Archive for the Daily Watering Category

Last week I read a couple of really good posts about parenting.  For real.  You may have seen them too because they went viral.  The first is “Your Children Want You.”  It made me cry because it’s so sweet.  The other two aren’t as weepy, but they’re insightful.  Read “Ten Things I Want to Tell Teenage Girls” and “Motherhood 101.”  I’m going to save the Teenage Girl guide for my daughter to read in a few years, and it’s too bad the new mom post didn’t exist back when I needed it.

I wish I could write something inspirational and tender, but that’s just not my style.  Occasionally I have mushy thoughts inside my head, but they come out all wonky, kind of like my dancing.  All my moves seem awesome when they start in my brain, but the execution is poor and the whole scene becomes downright humiliating for both me and innocent onlookers.

Also, I have no special qualifications to write parenting advice — I’m not a teacher, psychologist, or a mother of five.  My kids are happy, healthy, and well-adjusted, but they are easy children.  I’m not saying a monkey could do it — I’m proud of my mothering — but we haven’t faced the challenges that many families deal with, unless you count the several instances of Legos stuck in various orifices.

As a result of my inability to be serious and my lack of qualifications, you won’t hear much realistic life advice from me.  However, this is kinda real: Tell your kids exactly what bad words mean ‘cause they’ll be shamed out of ever cursing again.

Yesterday my daughter and I were out in the yard smelling roses, and one bush had been stripped of half of its flower petals.  My daughter asked why, and I explained that the sprinkler system had hit the plant with a powerful stream and knocked the petals off.  My sweet, thoughtful, somewhat sheltered 10-year-old daughter replied loudly and with conviction, “Sprinkler systems are dou***bags!”

It rhymes with smooshbags.

I was half-horrified and half about to laugh.  I gasped and gently replied that we cannot say that word.  It’s impolite.  It’s gross.  Oh. My. Gosh.

She had no idea that it was so inapropro.  (I use inappropriate so much that I gave it a nickname.)  I was immediately suspicious of a certain television show, but she said she read the word in a book she got from school.  Authors.  Pshaw.

I was afraid that she might say it again sometime if I simply told her it was a bad word.  She might still think it sounded cool.  So I took all the coolness out of it:  I gave her the real, graphic definition.  She was immediately blushing, mortified and grossed out.  And very apologetic.  Score!  And then we had a good laugh.

We agreed that bad words, especially that one, are not ladylike.  My daughter felt a little flattered that I gave her an accurate explanation and trusted her to keep it to herself.  With great power comes great responsibility.  Now that she knows the meaning of the word, I’m 99.9% positive she will avoid saying it out of pure embarrassment.  I admit that I’m not always proper — my last post was about fruit flies doing the deed — but I’m not ten-years-old, either.  And I’m making a conscious decision to write such things, so I won’t be surprised when nobody wants me to be President of the United States or the next Miss Manners.  (Though I might cry if I stop getting invited to parties, and that’ll teach me.)  My daughter should at least start out ladylike, and then she can go downhill from there if she so chooses.

Also, as a woman, I resent feminine hygiene products being used as an insult — I guess that’s why this word in particular offends me so much.  It seems degrading to women.  (I had more commentary about this but then decided that I would for sure lose party invitations.)  As an alternative, if you need to demean a sprinkler system, call it a tardy-gaited miscreant or another combination found on this Shakespearean list.

Anyway, I think bad words are much less appealing to kids when shock factor is replaced with embarrassment and disgust at the real meaning.  So here’s my parenting advice in a nutshell:  Tell your kids what smooshbag means if it ever comes up.

***Disclaimer: This strategy should not be used with kids who have poor impulse control, those of a rebellious nature, or on children who are too young to know about puberty.  Also, I didn’t look up the definition of tardy-gaited miscreant, so I apologize if I offended those of you who are, in fact, tardy-gaited or miscreants.***

This touched your heart and made you cry, didn’t it?

If you are like me then you acquired most of your sexual knowledge from watching The Golden Girls and PBS specials on insect mating rituals.  Oh, and I mustn’t forget the rape mysteries on Dateline—my family watched lots of horrific news programs.  Together these shows made me distrustful of men, enlightened about elderly impotence, and strangely aroused by antennae.  Just kidding about one of those.

Anyway, it comes as no surprise that when I saw an article about fruit fly shagging, I was intrigued.  Calm down—there is no scientific breakthrough in “doing it” rituals, but this study may help explain alcohol consumption in humans.

Scientists—clearly perverted ones—just kidding—sounds like a fun job—studied male fruit flies’ responses to being sexually rejected by female flies.  In the study, some females had just boinked another dude and some females were dead.  The gals who had just gotten a little somethin’ put up a big fight with the new males.  The dead ones just laid there.  (Guys, insert your dumb marriage joke here.)

Both the males who were in with the fighting, previously-porked females and the males who were in with the dead females were considered rejected in this study because they tried to mate and couldn’t.  Males who had just made sweet love were the control group.  Researchers found that the rejected males were much more likely to choose alcohol-laced food than males who were satisfied.  The rejected males also flew towards photos of Hummers and Ed Hardy apparel.

Rejected flies love this clothing line.

Scientists think the study translates to human experiences.  Since male fruit flies who have been sexually rejected are much more likely to drink, this could help explain human alcoholism and Indian casinos.

This study also provides a whole new reason to make fun of spring break drunkards and people from New Hampshire, who consume more alcohol per capita than people in any other state.  They claim it’s because they have no sales tax on alcohol, but I think it’s because they’re compensating.  Look at how New Hampshire is shaped:

Judge for yourself.

We must also consider that this “study” could also be a ploy by male scientists to “prove” that we must have lots of sex or else risk living in a society of raging alcoholics.

Real science or not, let’s agree to quench our longing loins in an effort to rid the world of Ed Hardy shirts.

Not worn by people--or flies--doing it.

My hypothesis: Scientists will discover that female fruit flies who drink red wine are more likely to lay with a male, in the Biblical sense.

Have y’all heard of the little magnetic balls called Bucky Balls?  I would call them a toy, but the website makes it very clear that they are NOT for small kids.  If swallowed, the magnets can tear holes through intestine walls to join up with each other.  I looked for a gruesome picture of this on the Internet, but we are out of luck.  🙁

My daughter received a set of Bucky Balls for her birthday.  She’s old enough to keep them out of her mouth and make really cool configurations with the little ball magnets outside of her intestines.  They are fascinating and addicting—more than Legos or any other building toy.  I went to an evening meeting last week, and my daughter tagged along with her Bucky Balls.  During the boring parts of the meeting, I stared at her creations, mesmerized by how she could arrange the magnets.  Is she gonna make a cuff bracelet?  Ooooo…yes!  And look at that!  She pinched a row off and the rest of it stayed together!  Magic!!!  Occasionally, I reached over to pluck a few away from her stash, but she was quick and would only let me have three or four at a time.

My dad ordered some serious magnets a while back.  He grew up in my grandfather’s machine shop and now works with jet fuel, so he knows what he’s doing around dangerous products.  He ordered the magnets for a legitimate project, but he admitted that he was also excited to experiment with them.  The magnet company motto was “For industry, for fun, for industrial strength fun.”  The magnets even arrived with wooden blocks between them—this was gonna be cool!

I never really heard the result of his magnet trials, except through my mom.  She said that the magnet part wasn’t going to work and that Dad had really hurt his hand.  That’s all the detail I got before we started gossiping about something else.

It’s a long story, but I set up an email address for my dad and still get his emails from that address copied to me.  One day, after the magnet experiment, I saw an email thread between the magnet company and my dad and clicked on it out of curiosity.  Here’s what I read:

From the magnet guy:  “Hello James, How are the magnets working out for you?  How was your experience with our company?”

My dad’s response:

“The magnets worked a little too well.  I got too close to the other magnets while holding one in my hand, and the loose magnets came screaming in like meteors from across the garage floor.  Yes, I hollered my finest profanity as I tried to see through the tears welling up in my eyes.  My fingers were mashed, and I had a huge blood blister in my hand where the magnets slammed in.  Two magnets were shattered like glass, and the sharp pieces were locked into positions that would not allow me to free my bruised fingers.  Anyway your service was great, and the magnets worked as advertised (90 lb. force)!  Holy %^^&%$##%!

Next time send a warning label.

Thanks,
James”

Magnets — fascinating, fun, and possibly from Satan.

This leads me to warn you: Be cautious around those who are described as having a “magnetic personality.”  He or she may captivate you and then smash your fingers or burrow through your guts.  Trust me—my friend has an ex-husband she’s been trying to poop out for years.

Hello, and welcome to this new feature on Tall Curly Biscuit!  Every week I’ll feature weird, funny, or provocative news that we can all make fun of.  Well, it probably won’t be provocative, but I like reading that word so I type it as much as possible.

If you have strange news, either from a media outlet or from a doctor explaining your very rare case of warts, please share with us.  You can email me at ang(at)tallcurlybiscuit(dot)com, and we’ll all have a good laugh!  If you email me with a link, please explain it with text in the email so I’ll know you’re not a spambot.

I love the newspaper, mainly because it’s easier to pick and choose what I read about, whereas it’s difficult to tune out to a disturbing television newscast once the volume is blaring.  Also, reporters have to fill all those newspaper pages with something, so the stories can get obscure.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article about a pair of lungs that washed up on a Caribbean beach.  Most people probably wouldn’t recognize a pair of lungs if it hit ’em in the face, but a doctor found them so he knew.  It was determined that the lungs were too large to be human, but the reporter stated that officials were still investigating the origin of the “rogue organs.”  Commence making fun of the use of “rogue” to describe mysterious beached organs:

This organ has gone rogue.

Rogue organ….does this make anybody else laugh?

There is also controversy over a newly released book about Rick Perry.  The authors of Inside the Circus claim that Perry was under the influence of powerful painkillers during the Republican primary debates.  Perry endured back surgery right before he launched his campaign and then had to wear dress shoes on stage for hours at a time, so it makes sense that he might need painkillers.  Once in Vegas I tried to drown out the pain of high heels by drinking whiskey; that didn’t work out so well for me.  The throbbing never went away, and I just made a dribbling fool of myself if you can believe that.  (Don’t believe it.  It was much worse than that.  Dribbling fool would have been a step up.)

Anyway, the article about the book controversy states, “The Perry camp has consistently denied that his erratic debate performances were the result of pain medication following his back surgery.”  WHY???  Why are they denying that?  If someone provides you a perfectly legitimate excuse for your spotty behavior and forgetfulness, why wouldn’t you take it?  If he can’t blame his debate results on drugs, what does he blame them on?

If someone makes fun of me for my blog content and poor grammar, which will probably never happen ever, but if it does, I’m going to use this excuse: “I consistently exercised along with a very challenging yoga dvd, and as a result I was under the influence of powerful doses of ibuprofen.”  That’s gonna be my justification.  Oh, and this is a humor blog and not serious politics, so please understand that I’m simply pointing out that sometimes excuses can be nice even if they aren’t true, and you should jump at any chance to take them, especially if your options are “appear kinda dumb” or “blame it on somewhat legitimate painkiller usage.”  Ha!

Last news item—
If for some crazy reason you aren’t following Tall Curly Biscuit on Facebook and Twitter and MISSED this link, here is a story about people in China eating eggs boiled in urine: Urine-soaked “virgin boy eggs” are a springtime taste treat in China  This is for real!

51-year-old vendor Ge Yaohua eats a hard-boiled egg cooked in boys' urine at his stall in Dongyang, Zhejiang province. Aly Song / Reuters

Classy.  This site is classy.

I wonder what accident I will cause or narrowly avoid today.

That sounds like a pessimistic, fateful statement.  It is.

I baked the Cookies of Destruction last night.

If you don’t like crisis situations, you may ask: “What are the Cookies of Destruction, and how can I avoid them?”  But if you obsess over cookies like I do, you may say, “Those must be delicious and totally worth it!  How can I get my hands on some?!”  I’m here to help.

The Cookies of Destruction are extremely time-consuming sugar cookies.  Delicate and light, these crumbs from heaven will melt in your mouth with buttery sweetness.

My mom recently baked these elephant cookies for a baby shower.

You may still be wondering why they’re called Cookies of Destruction.  That’s a fair question.  You see, these cookies always take far more time than I think they will.  I overestimate my superpowers.  The last time I baked these fragile cookies, it was in preparation for a big party.  I thought I’d be done by 10:30 p.m., but I was still meticulously mixing, cutting, baking, and applying frosting until 3:00 a.m.

My mom also baked and decorated these not long ago. She is brave and willing to risk destruction for elaborate parties. Or she just manages her time better than I do.

Nothing good ever happens when I’m tired.  My brain goes in slow motion or shuts off entirely.  Later that morning, I drove through my brick house like the Kool Aid man bursts through walls.

This could actually happen. Brick walls are surprisingly weak.

Getting 3 hours of restless sleep and not having my morning tea severely impaired my brain function, specifically the ability of one part of my brain to communicate to the other and then tell my foot what to do.

I was just returning from taking my son to school when this incident occurred.  According to an email I sent right after the accident, this is exactly what went through my sleepy brain:

8:05:00 a.m.: Should I pull in the garage or not?  Uhhhh…I dunno.  Yes, it might be raining when we go to preschool.  Sharp turn!
8:05:01: Oh, shoot!  I have a bad angle due to my indecision!
8:05:02: Oh, no!  I think I’m scraping the side of the car on the house!  Look at that!  I AM hitting the side of the house!  Hit the brake!  Guess what? It was the gas.
8:05:03: Why didn’t the car stop?  I need to hit the brake HARDER!!!!  Still the gas, this time with full force.
8:05:035: Oh, @#$%!  What’s happening?  My car is out of control!  Wait a second…am I pushing the gas?  I wish this were a dream, but I have my suspicions.  Why didn’t God include a rewind button for life?  That would have been really cool of him.  Some neurons yawned, “M o v e.  f o o t.  t o.  b r a k e.  e v e n t u a l l y.”  I hit the gas pedal one more time just to make sure it wasn’t the brake…
8:05:04: CRASH!!!!!!!  Is this real?  Hey, there’s the garage shelf on my windshield right in front of my face!  Oooo, I must have hit a can or two of green paint.  And look at those bricks fly through the air like Legos!  This Ford is impressively powerful!
8:05:045: Neurons finally get it right: BRAKE!  Put it in park, turn off engine.
8:05:05: Grab daughter, run into house, and watch for an explosion from the comfort of my breakfast room, which was a whole 10 feet away from the crash.  Helpful hint: If you think there is a chance of an explosion, don’t go into your own house.  Hindsight, ya know?

I cried, shook uncontrollably and felt nauseous for about 30 minutes before I realized that it might as well be funny because there wasn’t anything I could do about it at that point.  My daughter, barely five years old at the time, was completely silent during this whole incident; it’s the quietest she’s ever been in her whole life.  She was totally fine, and now I’m a big fan of Ford Expeditions for safety and power reasons.  You never know when you’ll need to plow through debris.

My husband was a plane ride away, but my dad was within driving distance and immediately came to my rescue.  Yay for dads!  And yay for husbands being out of town so you don’t have to see their initial reaction to foolish and overwhelming destruction!  The phone is such a nice buffer for those “whoopsie” accidents.

Oh, the horror.

Take that in for a moment.

One of the funniest parts about this incident was that before the crash, in the middle of the wall, there was a brick with what looked like a penis carved into it.  It was very visible.  I have no explanation for this other than the people who lived here before us had teenage boys.

To repair the wall, we used leftover construction bricks plus a few we saved and cleaned from the crash.  Even though my husband remembered the penis brick’s existence, he figured it was probably among the destroyed.  He and my dad must have hauled away a truckload of broken bricks.  What were the odds the penis brick would resurface?  Plus, my dad, who knows how to do everything, voluntarily rebuilt the entire wall for us.  He worked his fanny off in the heat, so we weren’t about to ask him to be on the lookout for a brick with a phallic symbol carved on one side.

Admire the carved handiwork, the details, the skill...

Sure enough, the penis brick ended up in almost the exact same spot from whence it came.

This rose bush will cover it soon, or at least make it smell good.

I froze the cookies that caused all the destruction in the first place, and we enjoyed them at a party a few weeks later where the destruction and the penis brick served as great conversation pieces.

I just made these neon stars last night; it’s the first time I’ve baked this kind in 5 years.  Here’s the recipe, but I advise that you start them earlier than bedtime!  Again, hindsight.

These are for a special birthday party where everyone requested neon poop. No, not really. The glowing excrement will come later as an extra little surprise party favor.

Delicious Sugar Cookies of Destruction
1 C salted butter, softened
1 ½ C powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp almond extract
2 ½ C flour
1 tsp baking soda
½ t. cream of tartar

In a mixer, cream the butter and sugar.  Mix in egg and flavorings on low speed.  Blend in dry ingredients just until thoroughly mixed.  Cover and chill for at least 20 minutes.  Roll out about a quarter of the dough at a time to 1/8 inch thick and cut into desired shapes, adding extra flour only if necessary.  Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet at 375° until set, about 8 minutes in my oven.  For the frosting: mix about 3 T butter, powdered sugar, about 2 T evaporated milk, a dash of salt, 1 tsp vanilla, and food coloring if desired.  If you want to add sprinkles, do it while the frosting is still wet and not set.  Freezes well so that you can make ahead, repair any destruction, and then enjoy. *These are fragile, so cut out sturdy, fat shapes that won’t break apart easily.  Once I used a skinny dragon cutter, and almost every cookie broke in half.  Horseshoes didn’t work well, either.  I promise they’re worth the trouble, though!

Sorry—I didn’t post instructions for carving a penis brick here, but I’m pretty sure you can find something on Pinterest.  ‘Cause I posted them there.