I'm Pinterest's Bitch

I thought I would brag for a minute about a few things. I have good taste. Every once in a while, we have an appetizer night where we make finger foods. Usually it's pigs in a blanket. Seafood salad in a blanket. Something else in a blanket. Because food makes you sleepy.

We decided (mostly it was my husband's idea) to have a buffet for Christmas Eve. And instead of the usual "football party food" (his term, not mine, because food=food) that we normally do, he wanted to class it up a bit. Shit. I'm going to have to take a bath. Since Pinterest is my companion, I know it wouldn't let me down.

I present to you, our Christmas Eve Buffet! (Of course, these are the owner's photos because I haven't actually cooked or taken photos of this stuff.) Links are provided so maybe you'll go and get the recipes yourself.


Garlic Herb Roasted Shrimp


Crostini with Prosciutto, Goat Cheese and Fig Jam


Fried Mozzarella


Crash Hot Potatoes

And last, but not least, a vegetable tray or a salad with ranch dip/dressing.

Breakfast for Christmas Morning will be...


Mimosas


And Breakfast Hash

I'm still not working on Resolutions

They can go fuck themselves.

I've decided that I want to be a successful blogger. My hands automatically started typing "suggestive." I wish I could be my smart-assed, sassy self right now and roll with the whole suggestive thing but my brain is just clunking around in my head right now bumping into all kinds of paraphernalia and being all rude about it.

I just noticed an enormous spike in my visitors. Today. Whaaaat? Why are you here? Where are you coming from? What do you want with me?! ... How can I make you stay? You can cross showing my boobs off your list. I'm not doing that. Leave me comments, people!

So the news is that I am committing myself. Sadly, not into a hospital. Not yet anyway. I know, your dreams are crushed, aren't they? I am going to post at least once a week. A good, quality post. Every week. This doesn't include the Menu Plan Mondays that I do sporadically (thank you Clueless word-of-the-day) or the photo dumps I take do. But I know you will be curious as fuck about the whole weight-loss thing. I know I would be.

So leave me some comments. Let's shoot the shit.

This is NOT a fucking resolution

Get your act together. I've been thinking lately, and boy is that a horrible thing to do. Every year, every month, hell, even every week I think to myself, "It is time." And every time, I look at myself in the mirror and think that I should just live with it. But now, I have a sense of foreboding. A sense of impending doom. That I just have to bite the bullet. Take the bull by the horns. Stir the pot. Shit or get off the toilet. Do you understand what I'm getting at? Do you??

Because I do. Because I'm the effing genius who decided to write a 40 Before 40. With goals. And a due date. And the days keep on going by. That date gets closer and closer. Even though it's 5.5 years away. I'm figuring this will take that long to complete.

Today I am making a concrete plan for one of my, ahem, items. It is such a large undertaking. I have to break it down into miniature goals. I just cannot NOT do it this way. It isn't going to be easy. It isn't going to be fun. At all. And I know the benefits will be worth it all. But can we just go ahead and shoot me now?

Oooh, alright. Fine.

Human beings are animals. Filthy, dirty, ritualized, animals. Our bodies are hard wired to store fat so that during times of less abundance, we can stay alive. Mother nature needs to hire an electrician because this shit is just too old now. Guffaw! Yeah. Right. Your fat, lazy ass got you here in the first place. Unlazy yourself.

So. Here's the problem. I'm 40 pounds overweight. My goal is to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. I have 5 years to do so. But, the sooner the better, right? January is when this starts. I know that shitty song is ringing in your head like an earworm and you don't even know the words. But everybody is doing it.

The plan is breaking it all down into bite sized goals that are easier to swallow. January? 5 pounds.

Action: Get off my lazy ass. Tone It Up. Yoga. Bicycling. Jogging.

Jogging.

Jogging.

Heeeeey while I'm at it I may as well start training for a full 5K run.

I'm getting ahead of myself.

Or not.

And no. I'm not taking pictures and posting them here. Not yet anyway. Shut up. I know you just want me for my body.

Better at this than you

Another December has arrived and since I really enjoyed doing this last year, I'm doing it again. Suck on those taters. 

Shitballs. I'm going to start throwing up red and green peppermint flavored tinsel. I was already behind with day one. I had to retch myself over to the computer to find something - anything - that will somewhat entertain the child. 

Nope. She isn't enthused at all. Not one bit. 

And then we had to go and pull out that damnable elf. The elf that is never on the shelf. WTF is up with that? The little shit should be called Elf Anywhere But on the Shelf. 

By the way, we were wrong for two years. "Cal" as Ivy named her in 2012, is actually named "Cow." Which is completely appropriate. And because Cow is such a bitch, she brought chocolate, soap, and a stupid ball that lights up. Thank you Hallmark for making and marketing this unnecessary shit. I fell perfectly into your trap. Fuck you. 

Mental note for next year, ditch the damned book because, even though it was demanded of me to read the book, the rules set forth in said book will not be followed. 

And because I am The Mother of All Mothers and better at it than you, Ivy entertained herself on the iPad with The Cow. 

And because that stupid elf isn't enough, I planned a little craft session because I really need a hole in my head. 

Read: I did everything in my power to have an ABSOLUTE ZERO type of mess. And.  It. Worked. Because, again, I'm a better mom than you are. 

It is also preferable for your ass to not be prepared at all and to do things on a whim. That kind of spontaneous shit is on the very top of a perfectionist's list. Yep. 

The beginning of the season wouldn't be complete without holiday cards. I decided this would be the year (after never doing this) that I would send out holiday cards. And hell to the no, I couldn't just write the addresses on them. I had to go and draw on them. 

Consider yourself trumped.

Sassily yours,

My ass

Good Samaritan

I just started to pull ahead from a stoplight when I saw a car cross traffic to turn left and get hit. It was my immediate reaction to stop and try to help. It happened right in front of me and couldn't go anywhere (if I had wanted to) so I parked my car and ran to assess the situation.

I asked about the driver (in the white car) that hit the green truck who was crossing traffic. Apparently she was fine and walking around and already making calls so I was checking the driver in the green truck. My first instinct was to check for injuries (none) and try to calm the driver down. A gentleman stopped so I asked him to call 911 and then help me get the green truck off the main road. I still did what I could to keep the girl calm and still just in case she was injured.

Once the officers and paramedics arrived I checked with the other driver and made my statement. I could have left but I asked the girl in the green truck if she wanted me to stay while waiting for her mom. She appreciated it and so I stayed. She was scared and very upset and for someone so young, it's terrifying. I've never been in an accident but I know I would want someone there that wasn't big and scary in uniform.

All of this happened so fast and I am still amazed how calm I was in the situation and kept my wits about me. And I'm not putting this out there for any kind of "atta girl". It was just the right thing to do.

So what I really want to tell you is this:
If you see an accident, do whatever you can to help. If it's to just stop and check, or give a statement, fine. If it's to administer CPR (please have a certificate) or pull someone out of a burning car, do it. It doesn't matter who is at fault, just help.

40 Before 40 Update: Big Cats

When I made my For Before 40 List (still in process by the way), my bud gave me the suggestion to go pet some baby tigers. Whammo! It's on my list. Now, I'm taking artistic license to what she said and changing "tigers" to big cats. I gathered more information from her. It just so happened that Groupon offered a discount. Back that up a bit. The zoo (Garold Wayne Zoo), in conjunction with Groupon, offered a discount. One failed attempt and one successful attempt to purchase the necessary tickets later, we were ready to make plans for our visit.

We drove all the way to Oklahoma on a cold fall morning. We walked around the compound on our own for a while and fed the animals in the front that we had access to. Then we all gathered together for a group tour. We got to go to the back of the complex and interacted very closely with some of the animals. At the end of the tour, we got to snuggle and pet a couple of 5-week-old liligers. Yes, you Napoleon Dynamite fanatics, ligers are real. Liligers are products of male lions and female tigers.

The rest is photographic evidence.

The Lost Art

Way before social media, way before the internet, people used to write letters. Actual pen to paper folded in an envelope and sent to people.

I was in middle school when I had my first official pen pal. Across the world. His name was Enrique and he lived in Spain. Then I had an Italian boy named Luca surprise me. After that I had my friend hook me up with a girl in Sweden. Oh, aren't you cute with your head in the gutter. Shut up, it was sweet. We lost touch after a while but I was hooked on letters from that point on. This may be where my mail obsession comes from. And by obsession, I mean it was my self-assigned duty to check the mail every day. When I started dating, I checked his family's mail. I was set on having my own PO box.

Once I started dating Ryan (hellooooooo internet!) I got in contact with a girl in Japan, Megumi. We wrote for quite some time! This was during my Asian interest era. And thus began my "dark years" as a letter-writing fiend. I built a pen pal database on (gasp!) Angelfire. I had upwards of 50 pen pals and more people with whom I was exchanging postcards. Oh and of course I have lost touch with these folks too. Except one. And somehow, along the way, I stumbled across friendship books.

Education!
A friendship book (FB to those of us in the biz) is a little handmade booklet of about 5 pages. Some of those little fuckers got artsy-fartsy with those things. Anyway, you put your address on it. It's yours. You also put your info in it like a tiny-assed bio and the type of friend you're looking for and weren't looking for *ahem*prisoners*ahem*. Excuse me there. Then you'd mail it off to one of your awesome pen pals, they'd add their info and pass  it along. Wash-rinse-repeat. If there wasn't any space left, it made it's way back home if you were lucky. I have a few that have come back! And to make things more ridiculous, there were mutations of these things too. This shit was a hobby.

Welcome back to present day!
I'm not quite sure how Ivy picked up on it but she is about as obsessed as I am about the mail. It's almost a beat-down, drag-out, contest to see who gets to the mailbox first. Ha-HA! I have the upper hand. I'm still taller than her and can get the mail easier than she can. And she has started asking if she has any mail. So I threw out a plea on Facebook for my friends and family to send the kid some mail and it has been steadily trickling in. And look who is happy.

And see who is not... Because of Pinterest and Instagram, I am seeing all this cute mail that people are sending and getting and I'm pouting over here. I want that correspondence. I want to connect with people around the world the old fashioned way. Send me mail, damnit!

And I remember I did this at one point.

I Like to Make Shit, okay?

So I have this 'thing' for sugar skulls. It's recent for me to actively pursue and purchase things. I have a few decorations hanging around. 

I thought about and decided I wanted to be la muerte somehow. I don't really like having makeup (especially grease makeup) on my face and one day I walked past the plain mask at {Big Box Craft Store}.  

With only one image hanging around, I started penciling on my designs. 

I added the paint and sequins. 

Flower and ribbons. 

And I couldn't really wear it because of my glasses and the stupid-assed Texas heat. I may add some more designs to it, but I'm so stoked over my mask.

Wear Red Lip Stick

Alternately titled: Spot the Euphamisms

Hello again. I see you over there. You look like crap. You're short, fat, and ugly. You are a frumpy mess. Your back is unnecessarily stabbing you no matter what. You're tired as fuck because your legs wake you up and you only get one-hour naps between uncontrollable leg-fits. You have a shit-ton of things to do.

So what is the best thing to do? Wear red lipstick. No matter what, it will apparently make you sexy.

So sexy in fact, that after stupidly slinging 4 large bags of double-digit weight compost onto a cart all-by-your-damned-self, checking out, and pulling that heavy-assed cart to your car, some dude will magically appear right behind your red-lipped sassy ass and just start putting your smelly compost into your car for you. Fucking creeper. Uh, thanks? Yeah, thanks for this. Abracadabra yourself to my house and I'll let you unload it.

That red lipstick is so sexy still that it will also invite men to ask you what your plans for the week are. Then they will offer help out to your car over a single, well-contained pallet of 12 cans of dog food. I guess I should've turned mushy, coquettish, and all doe-eyed helpless. Make the men work! "Thanks, but I definitely got this."

Are you too chicken-shit to wear red lipstick? I was too. It's so... bold. So out there. An advertisement. Suck it up, baby. Red is classic. It's beautiful. And it makes you feel amazing.  

Find a shade that matches your skin tone. No matter how red that stick looks, it will look pink or purple or, god-forbid, orange if it has the wrong undertone that looks like shit with your undertone. 

Put on lip primer first so you don't eventually end up looking like a sadistic clown-vampire. Just like the red itself abracadabra-ing people to willingly work for you, lip primer will abracadabra-ingly make lipstick work for you. 

Do you remember your childhood? Do you remember how to crayon? Same principal here. They make special stick pencils of lipshade colors. Line your lips so you know where you are supposed to put the fatter stick. 

Watch what you're doing and slather, no, smear? Smooth ah, that sounds shmexy. Smooooth the red lipstick across your lips. That one word gives your lips just the right shape for application. So smooth it on. Just the tip though. You want to avoid the teeth. 

That's all there is to it. Pout away and the weak-minded droolers will follow you. Of course you can top it off with shiny lip gloss to make it look like you've been motor-boating a can of glitter. I'm not a fan of either so I don't do that. There are people out there that do that IRL though. I'm not judging. 

Damn. Girl doesn't look so tired and plain anymore. Go feel better about yourself. 

So Long,

Sass w/a Ass

Pumpkin Silk Pie and Whipped Cream

Good afternoon folks, this is your Captain, Sass with an Ass, speaking. Welcome aboard my flight because shit is about to get real. Your panties will wad up. Don't worry. Once I turn off the fasten-seatbelt sign, you're free to move about the cabin and hoist that wedgie right out your crack. You know what your Mommas say about the heat in the kitchen. Can't stand my flying? I hope you have a parachute. So, now that we have asserted ourselves, let's have some fun. M'kay?

I don't convey myself - my self - on this blog. I want to open up and talk to you like I would really talk. How many people read this anyway? (Hi Joy! I know you do! I hope you keep reading!)

I grabbed the recipe for Pumpkin Silk Pie from here. But technically it was though Pinterest. Because, Pinterest. Okay? My go-to source for pretty much everything. And so help me, if you aren't following me on Pinterest.

It's Fall. It's Autumn. It's Pumpkin Season for crying out loud. Pumpkin. Fucking. Silk. Pie. All of those words should send you into a coma around this time of year.

Tangent? Okay! I used to hate pumpkin. I don't know why. I guess because I grew up with that. If Momma doesn't like it, Momma doesn't cook it, and Momma sure as shit isn't going to serve it to you. Once upon a time, my husband and I were shopping and came across a sample of pumpkin chiffon pie. It was all downhill from there. Pop tarts, lattes, bread. You name it, I've probably eaten it. 

So that recipe calls for Cool hWhip, Stewie. Fucking Cool hWhip. That shit ain't right. Have you read the ingredients? Nothing real is walking around in that tub of fake. Even on the organic tubs. Crap. Just crap. Just like margarine and Crisco. Those assholes. I don't know why I'm even throwing out respect by capitalizing their proper names. 

Would you like to learn some chemistry? Because that's what they're doing to things. They chemistry the shit out of something that doesn't exist and you eat it. They add a hydrogen atom to the chemical chains to stabilize it, throw in another chemical (high fructose corn syrup), add some more stuff that isn't real, and some people call that food. 

And just because there's a heart beating somewhere in my chest, I'm going to draw this for you so you can understand. I promise I don't think you're stupid. Pictures help me. Visuals. Imagery. 

If you are me, the words "fuck that shit" just toppled out your jaw. Lucky for you, I'm making you do extra work. Don't worry, I've done this tons of times. Just relax, it won't hurt. I promise. Go see Alton's recipe. God, I get it. You're almost as lazy as I am. Fine. I'll put that recipe here too. Jeezus. 

So let's make this longer, shall we?

First, make yourself some fresh whipped cream. Second, make the pumpkin fucking silk pie. And don't make a graham cracker crust, either. The ginger snaps and pumpkin anything are BFFs or lovers, even. Yeah. They're lovers. 

Three, hope like hell you don't just smear that all over yourself. It's damn good. 

Damnit! Put your top down. This ain't no Kitchen Aid's Gone Wild. 

I didn't think I'd be writing about it so there are zero process photos. 

I could say sooooo many inappropriate things here. But I am actually going to hold my tongue. 

Now this isn't Stan. 

But Phil here, Phil is so edible. And delectable. And happy to be food. Real food. 

And now for those pesky recipes that you're too lazy to click to their original sources.

Whipped Cream
Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 cup heavy whipping cream

Directions

• Place a metal mixing bowl and metal whisk into the freezer for 10 to 15 minutes.
• Place the sugar into the mixing bowl and add the whipping cream. Whisk just until the cream reaches stiff peaks. Store any unused portion in an airtight container for up to 10 hours. When ready to use, rewhisk for 10 to 15 seconds.

Pumpkin Silk Pie
Ingredients

• 32 gingersnaps
• ¼ cup butter, melted
• ¼ cup sugar
• 8 oz package cream cheese, softened
• 2 tsp vanilla
• ½ tsp pumpkin pie spice
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 cup pumpkin

• 16 oz Cool Whip
• 8 oz containter Cool Whip to use for decoration, if desired

Directions

• Finely crush 32 ginger snaps.
• Mix in melted butter and sugar.
• Press into springform pan.
• Bake at 325 degrees for 5 minutes.
• Beat softened cream cheese until light and fluffy.
• Add the powdered sugar, pumpkin, vanilla and pumpkin pie spice; beat until smooth.
• Fold in one large container of whipped topping and spread into the springform pan.
• Place in the fridge for a couple of hours over overnight to allow it to set up.
• Remove the springform pan sides and top with additional whipped topping.
• Sprinkle with pumpkin pie spice.

God help me if you use cool hwhip after I schooled your ass. Alton's recipe will make enough for this recipe. Double that if you want extra for, um, later.