Monthly Archives: January 2012

For those of you may have heard me in the general upper montgomery county area, I apologize for the yelping and innappropriate language.  This time it wasn’t for fun.  No, really.

You would think someone who eats as much grease and fat and oil as I do would have soft, supple skin.  But no.  No.  That would be too convenient.  Instead I have this freakishly dry, constantly cracking skin on my ha…nds and feet.  I can hide my feet well enough.  Troy hasn’t said anything about me wearing socks to bed every night…even in the height of summer. I’m sure he thinks I have some kind of fetish.

I’m ok with that.

Don’t judge.

But my hands are another problem all together. It’s my left thumb, mostly.  It cracks right at the corner of the nail.  We have tried super-gluing it. We’ve tried second-skinning it.  We’ve tried moisturizers, ointments, nail files, cuticle acid, and Maury’s Miracle Balm.  (don’t ask, I beg you.)  Nothing happens but that my thumb cracks.  And Bleeds.  And hurts like…well,…something that really really hurts badly. I’m out of metaphors tonight.

And when I hit that puppy, or even just graze it…..HOLY-STINKIN-MOLY!!!!!!  It starts with a yelp, then a hop or two, and the frantic shaking of the hand, then the thumb goes instinctively into my mouth, which always causes it to hurt more, so I don’t know why that instinct is even there, and then it ends in a crescendo-ing chain of explitives the likes of which my children should never be exposed to.

But then again, they shouldn’t have to come off the bus to a drunken sot, either.

Life is hard sometimes, you have to be tough.

So lets do a full circle to the rum balls….do you have ANY idea how painful 151 Rum is in a cracked thumb?  These pixels could never do it justice.  ***SIGH***

Some days are crazy-no-rest-for-the-weary-hectic from the moment my feet hit the floor (or the cat, if he is stupid enough to sleep in the wrong place on the floor) to the moment I collapse into bed.  I realize I am not alone in this.  I have no illusions that I am somehow more pathetically busy than anyone else out there. And that craziness often ends up dictating my eating habits more than I’d like.  I’ll confess, I don’t mind going to McDonald’s for Breakfast on busy busy days.  I’ve even been known to beg pathetically at 11:00am if they could just give me their left over breakfast items, even though its lunch time.  It usually works.  The eggs are oddly textured by then, but I like an adventure every now and again.

Today, in my manic, ADD, Type A personality, over-achiever mode (which apparently happens after a day of binge-eating Rum Balls) I found myself at McDonalds after delivering some of the extra said Rum Balls.  Yes, I was grovelling.  Yes, they bent under the pressure of my unbelievably pathetic and nasal whine.  I was the proud owner of two rather old, and somewhat hardened Sausage Burritos.  That moment… when I have paid, picked up, and am driving off with a short burst of elation in the knowlege that I will soon have that salty fatty deliciousness in my mouth, is a moment I savor in an un-natural way.  Its ok, I’ve come to terms with it.

Well, today I was REALLY hungry.  I’ve never ‘done Pot’, never intend to, but I have heard that you can get the “munchies” really badly afterwards.  Turns out, the same thing happens 24 hours after bingeing on Suped-Up-Turbo Rum Balls.  I was hungry.  SERIOUSLY hungry.  Like, I would eat a small child if they were in front of me and had cheese sauce poured over them.

Look, I’m not proud, its just how I’m made.

I pulled onto the driveway apron of McDonalds at Fisher Avenue in Poolesville, with one hand on the wheel and the other elbow deep into that bag of cholesterol-brined deliciousness.  I was waiting for my turn to pull onto the street, and was multi-tasking as I did it.  I had unwrapped a sausage burrito and was shoving as much of it as I could, without gagging, into my mouth.  Oh I was in heaven.  The sausage!  The cheese!  The peppers!  The Glorious salt!  Warmth, joy, angels singing! I could feel the endorphins coursing through my plaque-encrusted veins.  It’s my version of “Calgon Take Me Away”, only its “Burrito, Take Me Away!”, which, frankly, sounds dirty.

And then I had this awful feeling that I wasn’t alone in my ecstasy.  There, in a car right in front of me, was a man waiting to turn into McDonalds. Not just any stranger, but the father of one of my kid’s classmates.  Oh he knew who I was.  And he was staring at me.  The look on his face was complete disgust.  What could I do?  He saw me, he knew I saw him see me. I saw that he knew that I saw him see me. (It was getting  complex.)  It’s not like I could hide, so I smiled sheepishly, half chewed sausage and egg guts spilling out onto my lips, and waved with the hand holding the remainder of the ravished burrito.  He looked away and said something to the kids in the back of his car as he made his turn.  I just know it was something along the lines of “DON’T play with her kids on the school playground!”

I swallowed.  My glorious sausage burrito didn’t taste as good as it used to.  I felt so ashamed.  Undisciplined.  Weak.  Unbelievably embarrassed. And right then and there I made my promise to myself.  You know those life-changing promises?  The ones that you really keep because you see how vital it is to your spiritual health and well being.  I promised myself that I would never, never, never again eat my burrito like a Dog at a bowl of freshly opened Alpo on the Apron of McDonalds.   Henceforth, I will eat my burritos like a Dog at a bowl of freshly opened Alpo parked nose in, in the back of the parking lot, where no one will see me.

Amen.

Rum Ball Recipe, as requested by several.

And those of you who think you DON’T need it, you do.  We all do.

I tweaked this according to my tastes and sobriety, not necessarily in that order:

In a cuisinart, or blender, place the following:
Golden Graham Cereal
Gingernsnaps
Graham Crackers
Pecans
Brown Sugar
Powdered Sugar
Pumpkin pie spice

and then proceed to crush and pulverize the crap out of it.  You want it fine…very very fine.  Like soft sand.

To that, add:
Light Karo Syrup
Maple Syrup
Vanilla extract
Butter flavoring (found right next to vanilla at the store)
and 151 Rum

Add only enough of the wet ingredients to make a moist dough that sticks to itself.  Something kneadable, but not mushy.  You’ll have to do your tasting at the point.  Start little and add as you go.  You can always add.  It’s a lot harder to suck it out if you have added too much.  But you CAN add more dry ingredients if you have made it too wet.  No worries, mates.

Put the whole mass in a bowl, cover it with plastic wrap directly on the dough.  You don’t want the moisture to evaporate (re: the RUM).  Refrigerate this baby.

When it hard enough to handle, roll tablespoonfulls into your hand, dip in powdered sugar that has been heavily laced with pumpkin pie spice, and then put in a mini-cupcake paper liner.

When people ask me for quantities of ingredients, I have to admit I never measure.  It’s just not something I’ve ever felt the need to waste my time on.  That is why we have tastebuds, you see.   Taste your concoction as you make it.  Trust your instincts, luke! Go with the force! You can’t mess it up.  Look at the ingredients!  Any one ingredient on that list could stand up on its own.

With my blessings, The Queen of Lack of Discipline, Mama Boe