Here I am, just minding my own business making the Wal-Mart list, when I get this sage advice from the recliner:
“By the way, don’t ever use your scrubby glove to scrub your private parts. It takes off skin.”
W.
T.
F.
“I don’t even know where to begin responding to that. Are we talking about the scrubby glove I use to wash my face?”
“I guess.”
Annnnnd let me add new scrubby glove to the Wal-Mart list…
I tell you this because I care, dear northern friends. Many of you have started saying this cute little southern colloquialism and run the risk of saying it to someone southern.
Bless your heart.
In the words of Inago Montoya “I do not think it means what you think it means” – in fact I know it doesn’t. You may think you are being adorable but you are actually calling someone an idiot.
Bless your heart.
That’s a southern lady’s way to insult someone and still look like a lady. It’s not very ladylike to call someone a whore, but luckily they have this saying which covers so many occasions for them. Use it with caution!
This has been a public service announcement from DeepFriedYankee, a “damn Yankee” surviving in the buckle of the Bible Belt.
Some of the best stuff happens when you don’t have a camera, or have one but don’t think to use it. So it is with this past weekend’s trip to Memphis. Turns out that after downloading pictures, I find that some of my favorite memories have no corresponding visuals. So I’ll paint you a picture with my words instead. This really serves the selfish purpose of preserving my memories before I forget the details, but you get to be an interloper.
The Significant Weather Incident, Complete with Poultry: Picture if you will a large and beautiful park (Overton Park, to be exact) with a band shell where a Friday night concert has just been cancelled due to impending weather doom. You stand in the lovely evening air saying “the weather’s fine, we could just stay and hang out”. Cut to five minutes later in front of the SUV where the wind begins to speed through the treetops and gets louder and louder until you think it can’t possibly get any louder. But it does. You are amazed and totally forget about how your friend from Arkansas has said that when the wind sounds like a train, your ass just might be about to find a tornado kicking it. And suddenly the wind swoops down and there is dirt and rocks and acorns pelting you in the face, and you are holding a dead turkey by the neck (yes, really) and hoping that its permanently outstretched wings don’t catch air and fly all the way to Nashville. Then the turkey is unceremoniously shoved in the back seat between two slightly horrified ladies – I say slightly because no one in this group is completely horrified by much of anything – and you are yelled at to “GET IN THE CAR GET IN THE CAR”. But the wind was pretty cool.
Who Parties Hardest: Dear college students, I say this with all due respect having been one myself. You have no idea how to party. You think you do, and pop culture has glorified your efforts, but you’ve got nothing on old people. Old people have developed the wonderful ability called Not Giving a Shit. It’s pretty awesome to watch. It’s not about looking your best, dancing your best, or getting stinking drunk (although stinking drunk does sometimes happen). The art of Not Giving a Shit develops over time and you young folks just don’t have the life experience yet. I haven’t perfected it either, but I’m working on it and envy the people I saw that night who have it. As time goes on and you go through things that are more critical than failing an exam, breaking up with your cheating boyfriend, or having nasty things said about you on Twitter by your roommate, you’ll figure out what’s worth freaking out over. How badly you look when you dance at the Beale Street Tap Room will be nowhere on your list of concerns and you will bust so many ridiculous moves. People will point and laugh at your age inappropriate (says you) clothing, dirty dance moves and wonder about the relationship between all the people tripping and groping, but it won’t matter because you are having the best time ever. And having the best time ever beats looking cool any day, which is why old folks party harder.
The Superior Karaoke Three: Somehow you’ve had enough of the Tap Room and it’s time to find the other half of the gang across the street at Superior Bar. OhMyGod it’s karaoke night. Never having witnessed the human tragedy that is karaoke you are crushed to learn that you have just missed the best rendition of “Baby Got Back” EVER. And you love that song. And it was sung by a skinny white dude with a scruffy beard and hipster hat. In a Scottish accent. It is suggested that you go ask him to sing it again and although he politely declines, he promises to do Rod Stewart’s “Do You Think I’m Sexy”. It’s a mix of sincere effort and absolute hilarity – mostly hilarity. The crowd goes wild. Three ladies devise a “wouldn’t it be funny plan” and start flinging bras on the stage. Said bras are then used as props for the rest of the song and the ladies are besides themselves with joy that only butchered karaoke, propelled undergarments, and overpriced mixed drinks can bring. Even better, the ladies have their bras returned which is a blessing for the entire city because no one wants to see those knockers flinging around the rest of the weekend. The singer seems dazed. Our work here is done.
God bless Goodwill is all I have to say right now. That store is such a wonderful crapshoot of awesome opportunities if you go at juuuuust the right minute. When is that minute? You never know. Due to a spur of the moment thinly veiled work errand, that moment was yesterday afternoon this time. While we didn’t find what we were hoping for, I did score my husband a like-new, moss green, 4X beaver fur Stetson cowboy hat (in his size). Yankees – you may not be able to appreciate this type of find but trust me when I say it was a great steal. And that wasn’t even the awesome thing.
THIS was the awesome thing:
Giant Muppet pelt.
We looked over at the bedding rack and OHMYGODWHATIS THAT??? My first thought was that it was a bitchin’ shag area rug, but it turned out to be a comforter. Soon to be an area rug as far as I’m concerned, because I have been dying to get something to cover my ugly, dirt grey office carpet that probably hasn’t been cleaned since it was installed in the 80′s. So…ever.
I don’t have a tween daughter nor am I on the Delia’s mailing list, which is where I would expect to find such a thing and the probable intended audience for this. It wasn’t until I got the comforter home (AFTER checking it for bloodstains and leaving it in a hot, bedbug-killing southern trunk all day – safety first, kids!) that I realized it is enormous. Possibly king size. Which leads me to wonder all over again where you would find such a thing to purchase and who the pimp was that purchased it originally. Do 13 year-old have king size beds these days?
Andy insists that I’ll ruin it and my vacuum if I try using it as a carpet. I must admit that after laying it out on the bed to get a feel for the size, I’m a little tempted to keep it there. Then I think about how many spiders can hide in it and I’m pretty sure we are going to try the area rug idea instead. The students will love it, until I make them take their shoes off in the doorway.
Orange and pink shag. Don’t tell me you don’t want to roll around in it.
Update: I hate to admit that Andy might be right, but I’d hate more to destroy this pelt with the vacuum. As a compromise, I’ve decided to cover my despised couch with it. My couch is a vortex of evil that I won’t go into right now, but this makes me like it a little bit more. Maybe enough to even lie down on it, instead of just sitting on the edge of it.
Schweetheart the orangutan approves of this couch cover.
CLT Immigration Officer to my husband (please read IO with a Jamaican accent as well for extra realism): Mr. Andrew…what do you do for a living?
Andy: Nothing. I was a student and I just graduated.
IO: And what did you do before that?
Andy: Well, I’ve been a student for a long time. Most of my life actually.
IO: Must be nice.
Officer turns to me and asks: And what do YOU do?
Luckily, I can tell him I have a job so he doesn’t think we’re completely destitute freeloaders who deserve to be thrown back into the wasteland between the airplane and the immigration desks. Then he asks where I’m from and I tell him Buffalo. He smiles and says he could tell – I don’t look like I’m from Charlotte.
Do not bring home unwanted record players for your husbands. I say this because I care about you. Him? Him I’m going to stab with the corner of a Streisand album cover soon.
I had an event yesterday where people could bring unwanted items and/or pick up other items they needed. Like a giant yard sale, but everything is free. You get great things showing up to an event like this, such as velvet unicorn paintings and the Alcoholics Anonymous “blue book”. And abandoned record players. I thought this would be fun to bring home because my husband picks up records every now and then. I don’t know where he gets them but he’s a pack rat and it’s hard for him to see other people throw things away. Slowly we’ve grown a pile of dusty records in moldy cardboard in the storage room. When I called him to see if he wanted the player he was kind of “eh” about it, but I figured I could just bring it back if he didn’t want to play with it. I grabbed Billy Joel’s Piano Man out of another box filled to the brim with mostly obscure soft rock albums from the 70′s and took him his prize.
He took one look at it and laughed, saying something about how this must have been the height of technology in its day. I was confused. It’s a freakin’ record player, how technologically advanced is it supposed to be? My last record player was plastic and covered in metallic Lisa Frank stickers so I was kind of impressed with this thing. But he plugged it into his Man Tower of AV Awesomeness and played Piano Man. We sang along. It was all good.
Today I wake up to find him online reading a manual and all sorts of advice about this record player. He says he needs to learn how to use it correctly. ??? You pick up the needle and put it on the record – what’s there to know? Apparently, while most of us were moving on to cassette tapes, CDs and MP3 files, things got complicated. He starts trying to explain something about pitch and timing and layers and weight and I don’t know what else because I had to stop listening and make pancakes. Pancakes seemed like the winning option.
Foolishly I went up to the storage room to put away Easter decorations and dug around the records. The selection is hellacious. I grabbed what I deemed the best of the bad – Beach Boys, Harry Belafonte, Elvis, Mary Poppins and Duran Duran. Big mistake. That just fueled the crazy. He has spent all day reading about God knows what having to do with this record player and trying to figure out if he can hook it up in a way as to get the music onto his computer. Shortly before I retreated to the safety of the bedroom where I can watch a Moonshiners marathon in peace, he was playing the first side of the Duran Duran album for perhaps the 50th time, trying to figure out the mystery of digitizing all the snaps crackles and pops of “Is There Something I Should Know?”. I’m a DD fan from way back so I didn’t mind singing along the first few times, but “Wild Boys” and “Hungry Like the Wolf” can really grate on you after a few hours. Every time there was some blessed silence I thought he was done and moving on to something else this evening (like me, dinner, or watching a movie). Then I am assaulted with PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME NOW! PLEASE PLEASE TELL ME NOW! Nononononono……I had to escape.
The mysteries of men and technology.
All this because I brought him something free, and didn’t want to go see the Three Stooges this afternoon. (Him: But it’s my birthday. Me: Your birthday’s not until tomorrow. But I’m still not going to see the Three Stooges.)
While looking for a file at work, I realized just how overgrown all the drawers have become and how disorganized things are. So I start looking through all the junk I can throw out and get sidetracked by a folder from @1999 titled “funny emails”. (I used to print out and save forwarded e-mails that were funny? How sad. Now I don’t even open them.) In it is a list of 578 things that might make you a redneck.
578!
Folks, you can’t escape it. You might even have married it. Embrace your inner redneck. I present to you the best of the best. What makes them the best? They either remind me of one (or several) of you, or eerily mirror my life (which I will admit to by bolding for full disclosure and your entertainment). Or it’s just way more funny than the usual incest and Deliverance jokes.
You’re probably a redneck if….
You’ve been too drunk to fish.
You’ve had to remove a toothpick for wedding pictures. (My husband has a “technique” to flip said toothpick in his mouth whenever necessary.)
Your mother doesn’t remove the cigarette from her lips before telling the state trooper to kiss her ass.
Guests have accidentally drunk tobacco spit thinking it was iced tea. (This was a problem with my college friends who spit into Snapple iced tea bottles.)
You have spray painted your girlfriend’s name on an overpass. (I WISH)
Your senior prom had childcare facilities. (It should have)
You have lost at least one tooth to a beer bottle. (I have CHIPPED a front tooth to a beer bottle, but not lost the whole thing – that counts.)
You need one more hole punched in your card to get a freebie at the House of Tattoos. (There’s a freebie card!?!)
You have flowers planted in a bathroom appliance in your yard. (I think we know if I had a yard there would be a Bathtub Mary with flowers, don’t we?)
You have a very special baseball cap, just for formal occasions. (Oh yes, he has “work” caps and “dress” caps. This applies to cowboy boots as well.)
Skoal sends you a Christmas card. (And many coupons.)
You own at least 20 baseball caps. (If only it were just 20.)
Your belt buckle weighs more than three pounds. (He does have a lot of belt buckles though.)
3/4 of your clothing has company logos on them. (3/4 might be pushing it – maybe 1/2.)
You own more cowboy boots than sneakers. (I am shocked to realize this applies to both of us in my house.)
You’ve been on TV describing what the tornado sounded like. (That would be AWESOME.)
Getting a package from your post office requires a full tank of gas in the truck.
You ever hit a deer with your car…on purpose.
You think the last words to the Star Spangled Banner are “Gentlemen, start your engines!” (It should be.)
You ever took a six pack to a job interview.
You ever put oil or antifreeze in your vehicle in a K-Mart parking lot. (WHAT? I have a high mileage car that takes long trips!)
You get mud on your tires when you visit your mom. (This used to apply to visiting my MIL before she moved off the mountain.)
Your bike has a gun rack on it.
You know how many bales of hay your car holds.
You’ve painted a car with house paint. (Well…spray paint and Rustoleum oil enamel)
You ever named a child after a dog. (Not yet – but I always thought a girl named Ruby would be nice. Don’t judge.)
Birds are attracted to your beard.
You’re afraid to wash your car because it may stop running. (In fact, my car DID stop running after I washed it once. It was a dead starter.)
The heartbreak of having The Mighty Geo towed. At least I got to wash it first.
Your idea of dressing up is putting on your other hat.
Truckers tell your wife to watch her language.
You have “dress” boots. (Yeah baby – the grey stingray boots!)
Your state name includes a direction.
Your CB antenna is taller than you. (No, but there is a CB antenna)
You’ve ever shot a deer from inside your house. (How about “Has your FIL ever accidently shot up the kitchen while cleaning a gun?”)
There is a wasp nest in your living room.
You’ve stolen pumpkins. (I do not steal pumpkins, but my husband is proud of never having bought a pumpkin. I am horrified by this.)
You come back from the dump with more than you took. (I can say this about trips to Goodwill.)
You’ve ever cleaned fish in your living room.
You’ve ever rolled your riding lawn mower.
You’ve ever stood in line to have your picture taken with a freak of nature. (Not with, but definitely OF the five legged cow.)
You own at least one shirt with the sleeves cut off. (He loves sleeveless shirts but I think they came sans sleeves.)
You weigh four pounds more after you find your keys. (Yes, yes he does. You never know when you need all the shed keys at a house you don’t live in. Wait, having several sheds should be it’s own joke here, shouldn’t it?)
Your coffee table used to be a cable spool.
Your flashlight holds more than 4 batteries. (And we have more than one of those giant Mag-Lites.)
And finally….
If your cooler is mostly full of deer head, with a shelf of Mountain Dew for the road trip…you might be a redneck.
Redneck Problem: When your cooler can’t close due to excessive antlers.
We’re watching My Big Redneck Vacation tonight and I just learned that my husband is in denial about who he is.
The show started off with people frog gigging, shooting and jumping in mud, among other pastimes. He turns to me and asks “Why is that redneck?” My answer is “Because only rednecks think that stuff is fun”.
“But I think that stuff is fun.”
I am at a loss for words. This man is so confused about his true identity. How could he have no idea? Here’s the tip of the ginormous iceberg:
He wanted to dry these out and make birdhouses or some shit. I tossed them when they got moldy.
I could go on but I think you get the idea. I married a redneck. This was not a surprise to me and I have no problem with it. I enjoy watching the CMT redneck shows. I like watching Swamp People. I like NASCAR. My winter coat has a Realtree camo pattern and my favorite hoodie is bright construction worker yellow.
Rednecks get a bad rap, and I’m not sure why. In my mind, they are the majority of America but America likes to pretend it is fancier and more pretentious than that. It’s not. Rednecks are not white trash. Rednecks are not stupid. Rednecks are not a tiny fringe group of weirdos. What they ARE is a large part of the population who are resilient, friendly, resourceful and know how to enjoy life much better than the “average” “normal” person.
Did I tell you he has wrangled a snapping turtle?
Angry does not begin to describe this relocated turtle.
One day I will publish a cookbook titled “Things I Can Make that Don’t Taste Like Crap”. Until then, I will post such things as this.
Since I’m coming down off my post-king cake sugar high I will not go into the history of king cake as I do not have the energy. Someone else can pitch in if they want. Suffice it to say, this bread/pastry has to do with Mardi Gras and the Carnival season which started on January 6th. So we made this to celebrate it. The recipe is kind of lengthy (compared to the stuff I usually make) but hang in there.
Cake Ingredients:
1/4 cup water
1 cup whole milk
1/2 cup melted butter (1 stick)
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 cup white sugar
4 1/2 cup bread flour (1 1/4 lb.)
1 tbsp. vital wheat gluten
1 packet of yeast
1 tsp. cinnamon and dash of nutmeg (both optional)
In a bowl mix water, milk and egg. Melt butter and add to mixture. Mix completely. Next add vanilla, salt, sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. As always, mix completely.
Add flour one cup at a time for the first three cups (mix after each one). Add the last cup and a half with the wheat gluten and yeast, then mix until the dough pulls away from the sides and all dry ingredients are incorporated.
Grab another large bowl and coat it with oil. Take dough and roll it around the oiled bowl until all sides are coated. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit in a warm location for two hours.
Filling Ingredients:
1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup melted butter
Mix these! If you feel that’s not enough and you need more, we won’t judge. Roll dough out on a lightly floured surface and spread your sugar mixture.
Rachel's shirt claims she's a saint. It's false advertising.
Fold dough (or roll) several times until you get a long tube of dough. Now here’s the part I always suck at: Connect the two ends of the dough, making sure there’s no seam. Yeah right.
Place dough on a parchment covered baking sheet and once again cover with plastic wrap. Let rise 45 minutes.
Makes one big cake or two mini ones.
After 45 minutes take a brush and cover the cake with milk, making sure to brush the sides as well as top. Place cake in oven at 350 degrees for 35 minutes. If your oven is crazy hot like my old one used to be, try 325 for 25 minutes. If you don’t know if you have a crazy hot oven, you don’t.
Milked and ready for the oven (at last).
Icing Part One:
1/2 cup powdered sugar
7 tsp whole milk
This is a thin icing to pour over the whole cake as soon as it comes out of the oven. Use all of the icing then let the cake cool at least 10 minutes.
CAUTION: Here’s where we go from average cooking blog post and venture into WTF, which is where you have to go if you hang out with me. I think only ladies can appreciate this next observation, and it may even be too much for some of you ladies so I apologize. Once some things are read, they can’t be unread so tread carefully. But it won’t stop me from saying it. Once our little cake rings cooked and puffed up they looked like…a cervix. Exactly like a giant cervix. Ask me how I know that. I dare you.
ANYWAY…in that case, there was only one place to hide the baby.
If this was in any way proportionate to real life, I'd almost consider having a baby.
Now for the final part – Icing Part Two:
1 cup powdered sugar
7 tsp whole milk
This icing is thicker but you can brush it on as well. Add your purple, green and gold (okay yellow – Wal-Mart doesn’t carry gold) sprinkles. Ta-Da! This type of king cake is more like a bread, I know some are more like coffee cakes. To each his own, this is pretty tasty!
And yes, I'm using the awesome lobster feet platter.
I know what you’re thinking now. It’s a purple, green and gold cervix. And then we stuck candles in it for Rachel’s birthday. You’re welcome.
I have a standard list of things I always look for secondhand: Levi’s, cashmere sweaters, silver plated flatware and old Buffalo Sabres items. But the real fun of someplace like Goodwill is the random shit that jumps out at you when you least expect it. Today was the mother-load of random shit, and I’ll show you the highlights because I am so delighted.
Exhibit one is something I did NOT purchase, although I put it in my cart and carried it around for a while until I could talk myself into putting it back. I’ve been working really hard on just buying things I need and/or can be useful rather than decorative. But my heart did skip a beat when I saw this awful glass clown:
A steal at $7.99
The shame of this craptastic cell phone picture (besides the shame of me almost not figuring out how to e-mail this to myself) is that you can’t see the detail in his face. Everything about him is solid, heavy glass - except his eyebrows. He has little eyebrows THAT ARE TAPED ON. As if someone thought “well, he’s kind of creepy – let’s give him some eyebrows. Yes, that’s much better.” Oh dear God I wanted this clown. But at $7.99 it was by far the most expensive thing in my overstuffed cart. Choices had to be made. It was purely decorative and thus a forbidden item. I could see this on a shelf in a kid’s room. I could also see this falling off a shelf in a kid’s room and killing him. Maybe this clown has an evil history and that’s how it ended up in a Charlotte suburb Goodwill.
As I was flipping through a billion racks of t-shirts at light speed I was surprised to find both a Goo Goo Dolls shirt and a Sabres shirt (new electric slug logo unfortunately) – in North Carolina. Rare but awesome since I was wearing my own Sabres shirt today. And then in the middle of a bunch of ugly men’s shirts advertising Myrtle Beach and Cancun, I find this beauty:
I'm at a loss for words.
What? On? Earth? This shirt is mine. I don’t even want to understand the story behind it.* It’s obviously going to Mardi Gras.
It’s actually in my size and really soft. I prayed the cashier gives me a dirty look of some sort when I check out so I can say “What? You’re selling it.” (She didn’t.) Sometimes the stars align don’t they? Just the other day I was discovering The Bloggess and reading her story about Beyonce the Giant Chicken. Then I found a nice zip hoodie in a matching color because when you live where you work, you sometimes have to tone your awesomeness down just a little when the straights are around.
But now I bring you to the point of this post. The ultimate WTF item of the day. There I was, looking for a bathroom (because I was somehow born with a squirrel’s bladder so I spend a lot time time scoping out where the bathrooms are). As I was glancing past housewares to scan the ladies room situation, I spot a big serving platter and I think it has lobsters on it. My husband is big into oceana but there’s so much of it in the world you really have to be picky. Not any fishy plate will do. The lobsters look a little funky and when I realize what their problem is, I have to contain myself and hold back from rushing the shelf and knocking people out of the way:
When crime scene meets pottery class.
Yes way. The lobsters ARE FEET. And hands, but for some reason it’s really the feet part that sells me. Sweet creamery butter, someone stepped on this platter to make me lobsters. Because it’s red paint, it feels extra creepy/awesome. Like this family just crawled through glass and decided to make Grams a Christmas present.
In case you needed a horrifying close-up.
On the back it says “Love – Tim, Joanna, Caroline 2010″.
Well Tim, Joanna and Caroline, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will cherish this platter. At least until 2013. My husband will too. I pulled this out of the bag when I got home and set this in his lap barely capping my glee as I yell “THE LOBSTERS ARE FEET! FEET I TELL YOU!” He wasn’t quite as thrilled as I was, but he knows when to go along with my mania. Tonight we had bacon, egg and cheese muffins with a side of oranges – and ate from the platter.
*I did an Interwebz search and found that Rooster Teeth is actually a gaming community website. That’s all of the story I need or want to know.
