Really, really, really good potato salad, crazy style.

I got this recipe, many years ago, from someone who was in the top three craziest people I have ever known.  That's saying a lot, too.  When I met her, she seemed like Ms. Upstanding Mom/Retail Manager/Wife, and by the time our relationship.... ended, so to speak, she was drinking gin at work, reading crystals for customers, and going AWOL with random truck drivers for weeks at a time.

But never mind all that.  She gave me two really, really important things: a love of working in a bookstore, and the most awesome potato salad recipe ever.

WHAT YOU NEED:

5 pounds white potatoes, Idaho or such

1 medium yellow onion

3-4 stalks of celery

6 hard boiled eggs

1 jar Miracle Whip - no, the other stuff won't do.  Miracle Whip has a... tangy zip that is very important to this recipe.

salt and pepper

paprika, optional

WHAT YOU DO:

Peel and dice your potatoes and boil uncovered for 15 minutes or so.  As the potatoes are boiling, finely chop your onions, eggs and celery into a big bowl.

Take the potatoes off the heat, drain and pour into the bowl that has your other stuff in it.  Add the salt and pepper (I usually use about a teaspoon of each, but do it to your taste) over top the potatoes.  For some reason, this is a very important step.  If you wait till later to add the seasonings it just doesn't taste the same.  But try it if you don't believe me.  You'll see.

Stir all that stuff around, and while the potatoes are still hot (another important step - just trust me on this) add the jar of Miracle Whip.

Ok, I feel the need to say at this point that is you use mayonnaise instead or Miracle Whip and your potato salad doesn't taste very good, I WARNED YOU.  Just buy the Miracle Whip, ok?

Stir it all up, chill and top with paprika if desired.

It's real good in your mouth.

Oh no. I'm ruining cj's life, and he doesn't even know it yet.

I just noticed on my blog, on the part where it keeps track of how many times I have written about particular things, zj is winning.  According to these very scientific numbers, I have written about zj 32 times, and cj only 23 times.

How could have I let this happen?

Now, unless I can fix this and make it evened out, cj will grow up feeling inferior.

The lesser brother.

The family outcast.

I see many years of mood altering drugs, general angst, and therapy needed to correct the fact that  his Mama, his very own Mama, clearly loved his big brother more.

 

I have to act fast.

Truth be told, I do feel very differently about cj than I do about zj.  Any mother who says "Oh, I love my kids just the same" is either a) lying b) completely deluded or c) both.  

I'm not saying nor would I ever say, out loud anyway, that I love one of my boys MORE than the other, I just love them... differently.

Even at eight months, cj is clearly a different sort of kid that zj.  All the mothers who tell you it's not ok to compare your kids, bite me.  You know you did it too.  

Zj was energetic and into everything from the get-go.  He did everything early.  He rolled, crawled, walked and talked earlier and more prolifically than most kids.

Cj is clearly more of a watcher.  He likes to sit back and observe.  He has to get comfortable with his surroundings before he wants to interact with them or with anyone in them.  He doesn't really like anyone other that the core group of people he sees every day.

He may not be crawling by the time he starts kindergarten. 

He's kind of shy in a crowd, just like me.

I think that while zj clearly got his stubborn streak from me, cj got pretty much everything else.  

I wonder how I will ever be able to parent them fairly and equally when they are such different personalities.  What works with zj is probably never going to work with cj.  And vice versa.

These sorts of things keep me up at night.

But anyway, back to the important stuff.  As of right now, the blog score stands at zj: 32, cj: 24.

Don't worry, baby.  

Mama's got your back.

Rum Cake - A Tipsy Cake.

Ok, here's the thing.

I don't really like cake.

But anything that will make me drunk is certainly acceptable.  

So, most of my cakes are made with some sort of liquor in them.  Just because I can.

This is a really easy rum cake recipe that I stole from someone else and modified till it fit me and called it my own.

WHAT YOU NEED:

Yellow Cake Mix

Rum - I like the dark, but whatever you do, do not buy the 151 stuff.  Your house will blaze for days. Vanilla Jello pudding - the small box

Eggs

Oil - vegetable or canola

Water

Sugar

Butter

Walnuts or pecans - chopped (about a cup)

WHAT YOU DO:

Taste the rum to ensure flavor.

Preheat your over to 325ish.  350 if you're feeling crazy.

Put the cake mix, the pudding mix and four eggs in a mixing bowl (yes, I said 4 eggs).    Add 1/2 cup oil, and some combination of the liquids (rum and water) that equal a cup and a half.  If you're something of a rum cake wuss, use 1/2 cup of rum and 1 cup of water.  if you're an old drunk like me, 1 and 1/2 cups of rum and no water will work, too.

Taste test the rum for quality.

Mix it at low speed for about a minute or two.  If you're too lazy to wash your mixer, you can also beat it by hand for a few minutes.  A couple lumps aren't going to kill anyone.  

Taste the rum again.  You don't want that stuff to go bad on ya.

Next, spray a bundt pan with that scary non-stick stuff that I am convinced causes cancer in laboratory rats.  I use it anyway.  Go crazy with it.

Pour your chopped nuts all around the bottom of the pan like this:

Taste the rum again.  It would be unfair if an inferior rum made it's way into your cake, wouldn't it?

Pour the batter slowly on top of the nuts.

Bake for about an hour.  But you might want to check it after 45 minutes.  If it's getting black and/or smoking, go ahead and take it out.  I'm empowering you to do that.

While your cake is out and cooling, melt a stick of butter in a small saucepan.  Actually, I don't really care how big it is.  Use what you have, people.

Melt the butter, then add a cup and a half of sugar.  Toss in a couple generous splashed of water (maybe a quarter cup or so) and boil the whole mess for a few minutes.

Then, turn the heat down, stand back, and add a cup of rum.  Watch out, this shit will flame up if your heat is too high.  Boil it for another minute or two.

Check the rum flavor by taking another shot.  Quality is key.

Invert your cake pan and get the cake out. 

Use a wooden skewer to poke holes all over it - top, bottom and sides.  Poke the hell out of it.

Next, pour half of the rum glaze into the bottom of the bundt pan.  Put the cake right back in on top of the glaze, and pour the rest of the glaze over the top (which is really the bottom) of the cake.

Drink the rest of the rum.  Screw it.  There's not enough left for another cake, anyway.

Wait about an hour before removing your cake from the pan again.  This will give it time to soak up all that rummy, sugary goodness.  

Eat up.

Those star rhymes all sound pretty much alike.

I'm pretty sure cj is wishing for a new ear right about now, too.

Dude, he's four. Legos are about as complicated as it gets.

This is zj's new video mp3 player.

He's four.

I am considerably older than that, and I don't have a video mp3 player.

I'll give you one guess where it came from.

Superhero Tuesday.

This is Psylocke. Her real name is Betsy Braddock. She is a telepath and a telekenetic, and she has some sort of power that shoots out of her hands and looks purple. Or she used to, anyway, before she lost her arm in an epic battle with the other Marvel figures and it had to be superglued back on.

Brotherly love, or something like that.

Yes, I know the video is too dark.

Yes, I know zj picked cj up by the head.

No, I didn't do anything about it.

Yes, I know that posting a video every day isn't the same as actually writing something.

Yes, I plan to write an actual post soon.

Yes, I do let zj manhandle his little brother pretty regularly.

No, he's never seriously hurt him.

The one where the baby ate the camera.

This is much nicer if you watch it without the sound. There is a four year old coughing up a lung in the background.

Words.

Ok, here's the deal.

I'm sort of panicking a little bit.  See, I made this deal with myself that I would post something, anything, every day on this blog for an unspecified length of time.

Well, it's going on 9pm, I haven't even thought about starting dinner, and I have absolutely no idea what to write about.

Also, as a side note, it's part of the Code of the Blogger that it is never acceptable to blog about blogging.

It's like wearing white after Labor day, or picking your nose in public, or eating salad with your dessert fork or something terrible like that.

Words have always been important to me.  I remember being not very old, maybe four years old or so, and one day, like magic, all the letters on the page suddenly made sense and I was reading.  It was some sort of inane book about a bee!  I see a bee!  but the content didn't matter.  What mattered was that I could read, and suddenly whole new worlds were available to me.

Also, as a wannabe writer and something of a loudmouth talker, it is always important to me to choose the right word for the right situation.   Sometimes I mull over future conversations, playing and replaying it in my mind in order to ensure I am choosing the most appropriate, meaningful word to describe the situation.  

I love learning new words.  My most recent favorite word acquisition is "pejorative."  If you're not sure what it means, look it up.  I had to.  However, since then, I have managed to use it in about 4,000 sentences.  

God, I am such a nerd.

 

I really don't like Wal-Mart very much.

Don't get me wrong.  I go there.

Pretty much every couple of weeks or so.

Because I can save $.47 on a pack of underwear.  And since I'm quite possibly the cheapest person I know, that's pretty important to me.

But I hate it with a passion that I cannot explain in words that are appropriate to the internet audience.

Sometimes, I get up at 4am, shower, get dressed and go to Wal-Mart before the crowds hit.  RJ doesn't mind.  What that means for him is that he kids are still in bed when I leave, and they are still in bed when I get home.  It's a win-win situation for him.

I'm pretty sure I developed my intense feelings for Wal-Mart the the one time that I got trapped in an aisle and I had to leave my full cart of stuff in order to save myself an get out.

True story.

I was in Wal-Mart at around midnight.  It was a weekend, and I had just worked a closing shift.  I needed some deodorant, and maybe some olives.  I don't really remember.  It was years ago.

Anyway, I had a pretty full cart of stuff, and I remember that I needed some paper towels, so I went down the paper towel lane.

Obviously, that was a bad idea.

As I was strolling down the aisle, trying to decide - Select-A-Size or regular?  a very conscientious Wal-Mart employee parked a pallet of stuff at the end of the aisle.  No problem.  I was going in the other direction, anyway.

I spent a few minutes trying to decide on the square boxes of Kleenex vs. the rectangular boxes of Kleenex, and then headed toward he checkout.

But...

By the time I got to the other end of the aisle, yet another Wal-Mart employee had parked yet another pallet of stuff at that end.  Hmmm.  What to do?  I peeked my head around the massive pallet of stuff to look for someone to save me.  No dice.  Must have been break time.

I decided the only possible way out was sort of OVER and AROUND the big pallet, and of course, my cart wouldn't fit.

So I did the only logical thing.

I abandoned my cart and got he hell out of Wal-Mart.

Mmmmmm... Beer....

I love beer.

It's not really about the drunk part.  It's really about the taste.

However, I have found, the drunk part usually follows the taste part.    But that's ok, too.  I'm certainly not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

The photo above shows my beer selection on tap.

Yes, I have two beers on draft.  In my house.  Yes, I know it's not common.  Yes, the people who work in the liquor store believe that wild parties happen in my house every week.  No, I don't care what they think.

My default beer is Blue Moon.  It goes with anything.  Once you get past the weird, unfiltered look of it, it is really smooth and really good.

My top 10 beers are:

1. Blue Moon
2. Killian's Red
3. Sapporo
4. Sam Adam's Cherry Wheat
5. Corona
6. Dos Equis
7. BBC Amber
8. Market Street Vanilla Ale
9. Blue Moon Summer Ale
10. MGD Light

But really, I'll drink pretty much any beer.  Because beer is good.  And beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

According to zj, we'd better call Daddy right away. He's gonna be really mad.

+

+

=

Mmmmmm... Tastes like chicken...

Hey Sis, I did your taxes. Now you owe me a new rug.

Well, there may be a few more steps in the middle of that.

It's like this.

I hate Play-Doh with a passion that may border on the unnatural.

It smells weird.

It feels weird.

I'm pretty sure it's made out of ground up demon parts.

I absolutely cannot stand it when the colors get mixed together, because I am an OCD, crazy as a loon control freak because it seems very important to keep them in their separate containers.

Oh, and most importantly, it gets in the carpet and won't come out.  EVER.

But, in order to do something that might require some concentration and maybe some math, I needed to keep the kids busy for a block of time.

Cj is easy.   He's not entirely mobile yet, so it is pretty easy to trap him in some sort or contraption that bounces or swings.

Zj, not so much.

So, I bit the bullet and let him play with some Play-Doh for an hour or so.

This turned out to be not so great of a call.

Man Mode.

There's really no doubt that I love this guy.

Of course, we get on each other's last nerve from time to time.

Of course, we have a tiff now and again.

But truth be told, he gets me in a way that no one else really does.

A few days ago, I rear-ended someone on the interstate had a little bit of a traffic incident.   When I called RJ to let him know, his first words were "Are you ok?"  which of course, I was not.  After I hung up, he gave me a minute to process, because I always need a minute to process, then he called me back to see if he needed to come get me, arrange for a tow, etc. etc. etc.   I did not.

As soon as I got home, he inspected the damage, then went into full blown Man Mode.

RJ: "Did you call the insurance company yet?"

Me: "No, I was busy shaking." "I didn't have the number on me."

Before I could pour a beer blink, he was on the phone, making arrangements with the insurance company and the body shop,  and just overall Taking Charge.

We don't have to talk about things like this.  He knows that I hate dealing with this sort of stuff, and it's just sort of understood that he will do it for me, just like it's understood between us that he could not find the laundry hamper with a GPS system I deal with the laundry, and he's always the one who drives, because, HELLO, I run into people sometimes...

It's understood.

We don't have to have discussions about it.

Sometimes the most meaningful things are the things that don't have to be said at all.

What the boys do for fun...

I'll do just about anything to get out of going to a meeting. But really, this is a bit much.

So I had this really important meeting today in Louisville.  It was with my relatively new boss and all the other managers from my district.  It was supposed to be all about how to write reviews for the people who work for me.  Really important, once a year stuff.

And I wasn't looking forward to it exactly, but surely I was planning to go.

Actually, I went.

Almost all the way there.

But then, out of nowhere in the middle of I-64, a car just happened to stop in front of me.

And I just happened to run into said car.

Now, before we continue, I would like to be clear that I was not doing any of the following things: eating fried chicken, talking on the phone, reading, eating pizza, applying makeup, texting, working a crossword puzzle, eating a burger, sleeping or performing magic tricks (all of which I have seen other drivers do at one time or another).

I just didn't see her.

And I ran into her.

So, I had to call my new boss and explain, rather ineloquently, that my car and I wouldn't make the meeting. 

He took it rather well, I think.

What a hell of a way to get a day off from work.

Eating Spaghetti.

Spaghetti is a comfort food for me.

I serve it to zj and as you can see, he looovvves it, but this is Ragu from a jar, baby.  No secret family recipe here.  

In my growing up years, spaghetti had two very distinct phases - "Before Mary Rose" and "After Mary Rose."

Before Mary Rose, I had spaghetti, but it consisted of spaghetti noodles cooked with tomato puree and a little sugar.  That's it.  No spices.  No cheese.  I liked it just fine.  It was how my Mama made spaghetti, and it was all I knew.

When I was little, the Roses were our closest neighbors.  "Close" is a relative term here - they lived about a half mile away on a gravel road that was closer to the real road than we were.   Karen was three years older than me, and was in many ways my third big sister.  We rode bikes, and spent the night in each other's houses, and "fell" in the creek, and talked about boys and read Seventeen magazine and Sweet Valley High books and went to the Dairy Cup for Hot Fudge Sundaes and loved Bo Duke with an unparalleled passion.  Kathie was Karen's mother, and she took me on my first overnight trip to a hotel, and tried, really hard for years to teach me how to swim.  I still can't swim, but that's no fault of Kathie's.   Ralph was Karen's Grandpa, and he played music and sang and built secret clubhouses that Karen and I spent hours in.  And Mary was Karen's Grandma, and among many other things, she taught me about spaghetti.

 Mary was Italian, and there were always good smells coming from her kitchen, but they were smells that I didn't recognize at first.

I can't remember the first time I had Mary's homemade spaghetti sauce, but I remember sitting in their kitchen dozens and dozens of times over the years, learning about Parmesan cheese (I always wanted extra) and meatballs and black olives and learning how to twirl, not chop my spaghetti.  If it was spaghetti night at the Roses, more often than not I would get a call from Karen inviting me over, and then she'd walk halfway to my house to meet me.

More than once on my birthday or at Christmas, my gift from the Roses would be a jar of spaghetti sauce and a can or two of olives.  This still ranks in my top gifts of all time.

Over the years, I have tried, with absolutely no success, to duplicate this meal.  I make a REALLY good sauce, but it never has and probably never will be quite as good as Mary's.  Mary passed away several years ago.  Just a few months ago, I got Mary's "secret" recipe from Karen, but I have been afraid to try it.  What if it's not what I remember?

And then it occurred to me - of course it won't be as good as I remember.

Because what I remember is so much more than the taste of a mighty fine spaghetti sauce.  It's the feelings associated with it.  It's the feeling of being invited into someone else's family because they wanted me there, and it's the feeling of sitting in Mary's kitchen at the table with the whole Rose family and listening to them talk and joke and tease each other and me, and it's the feeling of sharing the love of a good meal with people who are important to you.

Thanks, Mary.

Good Grief. It's like freakin' Alaska here.

The wooly worms and the farmer's almanac predicted the worst winter in a bajillion years.

They got that right.

Hey PEOPLE Magazine, leave that nice Duggar woman alone. I think she's a pretty good Mama.

I really don't much care for celebrity types.


Who really cares about what Carrie Underwood wore to the Superbowl, or who Jennifer Aniston is dating this week?

It's boring.

But I happened to notice on the cover of People Magazine this week a picture of Michelle & Jim Bob Duggar, parents of 19.

Little Josie, the youngest, was just born several months prematurely, and People was bashing them a bit for their decision to keep on having babies.

Hmmm....

Well, People Magazine, let's see.

Can they afford these kids?  Seems as though they can.  Their 7,000 square foot house is paid off, they have no debt, and Jim Bob does some sort of commercial real estate mumbo jumbo in his spare time to pay for their weekly trips to Sam's Club.  Their clothes come from Goodwill, and they eat Tater Tot Casserole, for goodness sake.

Do they love these kids?  Well, it sure appears that way.  Michelle Duggar comes across as a bit of a saint, and her patience seems to never run out.  They do fun things together as a family, and truly seem to care about one another.

When you add it all up, these kids seem to have it better than about 98% of the kids in America right now.  So People Magazine, go back to covering Michael Jackson's doctor, and leave these nice folks alone to do what they seem to do best, make babies and Tater Tot Casserole.

I'm totally uninspired, so today I'm going to steal somebody else's blog idea.

Today, I am feeling completely uninspired.

For a lot of reasons.

One, I have inventory tonight, which means a really late night of hurry up and wait, random people yelling "SKU CHECK!" and too much old pizza eaten too late at night.

Two, pretty much everyone in my house is either grumpy or sick. Cj and I are sick. That leaves zj and RJ. You do the math.

Three, it's supposed to snow again. I. HATE. Snow.

So, anyway, I did a quick Google search and found The Daily Meme, which is a wonderful website dedicated to slacker bloggers like me.

One of the questions I happened across was this:

What fashion crime do you commit on a regular basis?

Oh, that's an easy one.

I am utterly, totally, and completely in love with my Crocs.

Yes, I know they are really meant for the under seven crowd.

Yes, I know they are dangerous on escalators.

Yes, I know they make me look like a lesbian hippie.

Yes, I KNOW they're ugly.

And you know what?

I DON'T CARE.

I have extremely bad feet.  Ugly, misshaped, swollen, twisted, peeling, ugly feet.

And these shoes, these Crocs, are a gift from God himself to someone like me who stands up on concrete floors 50 +/- hours a week.

So, judge if you must.

I'm going to wear them anyway.

As someone who has worked 18 out of the last 24 hours, this is all I've got today.

But really, isn't that enough?