Tag Archives: family

Public Enemy Number One: Corn Mazes

12 Oct

Yesterday I lost a little more faith in the human race.

Unfortunately I’m not referring to the college student who ran out in front of the car while I was driving, pretending as if putting his arms up and not making eye contact doubled as a human shield.  Though it comes as another close runner up, I’m also not referring to last evening when I watched Red Riding Hood.

Why did I do that?

No, I’m referring to something much, much sadder.  Something that lowers my intelligence quotient just hearing about it.  And now I’m going to do the same to you in order to even the score.  I’m sorry it has to be this way.

Yesterday, a family called 911 because they got lost in a corn maze. 

You’ve read it.  You can’t unread it.  

Picture it: you go out with your family to a corn maze for a little bit of autumn fun.  Thousands of people come from all over every year to cherish the wonders of the corn.  This year you finally decide to make it out.  But after you pay your entrance fee, you’re twenty minutes into the maze and have no hope for finding an exit.  It’s been at least five minutes since you saw that kid with the strange blue goop all over his cheeks who keeps staring at you like he knows something.  And then it hits you: you might never get out of here.  You could spend your life here, looking for the exit.   And though that would be okay for you – you’d make do with gnawing on the corn and then fashioning yourself a hut of husks, but wait.  What about your baby?

None of that was actually in the story.  Just the concern for the baby.  

I have a lot of questions, some many of which may never be answered.  

Now, I know you may be struggling with this.  You could be shocked that corn mazes pose such a current and real threat to our society.   You could still be wondering what kind of puree could be made out of the corn and mixed with breast milk to keep a small baby alive in such a dire situation. Or maybe you’re just  cradling yourself and rocking back and forth as you think about the tax dollars that were wasted in this and of the resources that went down the drain to make it a national headline.

Personally, I’m saddened by the watering down of our intelligence over the course of time.  This poor family is just a product of our terrible stupidity breeding with itself.  

Do America a favor, folks.  Watch this video.  Then go find your kids/parents/siblings/pets and force them to listen to you read an entry from the Encyclopedia Britannica.    

Your country will thank you. ♣

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Returning to the Homeland

5 Sep

This weekend I returned to the homeland to spend time with family.

For the record, my “homeland” is in the  middle of Bumblefart, Pennsylvania where the WalMarts have poles in the parking lots for the Amish to tie up their horses.

For realsies.

I’ve been frequenting the armpit of the state (always charming to me, rarely to others)  thanks to the addition of two shiny new sprogs in the family over the last two months.  The gas money is slaughtering me like a filthy, fat pig.  Apparently the oil industry giants have no sympathy for my condition.

Any good weekend home, of course, must be spent in competition.  My family was raised on board games of all shapes and sizes, as my father was once a game board artist.  That is, he did the artwork for board games designed by himself and someone else.   It made for some pretty groovy child-rearing.

Well that and the fact that my father was a Dungeons and Dragons Dungeon Master – which you can read more about here.

From the very moment I stepped foot in my brother’s house to the very moment I stepped foot outside, we were either eating or playing board games.  Of course, there were babies too – but the butt wiping and the baby holding and the rocking to sleep was a sort of side dish to the weekend’s mind games that were played in rounds of cards and battle map tiles.  It was epic.

I find it amusing that both my brothers are now grown up, married, and firing up the baby factories but when we sit around the table they are reduced to their impish, 10-year-old selves.  When we’re around the table, we’re all just kids again.   My brothers are always at war, sparring over who is the one true mental giant.  The evening is interspersed with loud, shamless flatulence, almost always courtesy of my middle brother.  I’m the youngest – the baby of the bunch – grumpy and confused when I don’t understand a new game and hoping in times of desperation that someone will take pity on my state and let me piggyback to victory.  And my father is there all the while – never truly an adult himself – chiming in and egging us on.  Because now when we’re combative, he doesn’t have to live with us and manage the fallout. 

It makes it hard to return to reality sometimes.   I find myself looking around the table and wondering why family ever moves away from each other do to anything other than be together and enjoy family.   

But then I remember how absolutely insane I go after too long with them all and I remember it’s best for all of us.

Still, it’s hard to return to my adult life once I’ve had a good healthy dose of my kid life.  I would much prefer to still be around that gaming table, fielding my brothers farts and provoking my brothers against each other.  

But alas, reality calls me.  And to the office dungeon I must return tomorrow.

Perhaps I’ll spend tomorrow night crafting that million dollar idea. ♣

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My Nephew Is a Powerhouse

31 Aug

Yesterday there was an epic happening on the home front.

My pudgy little monkey of a nephew reached deep within himself and declared dominance over his bottle by grasping it with both hands and never letting go.  He conquered an inanimate object and thereby established himself as a blossoming self-sufficient being.

Blossoming, mind you.  He still poops himself.

Needless to say, I’m pretty stoked.  Think about how long he’s been trying to accomplish this one, simple task.  Think about how many times he’s had to drink at an angle determined by someone else – how many times he’s wanted to take a break but could only stare blankly ahead.  Think about how today has rocked his world.

He must feel so empowered.  I’ll bet tomorrow he starts walking around.

I can’t remember the last time I accomplished something so easily measurable and so deeply gratifying.   I wonder what got him through it.  I wonder if it was stubbornness or frustration or an uplifted prayer to God that please, please could today be the day he tells his mother to stop making assumptions about whether he can or cannot hold his own bottle.

Ask and it shall be given unto you.

I’m a little concerned about my level of excitement regarding his achievement.  If I celebrate over him holding his bottle, how on this earth will I contain myself when he takes his first step? Or when he says “Aunt Jackie you’re so cool” for the first time?

I will send him trophies in the mail, that’s how.  

I’ll plaster my excitement all over a piece of paper and mail it to him;  Heck, I should probably go install a little trophy shelf in his room.  I can just send him little certificates of achievement for the most important things in life like learning to roll over, or saying something that sounds like gibberish instead of just crying and stopping his neck from flopping all over tarnation.

These are all worthy of recognition and praise.

So all hail my nephew, master of the baby bottle – achiever of dreams and determiner of his own destiny.

May inanimate objects everywhere  cower at the mention of his name. ♣ 

Hear him roar.

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A Recipe for Lackluster Pie

23 Aug

I think one of the most disappointing discoveries of my adult life is that pie-making is not a soothing experience.  If you do everything from scratch using merely the loins of the earth, it’s a little daunting for your average pie virgin.  And what makes it much, much more difficult is when you’re following a copy of a copy of a cryptic recipe that’s in a woman’s head almost 300 miles away.

Happy Lollipop Tuesday, girls and boys.

I’ve been getting pretty intense with my Lollipop Adventures as of late with all the pinball competing and the Battle of Manassas reenacting and the rapping in public.  So this week, I was more than happy to take Pezcita’s suggestion on my “What’s Lollipop Tuesday?“ page and take it easy, throw on my apron, and make a hot mess of my kitchen.    In order to be true to the wholesome, innocent, comforting nature of the patriotic pastry, I thought it only right that I use David’s grandmother’s recipe for apple pie.   David’s grandmother’s apple pie is so lusciously wonderful, in fact, that my tastebuds had abandoned an affection for pie altogether until I tasted hers and it restored their faith.

Indeed it is a fantastic pie.  …when she makes it.

I don’t know what it is about grandmothers that makes them think recipes are just ingredient lists and not step-by-step instructions for how to accomplish something, but I would kill for a grandmother who can take the time to write down their navigation of a process instead of carrying around all that precious knowledge in their heads like hoarders.   Not wanting to bother his grandmother at such a late hour last evening, I decided instead to call David’s mother for any suggestions she might have to add to what was nothing more than a list of ingredients, a temperature, and a time I got off an index card that was passed on to David – a cryptic family food jewel.

Call me stupid, but I can’t bake a pie with a list of ingredients for the crust followed by a list of ingredients for the filling.   

His mother was a wealth of information.  There were all sorts of lovely bits inside her brain that I needed to suck out, which she gleaned from her mother back in the good old days when kids used to cook in the kitchen with their mothers instead of playing iPad games where they cook in the kitchen with a cartoon chef.  She was hoarding information on what kind of apples, how thinly they should be sliced, what order things were done in, and that – get this – I should throw milk on the sucker before I threw it in the oven to keep the crust from burning.  

How on God’s green earth would I have figured that out on my own?  Because I’ll tell ya – throwing milk on a pie just doesn’t occur to me. Not in the slightest. 

I started out pretty hopeful.  After all, people make pies every day.  Surely I am smarter than your average bear and

Goodbye, paycheck.

surely merely average bears have conquered pies and so surely I could conquer a pie. 

I think the first indication of a problem was that I had absolutely none of the tools required for the job: no pie pan, no rolling pin, no pastry brush, and no kitchen timer.  Well, to be fair, I have a kitchen timer – but it keeps ticking past the “0” mark, thus negating its purpose.  It only has one job and it sucks terribly at it.

So after a costly trip to Bed, Bath and Beyond, I dumped out the newly bought implements of destruction onto the counter and hoped for the best.  I made a wild, mad mess of the kitchen and tried my hand at a homemade pie crust.  And failed.   And tried again – and made something that looked like crust and so I deemed it as such and laid it in the pan.   It took me almost half an hour just to get that far and then I realized I had to do it all over again for the top of the pie.  

My underwhelming second attempt. Apparently, I decided that everything could be fixed with flour. ...It can't.

It was here that I began to get discouraged.  

I remembered Dave’s mother’s words about how pies are hard and I should try not to get discouraged because everyone sucks horribly at them.  But I hate to suck horribly at anything that I’m genuinely attempting and so I was overcome with grumpiness.

A grumpy woman making a pie is a terrible thing.

It was in my sourpuss state that it became clear to me that pie-making is just meeting of the two kitchen skills I completely lack: rolling dough and cutting apples.   My apples were all shapes and sizes and my dough left, well, a lot to be desired.  Thick at one end, thin on the other, with pinched together, stuck-on pieces in between to patch up the holes along the way.   But when I let go of my visi0n of pie as a perfectly smooth and beautiful pastry with carefully-pinched edges and a light apple-scented steam venting from the symmetrical slits on the top and though of it more as a doughy bowl with apples in it, I started to expect far less of myself and lightened up.

Absolutely no idea if I'm doing this right. None.

In fact, once it was all baked I was pretty excited to eat it.  Of course, I wasn’t really sure when it was done because the “recipe” said “350 for about an hour”, which didn’t do much for my necessity of black and white in life.  So I just decided to pull the plug at 50 minutes, which is “about an hour” in my book.  

The end result wasn’t too terrible, though pulling up a piece of it revealed quite a bit of liquid hanging out on the bottom of the pan.  

Well, that and once I bit into a piece I realized I probably should have peeled the apples first.

Turns out apple skins don’t bake all that well.  The rest of the apple turns to mushy yumminess and the skin turns into this slightly less mushy alien-like strings, dragging behind your fork.

Hey: how was I supposed to know? Had the instruction “Peel apples” appeared anywhere, I would’ve been sure to make it happen for myself.  But like the milk, it just doesn’t occur to me to do these things.  Which is, you know, the entire point of a recipe.

End result?  A very sleepy Jackie with a smaller bank balance, a few shiny new kitchen utensils, a lackluster pie, and a serious hankering for a grandmother with a knack for detail. ♣

Mmm...lackluster pie.

 

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My Niece Is Out to Get Me

14 Aug

My throne is being usurped.

Right this moment, my brother’s newborn baby girl  is sleeping soundly and simultaneously assuming the position as the most beloved girl in the family without even the slightest effort on her part.

My glory days are over.

I’m the youngest of three and the only one of the female construction; I’m not really used to having any youngin’s up in my territory, most especially of the xx chromosome pairing.  I have lost the two key identifiers that made me relevant in the family set up.  Now with only a theater degree and, well, a theater degree… I have absolutely nothing to offer that hasn’t already been covered by other members of the family in light of the newest additions.

I do make a mean batch of chocolate chip cookies, but it’s mom’s recipe so I’m not really necessary for its execution. And unlike my newborn niece and nephew, I can walk, use the restroom on my own, and make myself food.  But it’s only a matter of time before they’re rockin the same skill set there as well.

I have been failing to make any contributions to the family tree even though I’m a ripe age for doing so.  I have offered up no husband and thus no mini Jackies.  And while I’m perfectly happy to keep it that way for quite a while longer, I’m beginning to realize that I’m going to have to come up with some other sacrifice for the family altar in the meantime.

I’m not sure that lambs and barley will be  sufficient.

I don’t know if I could come up with those two old school requirements even if they were the key to the family gods’ satisfaction.   Barley can’t be difficult to track down in PA, but I sense a moral dilemma coming on with the sacrifice of a lamb.

And so I must develop a new, crucial skill set.  I can no longer sit complacent in my position as only reigning young female, for it is no longer my crown to wear. 

Perhaps juggling.  Yes – juggling.  I’ll try my hand at it and become the family jester.

Looks like I’ll rope in their affection with that Theater degree after all. ♣

My bright future.

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How I Almost Engulfed My Father in Merciless Hellflames

13 Aug

Last night marked the single, most epic baking disaster of my life.

It is a rare and sad occasion when I set out to produce a batch of wholesome chocolate chip cookies and instead almost produce a body count.  I was a victim of my environment, really.

Having received an early morning phone call that my sister-in-law was having contractions, my family packed up and drove to my brother’s  house for the weekend to wait on the arrival of a soon-to-be-bundle of girly joy and sunshine sparkles.  But the labor was long and slow so instead of waiting it out at the hospital, my parents and I slept over at my brother’s house and anxiously awaited the real action.  

Long and late into the evening, my sister-in-law had not yet been officially admitted and my old folks (being old folks, after all), passed out.  My mother made it a conscious choice and retired in the upstairs bedroom.  My father, however, fought the urge and failed, passing out on the couch to a rerun of “Cow and Chicken”. 

Being designated the main line of communication for my brother’s updates and having a sudden urge to prove a wonderful aunt, I went about baking up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Entirely out of my element, I gathered all the necessary accoutrements and began relishing in my domestic prowess.   Halfway through, I realized I forgot to make sure my brother had baking soda and resorted instead to baking powder, which Google assured me was just as good as its soda-y counterpart so long as I tripled the measurement.

Lies.

As I repeated batch after batch of terribly flat, terribly depressing excuses for cookies, I started to lose hope.  The only solace I found was in my sister-in-law’s well-equipped kitchen, bursting with Pampered Chef delights.  I remembered earlier in the day my mother had found a square, rubber nondescript and wasn’t sure where to put it when we were cleaning.  Assuming it was a pot holder of some sort, I placed it in the appropriate drawer and went about the rest of my business.   And since said rubber nondescript was in the pot holder drawer, my brain later reminded me of it and I used it to house the baking pan as the cookies cooled between batches.  

When I was on my fourth batch of tears and resentment, I made my way over to the oven to pull out the disappointing fruits of my labor.  Before opening the oven, I shot a glance over to the counter to make sure the rubber-nondescript-assumed-potholder was still there, ready for cookie landing.  

It was not.

Knowing there could be no other answer, I jumped to the oven to confirm my fears: the rubber had stuck to the bottom of the baking pan and it was now a melty, smoky mess in the heart of the oven.  With the rubber dripping everywhere, my mother sound asleep upstairs, smoke filling the house quickly, and my father passed out on the couch, I had some quick decisions to make.  Unsure of the best solution, I instantly went to wake my father for his assistance.

But it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure how to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room without instilling a sense of panic.  

I stood over him, playing with the phrasing, wrapping my head around the syntax, and measuring which part of the explanation should come first.  What does one say when bringing another out of deep sleep for assistance in a fire?  Figuring there was no good way to do it, I resolved to let him sleep (and perhaps die a firey death) while I went solo.

I yoinked the rack out of the oven and put it in the sink, where the maroon rubber nondescript melted into the basin, serving a grueling death for being mistaken for a worthy potholder only hours before.  With the entire living room smelling like burnt rubber and smoke billowing from the oven, I ran around the house with real potholders in my hand, fanning the smoke away from my father’s head and the smoke alarm simultaneously.

I was a penguin, flapping silently and violently in an attempt to not disturb him.

After five minutes of pure freaking out, I was a sweating, heart-racing mess and thankful to the good Lord in Heaven for sparing me the lifelong burden of murdering my family.  I cleaned the oven, tossed the cursed cookies into the trash, and put my feet up to bask in my narrow victory.

Interrupted by his overwhelming urge to take a leak, my father stirred on the couch and rose slowly.  I calmly confirmed that my sister-in-law had officially been admitted to the hospital and he smiled.  Thinking this was as good a time as ever to drop the bomb of his almost-death, I casually mentioned that I almost burned the house down because I didn’t know what to say if I tried to wake him in the middle of a smoke-filled room.

He sleepily replied: “You say ‘Dad, don’t worry – we’re okay – but the house is burning down and I need your help'” – and chuckled on his way to the bathroom.

Surprisingly lighthearted reply from a man who narrowly avoided engulfment in cookie and rubber hellfire. ♣

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Remember the Important Things

12 Aug

Two days ago I went to work at 9am and left at 9pm.

I think when someone finds that they’ve been at work for 12 hours or more in a day, they should either quit or kill themselves, so at the moment, I’m at a bit of an impasse.

Do you have any idea how much it slays me that half of my day was spend in a place I don’t like doing something I don’t enjoy?  Every time I think about it, I can feel my soul leaking out me me drop by drop.  

The real pathetic, suicide-inducing part of it is that the reason I was there so late if because I was taking off yesterday and today.  What kind of a sad existence am I living when I have to work an extra four hours in order to take off for sixteen?  Why can’t we all just agree to stop making each other miserable and collectively decide to only work eight in a day and be done with it?  

My fifteen-year-old self would murder me right now if she saw me like this: a cog, fully assimilated into the corporate machine.  

I’ve been worrying that I wouldn’t be able to relax while I’m off work and spend all the time thinking about what I’m missing out on and what exactly I was going to do with all that free time.   But just moments ago I got a text from my brother letting me know he’s on his way to the hospital with my sister-in-law, who is going into labor.   Tomorrow my nephew turns one month old and today I get a brand new niece.

I’m headed to the hospital.

 Forget work? No problem, dude. ♣

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The Great Poop Machine

7 Aug

I’m so in love with my new nephew.

I say that like I have an old one too.  I don’t have any but him. In fact, he’s the first baby I’ve ever had contact with under 6 months and oh my is it lovely.  Everything he does is just so darn cute.

So cute it’s made me late posting two days in a row.

It appears that when I have the choice between posting at my regular time and feeding, burping, and changing a baby, I choose the latter.  And it’s not because I don’t enjoy posting.  It’s because as it turns out, I really like babies.  At least ones that are related to me.  And absolutely everything my nephew does is cute.  When he cries, when he poops, when he eats: cute, cute, cute.

This is astounding news.  Back in the day, my blog featured posts about a variety of horrifying thoughts regarding babies.  I would include a link to an example of one such post here, but I’d really rather not lead you to it.  I was a much more… crass… writer then.  I didn’t want to go near babies.  I had no interest in them and even thought it would be funny to have a serial killer name called “Shake n Bake”. 

For the record, I no longer find that even remotely funny.

I must say that nothing could prepare me for how poopy they are.  I’ve often heard stories, but I thought they were just embellishments.  And as a master embellisher myself, I tend to keep an eye out for exaggeration.  But this baby is a great pooping machine.  At one point when his diaper was full, my mother and I went to change it only to find that he was still in the process – and would be for another 5 minutes while we sat there with him.  There were not enough rags, wipes, and washcloths in the house to handle that grand explosion.

The kid’s like a pasta maker: what goes in comes instantly back out.

I find it hilarious.  I really am tickled by all of it, which is why I was more than happy to be with him 10 hours yesterday, wake up unshowered, and hold him again until his parents came to pick him up.  …at which time I went to the store to buy adorable baby things. I thought I had trouble buying baby stuff before, but it was nothing compared to how bad it is now that we’ve been properly introduced.

It’s a good thing I’m headed back to my place in a few hours.  Because if I hung out long enough and laid around with the little bugger, I might never get a post done on time again.

Thank goodness I only rent him. ♣

I thought you might enjoy a visual.

 

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The Resurrection of an Orchid: Ode to a Questionably Colored Thumb

5 Aug

I am the giver of life. 

Nearly two weeks ago, I stood over my kitchen trash can, ready to finally toss away the once beautiful, bright purple, smile-inducing orchid that David gave me early spring last year.  Now withered, dry, and depressing, it was a constant reminder of my inability to keep anything whatsoever alive.

I’m sometimes startled to find my cats alert each day.

I’ve never been sure about the color of my thumb.  My mother kills anything green she looks at, while my father is currently nursing a bonsai seed in their fridge.  My grandmother on my mother’s side is a gardening beast.  She turns rotted tree stumps into nests of flowering glory.  She cans, jams, and exhibits other stereotypical grandmother qualities wherein she toils in the earth and then harvests the fruits of her labor.

The fruits of her labor are delicious.

show offs.

I tried to blame a terribly dry winter for the downfall of my orchid.  Though I read in a multitude of articles that they’re one of the hardest plants to kill, I couldn’t help noticing the flowers fall to the dirt below.  Apparently that’s pretty normal too, as they have a regular blooming season just like any other flower.  I tried to tell myself it was okay until I started noticing people’s orchids blooming brightly around the office.  

Yes, my office has people who keep office orchids.  Spider plants just don’t cut it for this highbrow corporate society.

But soon the stems began to turn brown and the leaves began to wilt.  No amount of watering, sunlight, or plant whispering could restore its former glory.   So there I stood in my kitchen, ready to call the whole thing a bust and never invest in plants again.  Until I noticed what I thought could be a tiny, little, shiny green leaf at the base of the other wilting lost hopes.  

It was a pioneer in a desolate land: a sole carrier of dreams.

I got a bag of fresh soil and transplanted it to a more spacious planter, my hope renewed enough to fuel a second attempt at checking the color of my thumb.  I put it right by the window and have shown it love and adoration as absolutely often as possible.

One might say we’re intimate.

And in the time that I’ve given it all-my-lovin, all-my-hugs-and-kisses-too, that tiny little leaf has grown an entire inch, upwards and outwards into the great wide open.   My days are spent with moments of great hope and joy juxtaposed against absolute fear of failure.  What if it’s a fluke? What if it just grows a little leaf and nothing more?  What if I start to grow the plant back and my terribly dry, terribly enraging apartment chokes the poor little life out of it?

I suppose I can always take it to my Mr. Miyagi’s for advice. ♣

 

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The Quest for Air Conditioning: Cat 1, Dave 0

1 Aug

My cat is becoming a challenge.

Absolutely irate with the hot, AC-less apartment, he has begun to make us aware of his anger.

By inserting himself into the refrigerator every time it opens, for example.

In the little amount of time it takes me to open the door, grab ketchup, and splat it on something, I return to the fridge to find my cat inside it.   Even if he wasn’t in the kitchen to start with.  It’s like he’s telling me that if I don’t get an AC, he will continue to live his life in my fridge.   It was cute the first four times, but the first time I found cat hair on my water pitcher it lost all sense of adorableness.

Adorableness is a word.  It shouldn’t be; it seems strange.

Aside from trying to keep the Hobbesinator out of the refrigerator, I also have to put up with his recent pleas for escape.  You see, not too long ago, the Hobbeser ran away into the wild to give me quite a fright and himself a few wild nights to tell of in his later years.   My posts centered around the event for quite some time until I eventually found him mewing for us to save him from the cruel, cruel world outside Dave’s bedroom window. And ever since, he’s sat at the front door loudly yearning to return to the wild.

Dave’s been taking him on frequent walks to help him cope but they’re no good.  Mostly because cats are no good for walking.  It’s silly. But moreso because Hobbes is a little girly man and can’t deal with his emotions.  

Dave has also been holding the freezer door open and allowing Hobbes mini vacations in front of the cool freezer air.  I don’t know what’s better: finding cat hair on an ice cube or listening to him whine for hours on end.  You’d think he’d tucker himself out after a while and, like a baby, fall asleep when he’s had his share of crying.  But he’s more like a child who’s been left in the car while his mother goes grocery shopping – altering the sounds of his mew just to experiment with the range of his voice and keep himself entertained.

It’s intolerable.

I priced ACs the other day not for my charming Dave, but for my annoying cat.  Isn’t that sad?  Dave’s been ready for me to cave for weeks now and I haven’t budged.   Turns out all he had to do was sit in the same spot and badger me with annoying whinnies. 

Let’s hope he doesn’t take that as a cue for future endeavors. ♣

Cat + Fridge

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