To-Go-Cup?

I haven't really enjoyed pizza ever since I was puking everything I ate, especially things like pepperoni. Which is weird. Because this girl LOVES pizza. A LOT. There was a point in time that I wouldn't even smell a hamburger without gagging, but thank goodness to McDonalds and their classic, plain hamburgers with little more on them than a squirt of ketchup. I am chewing on those things again and enjoy the meatiness of them. Red meat. If I were a dinosaur I am pretty sure I would be a red meat eating monster. Chicken can only last for so long.

Handsome Husband has a tradition of feeding his empty heart the day of the week that I have to work late and without fail there is a Papa Johns sitting on the counter when I get home at 10 pm. He's learned to also get some bread sticks and to ask for the marinara sauce to dip them in, otherwise there is someone who is kind of unhappy. 'Cause that's all I'll eat. Bread and cheese with dipping sauce. Anything else on there and it is deemed unworthy of consumption.

I had a little bit of a craving for some Alfredo sauce and chicken the other night and couldn't stand the idea of eating it on noodles. So the next best carb? Potatoes. Potatoes are the next best carb to noodles, but no, I didn't eat potato wedges masked in Alfredo and chicken. It had to be the bread. The pizza bread. So off we went to this pizza joint that actually doesn't make all that awesome of pizza, but they do make killer bread twists. Seriously, killer. You could sword fight with these things and come away with a flesh wound. They serve them to you on a long skewer, dripping in butter and Parmesan cheese. Not only a flesh wound could you come away with, but a cholesterol attack all at the same time.

We usually get waters when we go out. 'Cause you know how spendy those sodas with ice in them are. That's where they get their money. A little carbonation and some syrup and you've added 5% onto your tip. Not worth it. But this time, this time we were given the option of red creme soda. Ummm... can't exactly pass that up. Especially when I have been haunting gas stations for the fountain stuff. We had to get it. It said nothing on the bottom about free re-fills, which makes a person think that re-fills are not free. So I savored that stuff. One goldfish sip here, another ostrich gulp there, it was good. And I made it last. All the way to the end. And then the waitress brings out another. Apparently there is one free re-fill. Well! We were actually putting the last bites of pizza and pasta into our mouths and were just about ready to go, so you know what she asks us?! If we want a 'to-go-cup'.

Say that again. A to-what-cup? We were both caught off guard. What was this nonsense, anyways? Who takes a to-go-cup from a sit-down restaurant? Arctic Circle and Taco Bell don't count. Side note for anyone interested, the root beer at Arctic Circle is to die for. It's your run of the mill Mug root beer, but that stuff is good there. We said yes, 'cause it seemed kinda rude to turn down something that was obviously offered there frequently. She brought us out two soda cups and lids and we poured our sodas into these fantabulous to-go-cups.

I've learned a lot from my parents, but probably one of the things that I learned that I use the most often, besides treat people the way you would want to be treated, which I may have learned in church anyways, is this little diddy. Whenever getting a soft drink, ask for no ice. Number one, you get more soda 'cause there's no ice taking up 3/4 of your cup and number two, you don't have watery soda when you'r sucking on that straw for the last time. I mean, they keep the stuff cold anyways, why bother with ice and watery soda?

Moral of the story, I don't like ice bumping around in my soda. So, bless his dear heart, Handsome Husband poured everything into one cup, popped the lid on it and opened up the straw hole real wide and strained the soda into the other cup, leaving all the ice behind. It was such a sweet thing to do. Simple pleasures of life. I definitely married him for his brains. And his sense of humor. And his personality. And the fact that he would never take me for granted.

I drank my red creme soda on the car ride home and enjoyed the red licorice taste of it and was so glad that now I know all about to-go-cups. And now that I know, perhaps I can go in there and just order up some red creme soda instead of scouring every gas station I pass.

Fact of Life: Kool-Aid Can Never Have Enough Sugar

Kool-Aid will forever stain your upper-lip. It knows no age limit and will pierce your skin with its red dye any day of the week for the cost of a sip. I needed some kool-aid this week. Seriously. Kool-aid. Who even thinks of that stuff? I got some. All red flavors. What was I thinking? We all remember the one kid in elementary school with the kool-aid mustache every morning. What their parents were thinking, who knows, but they would always show up to school with a bright red smile, a little turned up at the edges with the imprint of cup lines. For some reason the red is extra potent. I've never seen a kid with a blue or green mustache, it's always red. Weird things. Anyways, I was that kid this week. I had a red ring around my mouth one night and couldn't get it to dull to a light orange until after a shower. Gotta be careful with that stuff.

Fact of life, kool-aid can never have enough sugar. I was all trying to be healthy, just needed some flavored water. Nothing too sweet. Well... I started with 1/2 a cup of sugar and that stuff was sour!?! So I added what I thought was another half a cup. I couldn't be sure since all of our measure cups were dirty in the sink. There was no way I was reaching my hand in there to grab something when my eyes are pretty good at guesstimating. Perk of baking a lot. Though I've gotten a little rusty. Obviously. 'Cause that 'cup' was definitely no 'cup.' It was definitely more like a tablespoon. There was no way a cup of sugar mixed with the red food dye could taste so bad! Only way to fix that was to keep adding sugar. And so I did. A lot. And it's still not awesome... but it's drinkable. Is there an age that you outgrow kool-aid? The age where no amount of sugar can make that stuff taste good?

I remember in 5th grade it was the cool thing to mix your dry kool-aid packet with the sugar and put it in a plastic bag to eat later on the bus. I was cool. I was part of the clique that looked like we were doing some kind of dangerous drug 'cause our index finger would always be dyed a deep color from licking it wet to dip into our joints over and over again. Who thought of that, anyways? But it was soooo good!

I don't know if kool-aid has an age limit for whether it tastes good or not, but it definitely has no age limit as to dying an unsuspecting person's lip red and it has no limit to how much sugar should be added to make it good.

Busting a Load a Day

Who's got laundry? This girl with food spots all over the bellies of her shirts. Embarrassing? A little. I can't do a thing without having to directly throw an article of clothing into the laundry basket.

This belly of mine wants to get in and do everything. This includes making peanut-butter rice krispie squares. I was ALMOST done, seriously, I had the spoon two inches from my mouth, and what do you know? A little morsel of krispie sticks to my shirt. No warning. All of sudden it's there.

My belly has even become a target for any squirting foods. Peach juice, on my shirt. Ketchup, on my shirt. And let me tell you, that stuff stains if you don't get it off soon. Learned that one the hard way. I was even husking corn a few days ago and got corn spit on myself. Ummmm... someone needs to learn the direction for spitting and not use my belly as target practice. Because, number one, it's too big to be called an accurate target. It's like hitting an elephant with grape. Easy peasy. Now, if it were more like hitting a moving cheetah with a bowling ball, now that would be an accomplishment. See the difference?

I've found that it's easier to "fold" and put away laundry when you're doing a load a day. Leaves you with only like 3 things to stuff in the drawers that I thought I had emptied out a few weeks ago. Turns out they're full, again. Weird how clothes accumulate when you shop at DI and find some awesome steals.

But all the water! I am sorry in advance to all of the water-dwelling animals. Our old washing machine only has one setting. Full. And only one temperature. Burn-your-fingers-off-hot. It's a sad thing watching my couple of t-shirts swimming around in more water than I use when I shower. Hey, there's an idea. Just throw my shirts in the tub while I am shampooing my luscious hair. Step on them a few times and squish them against our feet pokers. Out feet pokers are actually supposed to keep you from slipping in the tub, but they're so old they poke. And they're so old they won't come up. So they are feet pokers. Gotta try this.

I Cooked It and I Ate It

I specifically remember the last time I cooked. It was a week after we found out we were having a little girl. I was craving some Cafe Rio taco salad and didn't want to fork out the 20$ to take both Steven and I there so I made my own with a recipe that I have.

I ate and ate that salad, drowning in salad dressing. It was exactly what I needed and wanted and everything I could imagine good food being. And then I threw it up. And that is the last time I cooked anything.

Number one, I was too tired. If I cooked dinner, I was too tired to eat it. It was either one or the other. Number two, smells. Opening the fridge and smelling apples and broccoli and the accent smell of cold plastic (betcha didn't know cold plastic had a smell, hu? Well you find out the secrets of life when you get pregnant and have a super power nose) was too much. I couldn't put anything into my mouth that I had smelled before it got to my nom-noming teeth. Number three, nothing ever sounded good long enough for me to make it. Handsome Husband went to the market to get cheese and butter for grilled cheese sandwiches and by the time he got back I just wanted some ramen noodles. He even went back to the store to get the ramen for me. He really is such a sweet heart.

These three things have kept me from cooking for the past three or four months. They have also kept me from doing the dishes. Just the thought of cleaning something that had been dirtied by food was more than my stomach could handle. Need I mention that I was already visiting the porcelain throne twice a day on a regular basis and more often if my supernatural sense of smell sent me hurdling my way to the bathroom. I won't be forgetting that too soon.

But. I wanted some stir-fry last week. So I got myself a package of vegetables and some rice and even some pre-cut meat and cooked it up and then I ate it. Since then I have also made a couple of BLTs and a taco salad (without the cafe rio dressing). And who knows, next week I might just do the dishes. Maybe.

We've all got a little Emily Dickinson in us

Let's admit it. Love brings out the emotions in us and in search of how to put our feelings on paper we end up with something called 'poetry.' Rhyme or no rhyme, the short lines and vague ideas are very convenient for those of us with so much inside and only so many ways to describe it.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers—
That perches in the soul—
And sings the tune without the words—
And never stops—at all—

And sweetest—in the Gale—is heard—
And sore must be the storm—
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm—

I've heard it in the chillest land—
And on the strangest Sea—
Yet, never, in Extremity,
It asked a crumb—of Me.

Even in highschool there was something about Dickinson that entranced me. Her words, never quite making sense, and those hyphens... never used before in poetry as means of punctuation. Her famous peculiarities are something I could never get enough of. I wrote high school papers on her life, I wrote college papers on her life and I made a pretty awesome collage as a representation of one of her poems for extra credit. The way that her poetry could be read at one time and make sense to my mind and then I would read it a few months later and it was all baffling. Such a mind teaser. The words and their meanings just at the tip of your mind.

I remember dissecting one of her poems on such a occasion that we were doing a poetry section in my lit class and none of the other poems really meant much to me so I took each word, each hyphen, and figured it out like a complicated math problem. Only, the true miracle of this math problem was there was no right answer. English is like that. Forgiving, so long as you can explain yourself. And with a five page requirement, there was plenty of room to do some explaining. Looking back, I can't even explain how I did it. There's no way I could do it again.

I never thought poetry as a means of communication for normal people. I always thought it was the walking dictionaries and the early century literature lovers who appreciated such frail things such as poems. Words that can have so many meanings and are like a complicated puzzle to figure out. The tool of patience needed to figure them out, which seems to be in short supply these days, especially among the young people who want answers now and don't want to work for their answers but want them given to them.

A confession, I have books upon books of poetry. Poetry that I have written when pining for that one boy to notice me in the hall. Poetry written when loneliness could have split me apart. Poetry written when I thought of others, especially memories. Poetry written when I couldn't get enough of a certain someone's smile. Poetry written when I just needed a good brain exercise and my fingers itched to flip through a thesaurus. Books of it. Notebooks full of sappy and emotional messages. A three-inch binder full of poetry formed from loose-leaf pieces of paper borrowed from the back of my social studies and health dividers back in the day of high school. It's disgusting. Most of it not really that good. All of it holding memories of my life. But I won't lie, there's some good stuff in there, too. I mean, I didn't win a newspaper poetry contest for nothing. But like I said, a lot of it is just trash with too much sentimental value to dump.

Imagine my surprise when I popped on facebook last week and found that my bulldozing people down with helmets and pads over a leather bound ball brother, the same one that can get 2 tickets and total a car in the same week brother, had a little bit of a heart and had written a poem. And had posted it as his status. And that it actually wasn't lame. It was actually kind of peculiar, and it made you wonder just what was going on to make him write it. Who knew he could write more than his name? Not that he can't write more and be more and is more than a beast... the kid just doesn't use his potential in the way that some people I know would like him to. Football is life, and if life is not football than it is wrestling. The kid lives to beat people up. But under all of that, what do you know? He's got some feelings that can only be expressed in poetry and he did his best to get them out. I was so proud of him! Guess I wasn't the only one who scribbled my thoughts down in dozens of notebooks, searching for just the right word to describe what was going on instead of using three.