floor. Anyhow, this was a fun night. Light purple shoes don't really have a lot of opportunities in life though, other than senior prom. Never wore them again. May not have ever evened opened the box until the other day.


These, now, these are a wee bit more recent. I wore these on a beautiful, sunny day a few years back. I was wearing a pastel suit and all duded up. I was at a work convention thing, sitting in a theater/auditorium with a couple thousand people watching a healthcare technology presentation. And all of a sudden, the presentation got extremely real. Over the top even. They somehow managed to get CNN involved, and had footage of falling buildings and everything. Wow, healthcare technology really is important! But that little moment of disbelief was terribly short. It was 9/11, friends, and the presentation was most definitely, awfully over. I carried these shoes as I walked down the street barefoot to my car, not quite sure of the ground underfoot:


And these. Oh, these. My basketball shoes from my senior year of high school. A lot of miles on these. I was something of a basketball player. Recruited a bit. Some low-key recognition of the all-conference variety for a few years. I loved it. I did. My senior year we were the best we'd ever been...a lot of potential finally peaking. We thought we might make it far at the end of the year. Our first game of regionals was going to be cake; we were playing a bunch of jokers. We were already looking ahead to the next game, and the next. Turns out, of course, that we shouldn't have been. The whole team played like ass, myself in particular. I was fouled a lot, shot a ton of free throws. I'd always been kinda shitty at free throws, but I really sucked it up this time, missing God knows how many, especially in the last minutes of the game when it really mattered. We lost. Season over. I collapsed on the floor of the locker room and sobbed for a good 45 minutes, feeling that I had blown it. And, I actually had. I felt so much shame coming out of that locker room. So much shame that I didn't touch a basketball again for about 7 years. I didn't go on to play in college, because I thought that game was proof I wasn't good enough. I told everyone that I just wasn't interested in being a jock in college, that I was ready for a change of pace. But that was bullshit. I was scared and embarrassed and horrified by my capacity for sucking. I never told anyone that before, not even Big K. Without further adieu:

While we're on the athletic front, let us behold these beauties, my athletic sandals. This style of sandal, you may recall, was intensely popular in the mid-90's. I wore these things constantly, as evidenced by the big toe and other wear marks. Specifically, I wore these to and from athletic competitions, to and from practices, and after game days when I was feeling sore from skidding my body across a hostile surface in an attempt to save a wayward basketball, softball, or volleyball from its demise. That boils down to about two solid years of having these on my feet, plus or minus 15 minutes.


Ah, of course. The stolen bowling shoes. In a drunken state during my freshman year of college, I stole these bastards from some lovely lanes in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. My first semester of college was possibly the only irresponsible period in my entire life. I had lots of scholarships that were one-time gigs, so I didn't have a job. I had buried my jock persona, so I was free to whoop it up. My relationship with dude from prom scenario #1 was of questionable authenticity at the time and I was in a fleeting stage of hotness, so I was extremely busy taking calls from various gentlemen who wanted to take me to Burger King. I got hamcocked regularly. I wore togas. I danced a lot. I went to class in my pajamas a lot. (Actually, that wasn't unique to my first semester of college, but you get the idea.) Second semester rolled around, I began a vision quest towards becoming the most employed college student in the history of humankind, I got serious about prom guy #1 again, and somehow it became today, with nary a reckless moment to my credit since the days of old, of drunken bowling shoe thievery. Beauties, truly:


Now, the last time I wore these was to my grandmother's funeral. I'm not going to disparage my grandmother on the interwebs, but, well, she started calling me Juanita at one point, and my sister Greta. (Hint: These are not our names.) My mom, bitter, put these names on the card with the flowers we brought to the funeral. But I saved the shoes.


Another pair of the oh-so-cheap and oh-so-blistering dyeables. This time for the wedding of my good buddy from college (she was definitely involved with the bowling shoe incident described above). At the time, Big K and I were still merely dating. Our early years were a bit tumultuous at times. I honestly didn't know if we were meant to be. Until this day. The bride and groom did the thing where you had to sing a song with the word "love" in it to get them to kiss. And Big K, who was highly uncomfortable at this giant wedding full of strangers, sitting at a table full of strangers while his girlfriend sat up at the head table getting sauced, got up on his own, came and grabbed the mic, and serenaded the couple solo, when no one in the room knew who he was. And he did it well. They still talk about it. Everyone went nuts. Old ladies were hitting on him for the rest of evening. And I finally let myself fall all the way for him. Here you go:


These are a bit more mundane. Old walking shoes. I always saved the old pair when I got a new pair with the idea that you never know when you're going to need an old pair of shoes for some highly messy project or activity. Of course, I had three extra old pairs. And apparently quite an affinity for navy and white. I guess all I can say about these is that if you ever had the occasion to walk a mile in my shoes, this is what you'd be wearing.


So, there it is. Just a bunch of old shoes. It turns out I have a pretty major tendency to assign meaning to the objects I associate with important events or emotions. But really, it is the memories and the emotions and the significance of the actual experiences that I hold dear, not the token. So now that I know why I had so many old shoes in my closet for the last decade, I can do this:

Purge, people. Purge. It's good for you. I guess the basic fact that I was blissfully unaware of why I was toting around these relics for a decade or more pokes a bit of a hole in my self-awareness game. Now that I think about it, I also have every card, note, ticket stub, and newspaper clipping from the last 15 years or so...but I'm not quite ready to go there yet. I guess what I'm saying though, people, is that it's good to force yourself to really look at your possessions. You never really know what you're gonna find. Could be just a bunch of old shoes. Could be a lot more.

NaBloPoMo or No?

So, I'm wondering. Should I try to do this NaBloPoMo thing,where you post every day in November, or not? Would it result in endless drivel, worse even than my usual posts? Would you still love me if it did? Would you tolerate posts consisting solely of descriptions of Phookie's pooding behavior? Would you tolerate posts consisting solely of my thoughts on waffles? I don't know. Comment and tell me if you've done this before and if it ruined and/or enhanced your life. Thanks.

Lucky #8

People. So last weekend I was visiting a local purveyor of shit in The Woods. It's actually a decent little shop selling locally grown produce and offering various quilting supplies, craft items, some specialty foods, etc. I often stop in there for seasonal produce. So I found myself there last weekend purchasing cranberries to can, and as I was paying, I saw on the counter a little flyer for some Octoberfest event that was being held, indicating that they were going to be having a contest for pumpkin pies and other pumpkin desserts. I grabbed the flyer, shook it at the heavens, and screamed, "It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine!!!" I then laughed like a maniac and told the employee I'd be back next weekend to win that sonofabitchin' contest.

Cut to last night. It was me, very tired after a week of medical hell that I may or may not go into at some point in the future on this here blog, and a shitload of cream cheese. You see, doggies, I was making my signature Thanksgiving special magic all-powerful religious awakening cheesecake. It is the Maple Pumpkin Cheesecake. When people eat it, seismographs pick up the effects. I'm serious. It is good.

So I'm semi-casually puttering away at this cheesecake, forcing Big K to keep me company in my state of semi-consciousness, and all of a sudden it occurs to me that this is not just a standard cheesecake that's goin' to granny's on Thanksgiving day to be crammed in the maws of my relatives. This is a friggin' COMPETITION CHEESECAKE. And there it was, that long-suppressed devil that is my competitive streak. All of a sudden I was paying attention to detail. I was highly conscious. I was strategizing. My main concern was that this cheesecake, as I usually configure it, is topped with a sauce that includes raisins. Now, I'm kind of ambivalent about raisins in general, but I do think they add to this particular dessert. However, they are one of those highly hated ingredients. A lot of people were apparently assaulted by raisins in their childhoods, because they react violently to them as adults. My mom, in particular, is a raisin hater. She can spot a raisin at 50 yards, and never neglects to scream, "I hate raisins!" to make sure that everyone in a tri-county area is aware that this is the case. So I was really torn about this raisin situation. I felt quite strongly that the sauce was best with the raisins. But I also knew that this contest was being judged by random assholes who walked into the store and would have the choice as to whether or not they wanted to try a particular dessert...there was no mandatory taste, so I was concerned that some people would walk away if they started having one of those ever-popular raisin-induced panic attacks. I hashed this out with Big K for approximately 90 minutes. Like in most other dilemmas I encounter in my life, he helped me see clearly through the fog. The wise old sage (whose first gray hair I coincidentally found yesterday) said, "Look, raisins definitely won't be the winning ingredient, but they could be the losing ingredient." Christ, he was right. I decided I would skip the raisins, which are usually paired with walnuts in the sauce, and do a blend of pecans and walnuts in the topping. It was settled.

At this point, I was visualizing the end product sans raisins, and doing some low-grade fretting over the whole damned thing being too brown. I started screaming, "You eat with your eyes, dammit! You eat with your eyes!" Big K of course informed me that he eats solely with his mouth and doesn't even consider stopping to taste things in his singular pursuit of an uncomfortably bulging stomach. I informed him he was an idiot, and then I set to designing the manger in which I would place the little baby Jesus that is the cheesecake. I was just going to be putting it on one of those travel dessert carrier things, but I felt it needed to be placed upon something more attractive than white plastic. I wished I had some fall-patterned fabric, but no. I wished I had some shiny chocolate-colored wrapping paper, but no. I wished I had a plaid dishtowel in a complementary color scheme, but no. What I did have was an old grocery bag. So I cut out a circle of it and crinkled it up so it would look all rumpled and Octoberfesty. And then I cut these fake fall leaves off of a candle ring thing that I had ten million of, as they'd been part of the centerpieces at our wedding. And then I made a cheesy little raffia bow and tied it on there all nice. It looked kinda charming. Behold:


So I woke up this morning and ferried my little project up to the store with more care than was taken putting Phook in her car seat for the first time and bringing her home from the hospital. I walked in and pulled the top off the carrier, and there was much oohing and aahing. One employee said that it looked like the best entry so far. I carried in my sweet baby and it became entry #8. I was so nervous, and it was highly pathetic. All of a sudden I was crushed by the fear that I would lose. And that would piss me off and make me feel like a dick. But I was pleased to note that no one else had put much into the presentation aspect of things. A lot of disposable foil pans. Amateur hour shit. One person had put a little dish of candy corn in the center of their plate, and that was about it. No one went to the great lengths of chopping up a grocery bag like yours truly here. So anyhow, I walked out of there feeling pathetically nervous but moderately confident.

The next thing I needed to do was call my mommy and daddy and tell them to go vote for me and to kick the shit out of anyone they heard complimenting another entry, since I'm not fully weaned yet myself. They went. I love 'em. However, they're jackasses (because it takes a couple of jackasses to raise a jackass like me), so they called and told me they voted for #4. I think they were kidding. Apparently there were about 15 total entries by the time they got there, and there was another cheesecake. My modest confidence of earlier took a slight kick in the pants with that disclosure, but oh well.

I went about my day in the form of preparing an elaborate birthday meal for my mother-in-law, because that's the kind of loser I am. And then, around about 4 p.m., I got the call. It was the shop owner informing me that I WAS THE WINNER!!!!!!! Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I screamed like I had just been informed I won a million dollars. I started dancing around the living room like I was hopped up on something wicked illegal, and I even got Phook laughing and excited. I then hopped in my minivan and sped to collect my prize, which was a quilted pumpkin wall hanging. It's not something I would spend money on or maybe even like in real life, but it's kind of nice and all since it's handmade, and I WON IT. So I'm keeping it, despite my earlier claim to Big K that I'd be selling it on ebay. I put it up on a wall already, actually, and it's staying there until it is no longer seasonally appropriate. Apparently 128 people did tastings and cast a vote, and I won quite handily. That's not too terribly pathetic. It's kind of like a real contest. My picture is even going to be in the paper and everything. I'm sure I'll look all dorked out and horrifying, but whatever, I'm a famous prize-winning pastry chef now, so there! Ha!

Man, I can't tell you how happy this has made me. I've been gloating and making inappropriate comments about being a prizewinner all night long, all through the birthday dinner and everything. I'm a boisterous winner, I am. So, yeah, there you go. I won that sonofabitchin' contest. Eat that.

Beauty and the beast

This is sort of a weird thing for me to post about, but I've been having a debate with myself for awhile on this issue, and I thought I'd just throw it out there and see what happens. You see, I pretty much always know what I think about things, but I continue to debate this issue in my head. So let's free it from those moldy confines and puke it onto the pile of nonsense that is my blog.

Basically this is a post about wardrobe, hair, and makeup. The stuff of pettiness. Or not pettiness. That's the issue. You see, I am most definitely a casual person. I have an extensive collection of lounge wear. And I do mean extensive. I probably own in excess of 30 pairs of pants with an elastic waist, including a diverse array of items such as track pants, sweat pants, yoga pants, etc. And I wear them a lot. In the summer I usually wear your basic tank top and a shorts version of the elastic waist pants. I wear Crocs a lot, and they're somewhat unkempt from doubling as my garden shoes. Or I wear my walking shoes, which have a couple billion miles on them. As a general rule, I don't put on any makeup. I've taken to showering in the evening because then I can stand there and let the day rinse off uninterrupted. I then apply a spray gel into my curly hair and put it in a bun on top of my head, and go to sleep with a wet head. So the next day, my hair is kind of half curly and half smashed, so I usually end up putting it in a pile on my head or a french braid. I wear my glasses more often than not, since I have dry eyes and my contacts freaking hurt after awhile. There is a far greater than 50% chance (and by that I mean 90% chance) that you're going to catch me looking like I just don't give a shit. (If you're curious, this is a long-standing trend and not mom-induced. Despite holding a professional job at a software company for for six years, our dress code was literally, "you must wear clothes," and I took that shit to heart. I wore plaid flannel pants to work a lot and managed to not be frowned upon for it, at least formally.)

Now, I'm not one of those people who is so clueless that I insist upon dressing like a hellbeast when I am going to be attending something that involves, well, things like deviled eggs or balloons or pinatas or some shit. I have a pretty extensive wardrobe of nice clothes. I don't mean designer clothes or even moderately expensive clothes, but rather a bunch of sale-priced dresses and skirts and tops and shoes and the sort of things one needs to select a nice outfit for the sort of occasions one goes to in the course of maintaining human relationships. I can apply makeup to cover the uglies and enhance the pretties without looking like a clown-faced idiot. My hair can be styled in a fairly reasonable configuration of the long curly hair variety. I can put contacts in my eyes. I can select some jewelry to tie the room together. I clean up all right, and spend time doing so, trying on multiple outfits and that sort of thing, worrying whether or not I'm back fatty and whatnot. And although the previous paragraph paints a pretty horrifying picture, I'm not one of those people who is so far gone that when I actually put things together a little bit my acquaintances stop in their tracks and scream, "Whoa! Where are you going?" A modestly put together Big W does make probably at least a weekly appearance, at least for church or something.

The thing is, as I concluded in this long-ago post, I am comfortable in my skin. I am proud that I weigh a goodly amount less than when I got pregnant with Phook, and that my body is pretty fit and strong, albeit stretched and sagged in that irreparable sort of way, and apple-shaped in that "too bad you're a chick built like a trucker" sort of way. I really, really like to be comfortable. I don't have to fret and fuss in order to run a quick errand, and there is a certain amount of freedom in that. But, if I'm being honest, I have to admit that I do feel at least a teensy weensy bit better about myself if I have my shit together. Okay, fine, I feel like I could take down a zebra like I'm some kind of crazy predator on the Discovery Channel, as opposed to my standard confidence level which generally only has me feeling smug in the knowledge that I'm smarter and funnier than everyone I meet.

But there is, of course, another thing. Hence, the post. People (strangers, that is) treat me differently, very differently, depending on which version of Big W is stepping out. It almost feels like a sociological experiment. Like I'm Gloria Steinem in the bunny suit or some shit. People are very nice and friendly to Big W in makeup. People can, sadly, be a bit dismissive of Big W in slobwear. You can see a lot reflected back in the eyes of people who are looking at you. I am a six foot tall woman, and people do generally notice me because I'm blocking their sun. This is, of course, never more pronounced than when in a retail environment, particularly one where the salespeople work on commission. The place where Big K purchased my engagement ring is a chain jewelry store. I'm not sure how large of a chain it is. They act like they're upscale, but it's kind of just that faux upscale thing that a lot of these places are rocking. (My ring is beautiful, don't get me wrong...I don't mean to go there...) Anyhow, my ring's service plan thing requires six-month checkups, so I have gone in there with some regularity over the years. And the way I am received in that joint is tied directly to which Big W is out on the town. In my track pants, all the snobby associates' eyes sort of go blank in disappointment, and finally one of the jerks saunters over and asks if I need anything. In my fitted winter coat (which despite the fact that it cost me about $49 with a free shipping coupon from a catalog six years ago, has actually been mistaken for a designer item) those asses are clawing each other's eyes out to meet me at the door. This makes me furious, and I frequently debate the merits of writing a nasty letter to the company's president or the store's manager or something. And I know that in this setting it is all about the staff's incredibly flawed perception of my ability to spend, rather than my value as a human. I know that, but it's a good example nonetheless.

So I feel like I'm sounding pretty shallow so far, and not making a clear point. It seems simple enough that I'm comfortable with myself, and who gives a rat's ass what my friendly neighborhood asspies at the jewelry store think when I know my friends and family love me and think I'm rad? There should be no debate. But there is. The debate is that I wonder if I am selling myself short by not putting the time into myself every day. Big K always says "perception equals reality" (although he does not make the statement in this context, of course, since he loves me crazylike and I know it), and I find myself wondering if I really am a slob if I look like one all the time. If I don't bother to cover up my zits, am I sending the message to the world that I don't respect myself enough to spend 30 seconds on myself? Am I devaluing myself by not taking the time to "look my best"? Am I, as I cruise around in my free minivan with my hair frizzed out around my head in my stained tank top, just beginning a long decline into a complete lack of self-respect?

I'm not considering upgrading to becoming the type of chick who starts every day by painstakingly turning my curly hair straight. I'm not considering becoming the type of woman who goes to bed in full makeup out of fear that my house might go up in smoke and the firemen are going to see me without eyeliner. But should I spend 10 minutes every morning putting in my contacts, covering up the zits and throwing on a little mascara, reactivating the curls in the hair, and occasionally wearing something slightly less tired mom-uniformish? Someone tell me, please.

I look at other women quite a bit for silent guidance on this. The thing is, I have very dear friends on both sides of this fence, and they are all beautiful to me. My BFF is the most casual person in the history of the world. Hell, she's grimy. She wears the same thing for a week without washing it because she's so cheap she doesn't want to spend the money on laundry, despite the fact that she works out in the damned shirt every day. No makeup, except for extra special circumstances. And let me tell you, probably 452 guys have been in love with this girl, because she somehow manages to remain cute. She doesn't give two shits about the trappings of girlishness. I admire her intensely for this. I have other friends who have a "look." They have a distinct style that all their clothing and general personage reflects. Trendy mama, nerdy hottie, sultry mysterious ringlets and all that, classic cool, whatever. No matter where, when, or how, these ladies always look lovely. And I admire them so much for that too. It takes work to put shit together to that degree, and, well, it's nice to look at prettiness. So WTF? Help me here, people?

Fuck, this is all the patriarchy's fault. It doesn't matter, just be yourself, blah, blah, blah, whatever. I can say that, I can. But I still can't answer my own question: does looking like a slob make me a slob?

Oh lordy, I was just struck by an intense pang of fear that I was somehow offensive in this post. I must post it immediately and walk away.

Have we discussed my husband's flawed anatomy?

Yup, Big K has some rather extreme physical issues. I may have mentioned them in passing. Dropped little hints about his many mishaps. But I don't know that I've ever spilled all the details.

It started around about January 2005. We had been married for a little over a year, and things had been going pretty well. He'd lost some significant weight, and he'd begun to bust some of his old athletic moves out of hiding. And by that, I mean he joined a basketball league. Now, Big K, in all honesty, isn't that great at basketball. (He's gonna kick me in the jaw for saying that.) Don't get me wrong, he's probably in the running for the most athletic person on the planet. He can run really fast. He can jump seriously incredibly high. He moves swiftly and gracefully in the pursuit of catching frisbees in his mouth. You know, that sort of shit. He's not that great at the nuances of playing actual basketball though. Shooting, for instance. Dribbling. Etc. He can jump out of the gym to grab rebounds and block shots, but that's about the beginning and ending of it. And yet, he has always enjoyed the sport. So he played. And one cold winter's night, after a league game in which he surely grabbed 17 rebounds and missed 13 out of the 14 shots he took, he felt the need to display his reclaimed greatness, his "mad hops." The man, after several years of fattening followed by one of his world-famous weight losses (this man has a poundage history not unlike Oprah's), was ready to display his great claim to fame. The stocky, meatheaded, 250 pound, six foot tall white guy who can dunk. It really is kind of like watching a gorilla jam a basketball. So he busts it out, successfully, and screams, "I am the fattest white man to ever dunk!" Unfortunately for everyone involved, his friend who plays with him did not see him do it. So he needed to repeat the feat. Sadly, some body part got hung up on the rim (the details escape me now), and he landed in the sort of position that causes injuries. He sulked home ice-packed and defeated.

In April, we found ourselves at our local (and by local, I mean over 60 miles away) surgical center, having his ACL (that's the big ligament thing-y) repaired with his own patellar tendon. It went well. And then we came home and I fed him some satan (I mean the tater tot casserole he requested and which I routinely gag over), and he got a bit of a tummy ache. And by that I mean he started projectile vomiting. He called nurses on call, doctors on call (he actually spewed in a bucket while speaking to one doctor), and they all reassured him he must have caught a bug coincidentally, and he was constipated due to the pain meds from the surgery. After subjecting himself to every constipation remedy known to man (I will spare him one shred of dignity and not mention the enema) and taking himself off all pain meds about 12 hours after having his leg run through the equivalent of a surgical lawn mower, he sent one more giant projectile vomit into the bucket and insisted we go to the E.R. Um, yeah, oops, appendicitis. So he sat around nearly blowing an organ for three days on the advice of our friendly neighborhood practitioners on call, and ended up having his appendix hooked out just for shits and giggles.

Hell, I haven't even mentioned the wound bag yet. When you have this kind of crap done, they wrap about 14 yards of tubing into your wound and set up the plumbing to drain into a cute little plastic ball hanging out of your incision. And then your wife has to regularly drain the bag contents into a collection receptacle, measure them, and then burp any remaining air out of the wound bag and reattach it to the wound. I'm shuddering here, reliving this shit. The bastard was a wound bagged, vomiting, butt-plugged clown with appendicitis. And we thought we'd be snuggling on the couch watching movies. Ha! That kind of shit never pans out in K-town.

Well, old dude rehabbed his ass back into medical clearance, and after several bouts of me hollering and him reassuring me I was an overreacting she-beast, he was back on the court. Fast-forward to November 2005, and Big K landing awkwardly on some kid's foot. Wham-bam-thankyou-ma'am, the other ACL is blown. (The woman is always right. Check.) He had another surgery and another wound bag, and as I recall, we might have caught a movie or two that time. Now, Big K had bonded quite closely with his man-crush physical therapist by this point, and had convinced the sorry sap to let him do a super-aggressive rehab program. In his last physical therapy session (I think the session was actually optional), he was jumping onto some cube or something, and on February 1, 2006, he broke his kneecap completely in half. One half decided to travel north and say hi to his groin, and the other half traveled a bit south and gave his calf a kiss. I was, sadly, traveling to Punxsutawney, PA to see that crazy world-famous groundhog, Punsutawney Phil, for no reason other than the fact that that's the kind of shit I like to do with my sister. Oh, and Big K had knocked me up a few weeks earlier, so I was feeling a bit under the weather what with Phook wreaking havoc on my shit. Around about Toledo I got word that Big K had outdone himself in the injury department. There were some tears by all parties, and after debating the matter over some tacos, my sister and I kept going, and my parents nursed the sorry sap back to health while I cavorted with the whistle pig. I know, I'm a heartless demon. Not really though. I brought him a Phil t-shirt, and purchased Phook her first gift, a book about rockets I snagged at the Museum of Science and Industry on the way home.

So things were cruising. We had Phook. Big K gained about three times as much weight as I did (to be fair, at least half of it had to be scar tissue), and then he lost most of it. What's a guy to do but end up on the softball field this most recent Labor Day weekend, gamely prancing around the outfield with train tracks up and down his knees? (Yeah, I convinced him that court sports were not a good idea after that blown kneecap incident, but field sports are practically risk-free...just ask him.) So, he's in the outfield, he's cavorting. I'm sitting on the sidelines with Phook in her outing-appropriate ballcap, watching daddy enjoy a nice day at the ballpark. And then he trots over to snag a ball. Slumps a bit. Limps. Bends leg repeatedly. I began screaming "Shit! Shit! Shit!" in front of Phook, Big K's grandma, and several local clergy. I knew. We had surgical case 4.0.

Fast forward to today. We rolled up to the Big K Memorial Suite and they had him IV'd and in his semi-annual coma in a timely manner. I went and subjected myself to a chimichanga in the cafeteria, and by the time I came back he was nearly stitched up. No biggie this time, just a scope job (no wound bag) to repair the various chunks of cartilage he'd shredded and get a little tune-up on the scar tissue while they were at it. I was escorted to the Big K Memorial Recovery Room, where I got to enjoy my favorite part of Big K's surgeries: the post-surgical narcotic haze. Let me tell you, a stoned Big K is a hilarious Big K. First of all, he loses all volume control. He laughs at everything. He acts, well, stoned. And the dude is just comic genius in these moments. For example, when I wondered what we were dealing with underneath the dressings, he posited that it was "probably Elmo band-aids." He then requested some cinnamon-and-sugar toast from the nurses, and when he was brought two pieces inquired as to where the rest of the loaf was. Three more pieces were delivered. Next, he informed me that his balls were really big. (This is kind of a vocal tic for Big K, stoned or not, referencing the size of his balls at inappropriate times.) He then told me he needed a hug. After getting the IVs out of the way, I complied, and he was then as pleased as a child who had skinned his knee and received a large helping of babying from his mother. He then referenced his giant gonads a few more times, and next stated that he missed a stray cat that had cavorted around my parents' house for about six months in the late 1990's. More ball references. Then he proceeds to tell the very charming southern nurse about our entire courtship (actually, he started with the years prior to our dating when we were merely crossing paths). I was actually embarrassed by the way he was chattering on like a high school girl about the K Family early years. I think he then asked if I knew he had really big balls. He then crammed more cinnamon toast in his grill and, with the type of excitement typically reserved for things like pie, yells to me, "Have you ever TRIED THIS????" He then made some flawed references to So I Married an Axe Murderer re: the Colonel and an addictive chemical being put in the toast, and I stared slack-jawed at the ball-referencing savage I had married. I really do love the sonofabitch, I do.

We were eventually cleared to leave after our friendly nurse escorted us out with pepper spray barely hidden in the pocket of her scrubs, and without hesitation got ourselves to the nearest drive-thru where a "concrete mixer" shake could be acquired. Sadly, they did not have the pina colada flavor Big K was fancying, and he had to settle for pineapple. On the hour-long drive home, Big K greeted what seemed like nearly every mile marker with another reference to his gargantuan nuts, and I wore the same smile you see on the faces of jailhouse brides. We got to the halfway point of our journey and stopped to get some movies (being all optimistic that his gall bladder or some such shit doesn't explode tonight and we will have a chance to watch them). He insisted on walking around (since only a man without balls would use crutches) the joint, and selected, among other classic titles, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that's just the kind of movie people who are stoned to the bejesus feel like watching.

So we're home now. Big K spent the last three hours passed out on the couch while I watched Grey's and wrote this post. And then he woke up, out of the clear blue, yelping, "Chuckalope!" when our cat Big Chuck hopped up on him. He followed this up by informing me that he dreamed it had snowed. Clearly, the meds have not worn off. I need to get myself to sleep before he remembers it's been awhile since he's delivered a status report on his balls.