Things have been busy here at the Manor of Evil. We've been doing some work out in the yard - the moat needed to be re-dug and those alligators needed a dental. Things are getting back into shape, and it's lovely to sit out back and look at the lovely view. Especially when the Venus Fly Traps are hard at work. Their little smacking sounds can be quite soothing in the twilight.

We have a bat house to put up, but I still haven't found a location that I really like for it. I do have bird houses up, and feed in the feeders. The alligators do need a snack.

I've also been doing my duty and getting on the treadmill every day. Well, almost every day. At least 5 days a week, which for an exercise hater is pretty good. We've even gone to the park a couple of days and walked there. And with some SPF 10,000, I managed not to fry to a crisp.

Thank goodness The Minion seems to have gotten his father's skin tone.

The Furry Minions have loved frolicking in the back yard since we've had such nice weather. Of course, that means we have to listen to Rhubie's incessant gnawing on her feet since she's allergic to grass. And Jerry just licks all the time anyway. It's enough to make my eye twitch sometimes. I've even threatened to put a muzzle on him. Or rip his little tongue out of his head. Which I would never ever ever do ... there's a Special Hell for people who mistreat animals. But still. Sometimes. That licking noise is just really annoying.

I'm not feeling funny today. Sorry. But the kid is still entranced by that Shake Weight commercial, so that's always good for a laugh.

The Minion is mesmerized by the Shake Weight commercial. It comes on, and he freezes, staring at the TV. Last night there was even some drool involved. I don't know what's going on with that commercial, but it's hypnotizing the toddler in this household. Which is actually quite hilarious.

Avocado Jesus


So, I must confess that I am somewhat addicted to guacamole. Not like my book addiction, but close.

See, for Christmas, The Queen Mother bought me one of those Ninja things. It's like a food processor type deal. I was sorta "meh" about it at first, but a couple of months ago, I had some smoothie stuff and decided to drag it out of the box and give it a whirl.

I made the smoothie and it was okay. But I started flipping through the little booklet and saw a recipe for guacamole. And I thought, "I could do that." So I went through my cookbooks and found a couple of other guac recipes. Then I cobbled together my own, based on the guidelines of the recipes I had found.

I threw the Minion in the car, drove to the store and bought the stuff I needed. I came home and made my first homemade guacamole. And it was so freaking good, ya'll. Like one step away from a religious experience good.

And from then on, I almost always had fresh guac in the fridge. Guacamole because my personal Saviour. I loooove it. And then I started calculating ...

I am making guac by the quart. Yes, POF does eat some. But for the most part, it's all me polishing off almost a quart of guacamole in 3-4 days. And I tabulated and figured I am eating about 3/4 cup of guac a day, on average.

And then I wondered ... how much is too much? Avocados are supposed to be really good for you. And all the produce I am using is fresh, half of it organic. Tomatoes are good for you, garlic is good for you. An entire race of people eat cilantro by the bushels, so it's got to be good for you too. I assume. They haven't died out or anything, so at the very least it isn't detrimental to your health. But is 3/4 cup of guacamole a day so much that it's bad for me?

I panicked. And I went cold turkey. For almost 3 weeks I have been guac free.

Then, today, as I pushed my cart through the produce aisle, there they were - whispering my name. So I bought the ingredients and came home to make some guacamole.

And Oh My God, How I Have Missed You, My Lovely Green Concoction.

POF was getting ready to head out the door to practice with one of his bands. And I was practically orgasmic licking the spoon. As he walked through the kitchen, I paused long enough to inform him that I was pretty sure I was emotionally cheating on him with guacamole.

His response, without missing a beat: That's okay, I've been doing the same to you with beer for years.

And that is why I love him oh so much.

Now I am counting down the minutes till dinnertime. Cause whatever I eat, it will be consumed with a side of guacamole. Oh yes it will.

Celebrating Returning From the Dead, now with a super high temperature!

Someone told me I needed to update more often. And I am trying, I swear. But lately I just don't seem to have much interesting to say. Which is distressing, trust me.

Our Easter was spent with a Minion that had a 102 temp. No church, no trip to Grandma's for lunch, nothing. Just home with some Motrin and Tylenol and a lot of rest. He was pretty pitiful and so very very hot.

But, the fever finally broke this afternoon (YAY!), so things are looking up.

Since he's still so little, I didn't really do much - not like he's gonna remember. We were grocery shopping one day and the Easter stuff was out, so we went down that aisle. I showed him ducks and bunnies and all kinds of Easter themed stuff. The only thing that even remotely interested him was a frog. So, for Easter I got him the stuffed frog he had liked.

And one of POF's friends (a dear woman who is a fan of his country band and attends most shows) bought him a rocking horse. It is adorable. It makes galloping noises and horse type noises, and it's head and tail move. Very cute. He is cautious of it, but interested.

And all I could think was Gee, thanks so much for upstaging my first Easter lady!

heh.

On a humorous note, when I brought it inside, the first thing that both dogs did was smell it's butt. If only I had the camera ready, that would have been a priceless picture. It was possibly the highlight of the day.

And now the Minion is awake and it's time to go back to Mama Duty. I promise to come back soon with something totally inappropriate.

I'm a lefty. For the most part, I have learned to navigate the right-handed world with few difficulties. However, scissors elude me. Certain pairs just will NOT work for me.

Just tonight I was trying to cut open something and couldn't find my usual lime green handled scissors. So I grabbed the other pair from the drawer. Knowing they wouldn't work left-handed, I still tried. And tried. Feeling stupid for attempting, knowing that all I was gonna do was caress the paper softly.

Yet I switch awkwardly to my right hand and snip, snip, snip. WTF? How is that even possible.

Because we are valued cable customers, we have a free 4 day trial of Showtime. The only thing even remotely worth viewing at this point is Twilight. So I will watch it.

I admit, I read the books. I keep reading all these things about how AMAZING they were, so I figured, hey, I like a good vampire story as good as the next girl, what the heck.

I mean, once I commit to a series, I am compelled to see it through. I have stuck with Laurell K. Hamilton this whole time. And what started as a pretty cool series about a kick-ass chick vampire executioner slowly and painfully slid into a story about a former kick-ass chick who hops from one supernatural orgy to another. The last 4 books have had little plot and zero character development. Bloor Noir was pretty good, if you can get past the fact that the book starts with a multi-room threesome ... that's sole purpose was to make one of said threesome feel better. Yeah, skip the first hundred pages (she's already covered it before, trust me) and it's not bad. But the rest, well, I have basically skimmed through them and gotten the whole story in about an hour. Sad really.

So, keeping that little quirk of mine in mind, I embarked on Twilight. I will not go into what a horrid mess these books are. My one year old Minion could write better. Seriously. But I read them. I figure if the movie is half as bad as the books, then it will be a good laugh.

On what planet is a super strong, possessive, stalker boyfriend a good thing?

About the only good of that whole 4 book mess was the summary I found on Mimi Smartypants' site. Eclipse was described as "yet another 700 pages with no fucking". Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.

Not that any of this matters, since Hell has apparently frozen over with the passing of the healthcare bill, and an apocalypse is imminent. I know that there is no way to please everyone, but I can't help but wonder how different things would be if Obama was a Republican. I am almost certain that death threats against Republicans supporting his bill would be on every media outlet demanding justice, wire taps, arrests, life sentences, etc.

The fact that Republicans are basically telling the Dems to walk it off and suck it up is just disgusting. And their lack of action to quickly and loudly condemn those actions is basically a passive-agressive way of condoning it. It makes me sick. I am over politics for a while.

On a happy note, the Minion is walking now. He made it all the way across his bedroom yesterday and today without any help. And he also has a full on Spring Snotty Nose. This has required several snot sucking adventures with the aspirator thingy. Which he finds hilarous. Only my kid.

So, today's been a busy day here in the Land of QoE. First and foremost, it's The Queen Mother's birthday today. Her gift request - a container of my homemade guacamole. No, really. So that's what I gave her. (I am going to her house tomorrow to eat half of it. Shhhhh - don't tell)

[Flashback to this past Friday, as my mother and I are dusting in her computer room ... "I really like your blog, but I think if you write anything about me, you should call me The Queen Mother. But you know, that's just a suggestion."]

POF was finishing up a job and didn't get home till just a little bit ago. He came in, he was excited to see the Minion, and the feeling was mutual. He had given the furry minions a brief hello, but we were distracted. He was holding the boy, doing his best to work on some wings from Hooters that he'd brought home (no lie people, the Daytona sauce is AMAZING - and I don't even really like chicken wings). He's holding the Minion, telling us about his day, asking about ours. Well, apparently we weren't paying enough attention to the precious baby girl.

That's her and her crazy brother there at the top of this blog. She is my most precious angel, My Baby Goose, and she is e-v-i-l. Also hateful and demanding. Sometimes she smells like pancakes and we can't figure out why. She eats poop and if she deems you worthy of a cuddle, you will be asleep within minutes. She will be 15 in July and I love her more than I can even say.

So, in an effort to get her point across that Hey, Peasants, you are not paying attention to My Needs here, I have to go OUT, she pranced in and took a big shit, right in the middle of the kitchen floor. It was awesome, and totally hilarious. In a really disgusting kind of way. That's my girl.

That wasn't really how I planned to start this post, but it was too amusing not to share.

This past weekend, my Godmother was in town for a brief visit. (Hi Godmother! *waves*) She is in the military and has what one might call a commanding presence. She's also all of 5 foot nothing, so this makes her intimidation even more outstanding. She was always sorta bossy, but she has tolerated my horrible jokes about her lack of stature since I was like 10, so that's cool. Big manly military men quake in their manly military boots in her presence (or at least I like to think they do, cause it amuses me). She's also an Indian.

While POF's family is of the more laid back, Plains variety of Indian - you know, they own casinos and either wallow in their lust for the firewater, or go the other way and found churches, but either way pretty much a peaceful lot - Godmother is a Mean Indian. Of the We Will Scalp You In A Heartbeat variety. I think this has something to do with the fear factor mentioned above.

Cause really, what would be more awesome than a tiny Indian woman in a uniform scalping an insubordinate underling?

Besides all this, for some reason we can't quite fathom, she's also a conservative Republican. The Queen Mother ... is not. She's basically one Pro Choice petition away from being on some sort of government watch list for the Left. I was going to make some sort of joke about being a hairy legged, braless hippie, but well .... never mind [love you Mommie Dearest]. Politics is something they just cannot find a middle ground on. And boy, do they love to push each other's buttons. They've been friends longer than I've been alive, so they've had many years to perfect their skills.

And naturally, it was bound to happen. We were having a nice chat about New Orleans (Godmother considers it home, and I was discussing the trip POF and I made there several years ago). Which of course led to the whole Pre-Katrina and Post-Katrina comparison. Then came the Katrina stuff itself. And then, out of the blue, there it was. Politics. Buttons start being pushed, and they are off.

Now, left unchecked, this could escalate to shouting and go on for hours. It's like a sport for these two. But by golly, we were not going to have a family brawl on this day, during such a short visit. So I forcefully, but still nicely, told The Queen Mother to let it go. To stop. To leave it alone.

She didn't listen.

So I had no choice. I had to get her attention. I walloped her one on the shoulder blade/back area. After her exclamation of pain, she shut it. I didn't hit her THAT hard, I swear. She is convinced that she will have a big purple bruise to show for it. I am waiting to see it. I don't believe it.

But in the event that I did commit maternal abuse, I vow to post a photo of my crime, along with an apology. She didn't mention it today at dinner, so I think she has recovered nicely. Stay tuned for the results.

I am sure she's hoping for a photo to add to her collection. It will go right next to the hot tea burn over her boob that looked like a shark.

My little Minion is going to be a year old in a couple of days. I can't believe it's been a year already.

This mom thing is pretty cool. And I've made it almost a year with no visits from Child Services, and the kid hasn't packed his bags and run away yet. Not that he can run. But he can crawl pretty fast, so there is a small chance he could escape if he wanted to.

We've had a busy few days, and I am tired. Last night, the kid was actually wide awake, playing in the playpen, and I was on the couch fighting to stay awake. It was 9 PM. I lasted to approximately 9:15. POF finally got the boy to sleep at 10:30.

Obviously this whole time change business doesn't have an adverse effect on the toddler set. The Minion was wide awake and ready to go at 5:30 this morning. Crazy kid.

Hopefully I will find time to post something funny and somewhat improper later. But for now, I have two pitiful sets of weenie dog eyes begging for dinner, and one toddler patiently awaiting his. If I wait much longer the screeching will start, and we've had a good day so far (complete with massive poopy diaper that POF had to change. heh. that always amuses me).