Don't toss this candle salad

This is one of those posts that's going to make my mother call me clucking her tongue and muttering about my not being appropriate.  And all I'm going to say is, TAKE IT UP WITH BETTY.

I was watching an episode of "Watch What Happens Live" with Andy Cohen, who in an interview with Amy Sedaris mentioned the Candle Salad.  If you're a thousand years old you might remember this, because the recipe appeared in Betty Crocker's Cookbook for boys and girls, published in 1957.  Oh yeah, it's a real salad. 

Original recipe

Modern interpretation

Remember, kids. It's better than a real candle, because you can eat it!

Wherein things go from bad to worse.

We play a family game!

We are visiting my family in Virginia, and the assembled crowd includes my parents, all 4 of my siblings, two spouses, an exchange student who's been living with my family for three years, and two of the three Buds.

The game, announces one of my sisters, plays like written Telephone. Each person gets a stack of paper. On the top sheet, we are to write a saying or a phrase. Then we each pass our stack to the left, and the next person interprets the phrase in a drawing. Another pass, and the third person must - looking only at the drawing - write what they think the original phrase was. And so on, until each stack has passed completely around the group.

Oh yes, hilarity ensues.

My brother selects as his phrase, "I have a dream..."

This gets passed to my father, who draws what appears to be someone lying in bed either dreaming or smoking.  Just say no, kids.

Next, my sister interprets this as the following:

We'll ignore the fact that a delightful fluffy cloud of dream-smoke does not a nightmare make. She passes the stack to me, upon which the whole thing heads downhill.

In my zeal to make sure the "boy" part of the phrase is understood, I draw an anatomically correct stick figure. I also clarify the bad dream portion by including another stick figure being shot. Seemed straight forward enough to me.

APPARENTLY NOT because the DNB passes this bad boy on to my mother. "MORNING WOOD?" I shriek when we review the stack later.  Leave it to us to ruin a perfectly nice family game.

"Well, it definitely looks like the person is dreaming about watching a porn shoot," he defends himself. "Imagine how I felt having to pass that phrase on to your mom!"

Fortunately, my mother is sweet and innocent, and interprets this in the nicest, mommish way possible: morning, with a neat pile of logs.

This she hands to my other sister, who does her best.  Ah yes, the old "the rooster crows in the morning at the 3 logs" saying.  It's a classic. 

My brother-in-law interprets this beautifully, with a careful depiction of a rooster crowing at precisely three logs.

Our exchange student is the last to receive the stack. Maybe in Korea chickens comment instead of cluck?  Even Asian animals are smart!

 

Testing, testing.

The DNB discovers a treasure!

It's a directional mic he hasn't used for at least 10 years.

His face lights up, and I can see the wheels turning. I have learned that this is NOT A GOOD THING. He disappears into the basement.

He reappears several minutes later, the Buds' e-collar attached to one end of the mic, and a pair of giant headphones attached to the other. He wanders around the house, listening intently.

I lean toward the contraption. "If you think this isn't going on the blog, you're a complete retard instead of just borderline," I tell him.

He waves the parabolic mic in a different direction.

"Wait, say that again. This thing may not be directional."

Marriage is a Solemn Institution

It's a time-honored tradition in my family, on my father's side, to put clothespins on unsuspecting individuals. Nowhere has this childish/Super Fun past time been embraced as warmly as at my sister's recent wedding. My sister's classy and elegant wedding. At a country club with a plated dinner.

My uncle sidles up to me. He displays a handful of plastic clothespins like a guy with watches in his coat. "I bought 200 of these last night," he says in a low voice, handing me a few.

My eyes widen in delight. He walks away, a red clothespin already clinging to the back of his shirt.

We decide that the ultimate coup is to pin one on my sister, the beautiful bride. That accomplished, many times over, we move on to more insidious targets. My father manages to clip one to the long braid of one of our servers. Our entire table giggles into our hands. A family friend stops to chat, his back to my brother's seat. By the time he walks away, the back edge of his jacket is lined with a patriotic assortment of red, white, and blue clothespins. The DNB tags the photographer.

Our game is interrupted by a young man, a friend of the groom. He kneels by my father's chair. "Sir," he begins. "I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful event." Graciously, my father shakes his hand and the young man leaves. A clothespin has made it onto the bottom hem of my father's pants.

My father, an expert in military intelligence, carefully bides his time. A game of limbo begins, and my father works his way toward the edge of the gathered spectators. Just as the young man begins to scoot his way under the limbo marker, my father swoops in. Surreptitiously clipping the clothespin to the back of the limboing young man's shirt, he walks away in triumph.

Jon Lajoie will possibly be my next husband.

It's Sunday afternoon: get up, get down, and get stuff done.

When the "Conversation" takes a turn for the worst.

Hookah Not Shown.

We go north!

We're setting off for Duluth again, the city I awarded "Worse Use of Natural Beauty" after we spent all day driving around trying to get a decent photo of the harbor. Can't be done without Photoshop. It's because, in its heyday, Duluth was known for its bustling steel, lumber, and shipping industries. Today, the remnants of that history remain in the form of an industrial wasteland just outside of downtown Duluth. It's totally fug.

I tried to do a search for Duluth photos so you can see what I mean, and this was one of the top results:

This isn't a photo of Duluth, but I decided to post it because why is that guy sitting in a bookshelf?? And why is the other guy totally high?

Because it's winter in The Great White North, kids, that's why. Please, God, tell me they're studying computer robotics at UMN-Duluth.

Back on Thursday.

Karma is a Punk-Ass Bitch, as told to me by the DNB.

"I was mad at you yesterday, so I took the little container of chili you prepared for your lunch. I was like, "I'm mad, I'm taking her chili." I put a spoonful of sour cream in there and packed it up. And all day I felt no remorse, and instead was very excited to eat my chili for lunch.

When it was finally Chili Time (not to be confused with Business Time), I could not WAIT to eat it. I put it in the microwave, and even my Boss-Doctor commented on how good it smelled. I took it out, stirred in the sour cream, and took a big ol' bite. 

IT WAS FUCKING GRAVY! 

I took GRAVY for lunch! The gravy for the pot roast was in the same type of container as your chili, and ohmygod I packed the gravy." 

"AHAHAHAHAHAAHAHA," I interject. "Because I leave earlier than you, and I had already taken the chili." 

"I actually took a few bites because I was thinking, well, maybe this gravy will be so good that I'll actually want to eat it for lunch instead of chili. But it wasn't. So I all looked around and nonchalantly put the top back on the container and slid it into my bag. 

'Finished already?' my Boss-Doctor asked. 

I didn't want to admit that my delicious lunch was actually gravy, so I just replied, 'Yeah, it wasn't really what I expected.'" 

"AHAHAHAHAHAHA," I continue. "See kids? This is what happens to people who try to be jerks: they end up with gravy on their face!"

"I know, totally. Finally, by the end of the afternoon, I had to fess up to my Boss-Doctor, and for the rest of the afternoon, he made gravy references. One of the other docs was like, 'I'd love to go up on the roof and drink some beer right now,' and my Boss-Doctor was all, 'Yeah, and eat a big bowl of GRAVY.'" 

It's at this point in his story that I'm totally planning the title of my blog post about this. 

"And at the end of the day, my Boss-Doctor's parting words were, 'This is going on the blog.'"

Sprite shoots out my nose, and I dissolve into the kind of giggles that makes you too weak to stand, and I'm holding onto the counter for support. 

"I didn't even embellish this story ONE BIT as I told it to you because it's bad enough as it actually happened," the DNB concludes. 

All I can do is nod as I gasp for air. The Buds eye the kitchen floor, searching for more Snot-Sprite.

Blog Brings Couple Together

So I wasn't going to post today because I was in a really bad mood this morning because the DNB and I had a fight, and it ended with us both accusing each other of different horrible things that had nothing to do with the subject of the original fight, which was pot roast. And if you're wondering how people can fight about pot roast, well, trust me IT CAN BE DONE.

And perhaps as a consequence of that, I spent most of my work day reading this crazy hysterical blog I just found called The Bloggess. I like to think the author and I are a little bit alike, except that she's in the top 3,500 blogs on Technorati, while only my mother-in-law reads mine. Which means you don't get to read all of the good stuff about the DNB, like that one fetish he has for bikers wearing diapers chasing nurses dressed like Smurfs. But this post is what really got me, and I started snickering right here at my desk in this super fancy law firm where casual day means you can wear your two-piece suit instead of the three. I would've gotten dirty looks, had most everyone else not been deeply engrossed in trying to inflate their billable hours. KIDDING! ALL LAWYERS ARE ETHICAL! AND WE LOVE PUPPIES!

It was after reading that post that I realized there are more important things to have angst over than who's right about the pot roast. Like that a snake could be waiting under my car to attack me.