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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

The following is a saga about me, Rum Balls, and human frailty.  Not interested? move on.  Want to feel superior about yourself and your life in general? Then by all means, continue.

I have always wanted to be a valuable, productive part of society.  I chose to stay home and raise my kids.  It’s not everyone’s choice, but for reasons I won’t go into here, it was my choice. I will say, however, for the record, that none of the reasons I had for making that choice was sloth, selfishness, or lack of ability to make it in the real world.  (Maybe that last one a little bit, but we’ll let it slide.) Being a stay at home mom in this day and age is filled with challenges.  Not only does everyone who is NOT a stay at home mom figure you have time on your hands to volunteer for everything they do NOT have time for, but also, you get judged.  I mean, seriously judged.  You get judged by your family, your working peers, your stay at home peers, and lastly, yourself.  You find yourself trying to prove to yourself and the world that your place on this earth accounts for something.  Believe me, your children can’t appreciate what you do for them until they are way way older.  And by then you don’t give a crap what anyone thinks of your efforts, because you are too busy peeing in your rocking chair.

Well, as my kids got older, and I stopped homeschooling because of my divorce, I had to find some other excuse to make all the oxygen and water I was using in this world worthwhile.  I decided to try EMS, and became a volunteer EMT and then ultimately a Paramedic.  I was good with patients, I mean, REALLY good.  I could make someone in the throws of a cardiac event laugh.  But that was pretty much where my talents stopped.  I learned that, to be a good paramedic, you really can’t afford to be afraid of the needle.  Go figure.

Besides which, my kids, the apples of my eye, the life-force-sucking entities to whom I am enslaved, were complaining that I was always away.  It wasn’t true, of course, but they were just used to me being full-on-always-there-mom.  I love my kids more than anything, and never wanted them to feel they came second to me…there was no choice. I had to stop the whole EMS thing.

I got remarried to a man (My Captain) who simulateously lifts me up and puts me in my place.  Its a tight line to walk, but he does it without complaint.  Most of the time.  When he says his wife is a handful, he’s not just saying I’m fat.  But, he agreed with my decision to make staying home and being a full-time mom and family organizer my number one priority.  So I have been Mrs. Brady, Martha Stewart, and Phyllis Diller all rolled into one ever since.  I’ve become quite the homemaker, mom, wife, gardener, holiday decorater, etc.  Our lives became one long episode of Leave It To Beaver.

As fulfilling as that was, I decided I ought to make some more friends.  I’m a social person by nature, and being a stay at homemaker in the Agricultural reserve can be a little solitary.  My mom’s neighbor was having a cookie exchange.  I invited myself and decided I’d make Rum Balls as my contribution.

Here’s where the reason lies for this post:  Its 1:40 in the afternoon, my kids come off the bus in less than an hour and a half, and I am, well, NOT sober.  I mean, I’m woozy.  Seriously.

You see, I made the rum balls with 151 proof Rum because the gentleman at the county liquor store suggested that the receivers of my Rum Balls would appreciate it.  What he didn’t consider, and neither did I, was that there is a lot of taste testing in any cookie making endeavor.  Rum Balls included.  You have to make sure you have the right amount of Maple syrup, crushed Pecans, crushed gingersnaps, crushed graham crackers, Brown sugar, Vanilla, butter, Ginger, Cinnamon, Cloves, Nutmeg, and Rum.  Too much of any one ingredient and your Rum balls become Ginger balls or Maple balls or Vanilla Balls. And who needs THAT?  It needs to taste primarily of RUM, you see.  So I diligently did what I always do, and tasted here and tasted there and added this and then tasted again and then added more of that and then tasted again.

And then, the kitchen started spinning.

I gulped down the rest of my coffee, sat down, and put my head in my hands wondering if I was given an intervention, would it be from AA or Weight Watchers?

So, here I am, a happy drunk,  just because I was trying to be a good homemaker.  It all makes so much sense now.  This was obviously my purpose in life.  I was never meant to be a Paramedic.  I was meant to be a drunken Baker.  God help my children and my husband.