Valentine's Day, Chickens, and Cheesecakes...

Yesterday I was listening to Dr. Laura while I was working on a wedding cake, and she had her annual "mooshy gooshy" Valentine's Day program. This is when listeners can call in and share a story about a romantic Valentine's Day or other time that they shared with their spouse. At the end of each call, she would ask the guest what their pet names were for each other. Most of them were cute little names like "sugar bear" or "cutie pie" or even just plain "honey." Then I started thinking about Bruce's pet name for me. What is it, you might ask? "Chicken Lips." That's right--"Chicken Lips." Sometimes it gets shortened to just plain old "Chicken." So what kind of a pet name is that? I guess you would have to know and understand Bruce to appreciate that. Anyway, since he persists in calling me that (I actually find it kind of endearing now after all these years), one Valentine's Day I thought I would go one step further with the whole idea. I found this really pretty flowery heart-shaped box, and then I went shopping for a rubber chicken to put in it. Do you know how difficult it is to find a rubber chicken when you are actually looking for one? Anyway, I finally found this ugly rubber chicken at some joke gift store. It made this disgusting "rubber chicken sound" when you squeezed it, kinda like a chicken ready to die or something. I figured it would be perfect. When I went to pay for it, I explained to the checkout girl why I needed the chicken, and her comment was "this will come back to haunt you." Had I only known what she meant, I might have chosen a different route. So, I take the chicken home, wrap it up in pretty tissue paper, and stick it in the flowery heart box. When I gave it to Bruce, he loved it...and especially loved squeezing it to hear the sick chicken noise. He squeezed it, and squeezed it, and squeezed it! Now I knew what the checkout girl meant when she said this "would come back to haunt me." After many Valentine Days have now come and gone, and we can't remember most of the gifts (we're not usually big into Valentine gifts), the chicken still remains. Many of our things are still packed in boxes and stored in the crawlspace, but the chicken box is in plain sight in our closet. Bruce still gets out the chicken occasionally. However, the sick chicken sound is almost dead...thank goodness. Now, instead of chickens, I just continue to make him his favorite cherry cheesecake for Valentine's Day (also for birthday, anniversary, and every other holiday). Unlike the dead chicken sound, our love continues to grow, and I kind of look forward to "Chicken Lips." Happy Valentine's Day, Sweetie (my name for Bruce)!

Groundhog Day

Today is Groundhog Day. It is not really a holiday that most people celebrate, unless...you were raised in Snowflake. In Snowflake, each Groundhog Day was special because we had a big town breakfast. It was originally put on by the Flake family. The big pancake breakfast always included "ground hog" or sausage, of course. After awhile, I believe the town hall people took it over and I think it still exists today--at least I hope it does. Anyway, we have carried the tradition over into our family. So every Groundhog Day, we normally have a big breakfast, including sausage, and then, sometime that day, we watch the movie, Groundhog Day. It has been a fun tradition to keep. I'm not sure any of the children have continued it on except Paula. Because yesterday was Sunday and I forgot to buy sausage and Bruce had to leave for work early this morning, we will probably do our breakfast tomorrow, so we can still keep the tradition going. By the way, in Punksutawney, PA, I believe that Phil the Groundhog saw his shadow. I guess that means we will have 6 more weeks of winter. Supposedly, he has been right 100% of the time. What does that mean for Colorado? Heck, we could be having winter until the middle of June...who knows.

Sex Education at Best Buy

Tom found us a great deal on a new computer monitor from a guy that he works with who was upgrading his monitor to a larger one. He is an animator...what can you say. Anyway, this is a beautiful 21 inch flat screen...much better than our 5 yr old 15 inch or whatever big old thing. So, we anxiously awaited the arrival of the new monitor...kinda like waiting for a new baby to arrive. It took 2 weeks and it finally came. We were so excited, except that the cable that Tom sent with it had the wrong fittings. So, off we went to Best Buy to find a cable that would fit the new monitor. When we got to the computer cable section of the store, I had no idea we were in for such an education. First, we saw the male to male, or homosexual cable; then we found the the male to female cable, or heterosexual cable; and then the best one was yet to come...a gender changer adapter. Who would have guessed that we would have a sex education lesson right there in Best Buy. By this time, I was laughing almost hysterically, while Bruce was again, about to throw up his dinner. I will not go into any further details, but you can see for yourself by looking at the pictures...prongs vs. holes, etc. So, we finally get the "gay" cable and head home. On the way home, Bruce informs me that they do the same thing with plumbing parts. That did not help. Who came up with these names for inanimate objects, anyway?

Gay cable
Straight cable

Gender changer adapter

Lemon Meringue Pies and the "Never Fail Pie Crust"

Tomorrow we are having a dinner to celebrate Bev's birthday. She said she hasn't had a party since she was a kid, so decided to invite our family home evening group over for dinner. Her favorite dessert is lemon meringue pie, so she asked me to bring 2 pies. Well, I did not have the heart to tell her that I am not a pie baker. Let me say that again, I AM NOT A PIE BAKER. I am a cake decorator. Anyway, probably the reason I am not a pie baker is that I haven't taken enough time to learn how to perfect the art of baking pies. Now, don't get me wrong, usually my pies taste good enough; I just haven't learned how to make them look beautiful yet. Now when I bake something, I think it should not only taste wonderful, but look wonderful too. So I pull out my recipe for "Never Fail Pie Crust." It is a great tasting, very flaky pie crust, which is very easy to make, you roll it out between wax paper, and plop it in the pie pan. Here comes the trick...making it look pretty around the edges. So I worked extra hard and actually made these really pretty crimped edges. Both pie crusts looked really nice, until...I put them in the oven to bake. Little by little, the crust begins to slide down the insides of the glass pie plates, so I no longer have beautiful pie crusts. I caught one before it baked too long, so took it out and repaired it, then put it back and let it finish cooking. The other was difficult to salvage, so it ended up looking pretty sad. So I poured the filling in and put the meringue on top, hoping that it would cover up or at least disguise the damage to the poor pie crust, but it didn't help much. So my quest continues...to make a pie that looks as great as it tastes, and to keep my "Never Fail Pie Crust" from failing.

First pie...OK, but not perfect

Second pie...looks like someone has already taken a bite out of it!

Computer generated "words" and random memories...

This morning, after reading some recent blog posts from friends' blogs, I felt inclined to leave comments. As in many times past, I was asked to type in a "word verification" prior to publishing my comment. Another time when you are asked to type in a "word" is when you post something on Craig's List. It just struck me funny this morning that these computer generated whatevers were actually referred to as "words." So, I began to think of what these "words" could actually mean. Here are a few of the last "words" I typed in:

spitual: This could possibly be the word "spiritual," just typed wrong

barslyte: Could this possibly be someone sitting at a bar, drinking from only a very small glass?

daheas: Maybe some kind of flower

wallyh: Definitely someone's name "Wally H." It could just as well have been Wally G. or Wally M.

phose: Either phone spelled wrong, or another name for a funny hose, with the word being pronounced "fose"

Looking at these "words" then made me reflect back to the times when we played either Boggle or Balderdash together as a family. My first thoughts were of Tom, who was the best at cheating (or at least pretending to cheat) when playing Boggle. We had to keep a dictionary handy, as he would constantly come up with new "words." In the game of Balderdash, you have to make up definitions for unfamiliar words and then try to trick the other team into guessing for your answer. The most "fun" we had during a Balderdash game was actually after the game was over. Paula put several words together to make some crazy sentences. Rachel (who was 7 mos. pregnant at the time) began laughing so hard that Brent was fearful of her going into labor, and then Bruce began laughing so hard that he began to upchuck (not an extremely unusual thing to happen). Yes, we are your normal "fun and games" type of family.

Crazy Colorado Weather

We knew from living in Colorado before that the weather here is very odd. The saying here in Colorado is "if you don't like the weather, wait 5 minutes...it will change." Well, so far, this has been a very strange winter. One day it will be in the 60's or 70's, the next day it will be below freezing. Take this week for example...early in the week we had single digit temperatures; this afternoon it was 73 degrees. No wonder everyone gets sick with colds. The snowfall has been weird this winter, too. 2 years ago, we had several feet of snow, and it snowed what seemed like every weekend. This year, the most snow we have had at one time has been about 2-3 inches, and the wind just keeps blowing and blowing. When it is this dry, the "experts" tell us we need to water our lawn, even in the middle of the winter, or else it will dry out and die by the time spring comes around. If that's not strange, I don't know what is. So, I'm going to bed now, and before I do, I will slather my body with lotion, so it doesn't resemble a piece of dry crusty old bread.

Happy 2009!

So, what do two old people do on New Year's Eve? We try really, really hard to stay awake until midnight. I had a wedding cake to bake that night, so while the cake was baking, we watched a movie. Watching movies makes me automatically fall asleep, so it's a good thing I had the cake in the oven...I knew I couldn't fall asleep while the cake was baking, or we would have a crispy instead of moist cake. So, after the cake was baked and the movie was done, we flipped from channel to channel on the TV, waiting for the "NY ball" to drop, so we could officially proclaim "Happy New Year!" Then we went to bed. Normally, on New Year's Eve, we would have been celebrating at a party at Dick and Nancy Wright's home, but they had family here from out of town, and no one else stepped in to take over the hosting, so instead you have two old people with a pretty boring New Year's Eve.