Two for me.

I’m not sure how this happens to me twice in a row, but last night after drafting up a big fat blog post, it vanished once again, without a trace. Argh! ARGH, I say. I forget everything I said yesterday, so I guess I’ll just let you know what’s going on today.

I bought a gigantic sack of candy bars for the trick-or-treaters on Halloween. The mistake I made was buying Twix bars. I’m not sure what I thought I was doing buying my biggest vice in the Mars candy world. Twix are my achilles heel. If the Romans built a prison of Twix bars around me, I could eat my way out in hours. I love Twix, okay? Anyway, to my surprise, I have so far been able to leave the giant sack of delicious chocolate covered caramel drizzled shortbread cookies alone for nearly a week. Six more days to go before Halloween, though. If I break, I’ll be handing out Milkbones. Stay strong, Switz.

When August arrived this summer, I was feeling like a lazy bum being sedentary and not doing anything active with my body. Unfortunately, it was 118 degrees all summer long, and running was simply out of the question for me. I’m just not that hardcore. Team sports and I go together about as well as dill pickles and chocolate syrup, so that was out. I looked into some martial arts, but the karate clubs nearby had weird schedules that wouldn’t work for me. Then I found a Title Boxing Club like 2 miles from my house. They have a free class for newbies to try, and I figured what the heck, let’s give it a go. I went in, and before even trying the free class, I decided I may as well go ahead and join. I signed myself up for a year-long membership, got my gloves and wraps, and took my place next to one of the 170 pound punching bags, ready for class to begin.

Class starts, and I’m already feeling like an energized badass. Montell Jordan immediately starts playing in my head, and I’m bopping around like Million Dollar Baby. We start off with some cardio—jumping jacks, mountain climbers, sprints. “Aw yeah,” I say to myself, “You got this shit.” Not five minutes later, I am going into cardiac arrest, feeling like throwing up all over my neighbors and myself, and yawning continually due to lack of oxygen to my brain. This was no joke. They were beating my ass. Inside my head I was saying things like, “Becca, you’re a lunatic—why did you ever sign up for this? A YEAR OF THIS? You’re going to die.” Regrets.

I had 55 long minutes left.

By the time class ended, I found myself laying face down on the floor, motionless, and in need of a stretcher to deliver my carcass to my vehicle. The next two days were absolutely brutal. My body was bitch slapped. They bitch slapped my entire body. I am not exaggerating when I say that I literally could not walk down the stairs. I could hardly put on my pants. I had trouble getting into my Jeep. It was rough.

THANK GOD! That’s what I signed up for after all. Boy do they whip you into shape up there. I am feeling and looking fit as a fiddle, you guys. If you have a Title Boxing Club near you, I highly recommend going. 

The only downside is that I’ve really torn up my poor knuckles. My hands are starting to look pretty haggard. People probably think I fight bums in the street for crack because of the way my knuckles look. Tradeoffs.

So I’ve been cooking a lot. The photos of my meals have been getting a lot of attention lately, so I think I might start throwing some easy recipes on here every couple of days. THOUGHTS? Tell me how you feel about it. They are all low calorie, super simple and delicious meals. 

Ok bye.

________________________________________________________________________

B:  “YOLO!  ….I don’t even actually know what that means.”

C:  “You only live once.”

B:  “Oh. I thought it was some sort of salutation.”

Take me out of the ball game.

Mother. F-cker.

I just wrote a GIANT blog post, and then it VANISHED!!!! I am devastated. I guess I’ll just do it again.

I think football has officially taken the number two seat on my “most hated sports” list, being replaced with gusto by baseball. It’s so boring. I don’t understand how people watch it. It’s like watching someone make a bed. But for six hours. It’s like watching a maid make beds for six hours. America’s favorite pastime, get out. Baseball does not pass time. Time passes it. Now, live at a baseball field, maybe I can see it—there’s beer, gluey nacho “cheese,” people watching, hooting and hollering—fine. But baseball on television? That’s torture. I’d rather watch the Catholic Channel.

People keep saying things to me like, “GASP – you don’t like baseball?! But you live in St. Louis!”  I don’t care if I live on the moon, baseball is not going to get any more exciting because of my geographical location.  “You’d better learn to like it if you’re going to live here,” they say. No. I won’t. The world series is interrupting my X Factor schedule, and that is the only glimpse of baseball I will be catching on purpose, f’real.

I haven’t written a blog post in forty-five years. I forgot my log-in information. It’s been a while. I’ve been busy cooking, exercising, and failing at baking. “Cooking? YOU!?” I know. One year ago my diet was made up almost entirely of Velveeta shells & cheese, spaghetti, cereal, McDonald’s, and Chinese takeout. I’m not sure how I didn’t turn into Kirstie Alley. Somehow I managed to maintain a normal physique. This year however, I am cooking up a storm! Salmon, tilapia, broccoli, sweet potatoes, squashes of all sorts, shrimp, chicken, brussels sprouts, quesadillas, salsas—WOO! I’m actually pretty good at it. Baking though, that’s a whole other “ball game.”

HA! Get it? I say “ball game,” because like baseball, it’s f-cking terrible. I’m not sure why. It’s disastrous. Recently I got the recipe for these incredible chocolate chip cookies made with Jello to make them extra soft and moist and delicious. I went out and got all the ingredients, and set myself up in the kitchen to get to baking. Have you ever had those biscuits at Red Lobster? Well they came out like those. Except not, because those biscuits are terrific, and these cookies sucked. They had a biscuit-like texture. They were like chocolate chip English muffins. What’s worse is that the recipe yielded over 70 of these non-cookies. I was depressed.

Next I attempted butterscotch oatmeal cookies. Easy enough, right? Apparently not, because mine turned out flat and runny. You had to eat them with a fork. I’m not joking. They still tasted good at least, unlike my Red Lobster Cheddar cookies. Nobody will be calling me Betty Crocker any time soon. At least as far as cookies are concerned; for whatever reason, I have had luck with cakes, so at least there’s that.

Halloween is right around the corner. This is the first year I am living in a house in a high traffic neighborhood and not in a dark, seedy apartment, meaning children by the dozen will be stopping by expecting fistfuls of candy. Or iPods and iTunes gift cards, whatever it is this spoiled, greedy generation expects from strangers on insignificant holidays these days. To avoid what happened last year, I have already purchased two large sacks of bulk candy. One of those bags is filled with Twix bars. Purchasing it ten days in advance may have been a major mistake. We’ll see how many of those Twix bars are left come Halloween night. I’m a bit of an addict. Once that bag is torn open, there’s no telling what might happen. If I binge eat all those Twix bars, I guess I’ll just have to hand out batteries.

I think it would be funny to hand out ice cream sandwiches. At first the kiddos would be like, “Aw yeah!! Score,” initially not recognizing the negative consequence of stuffing frozen treats into their sticky trick-or-treat bags, until they get home and find their Reese’s cups and mini Snickers floating in a soupy vanilla ice cream puddle.

I’m twisted.

WELL, I would write more but I’ve already written all this twice. I hope I didn’t forget any funny, snarky comments I had in the first one. Sigh.

_______________________________________________________________________________

A:  “I need to charge my phone.”

C:  “Well, I would let you plug yours in but mine is currently plugged in. How low is your battery? I need a number. Give me a percentage.”

A:  “57.”

C:  “Okay, mine is like 96, so I guess you can charge yours.”

UFC you later.

I have been cooking a lot lately. My vegetable consumption has skyrocketed. My countertop is covered in fresh produce instead of a Jenga tower of Velveeta Shells & Cheese boxes. It used to be really tricky for me to buy fresh fruits and vegetables, because they would spoil and grow a toupee before I ever got around to eating them. Now I can barely keep my veggie stock full. I feel like I’m buying spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes and lemons nearly every day.

.

I wish I had a garden. Then I wouldn’t have to watch my food go bad. I could just pluck things fresh off the vine. Strawberries, for example, get moldy before they even reach my home from the grocery store. This pisses me off. I like potatoes though. Potatoes don’t go bad. They just grow more potatoes. I wish the other vegetables would follow suit.

.

I’m in a room full of people watching a UFC fight. The two fighters in the cage right now happen to be Canadian. People in the room keep saying, “Becca, these guys are Canadian! Don’t you want to watch?”  as I type away on my computer. No. I don’t know why everyone thinks just because I am from Canada that I should give a f-ck about other people doing things who also happen to be from Canada. If there was a quilting convention being broadcasted on television and the two geriatric women needling away were both from Missouri, would you give a shit about that, Greg? I didn’t think so.

.

.

Speaking of the Canadian thing, when people find out I’m Canadian, it is not uncommon for them to say something like, “Hey, I went to school with a guy named Jordan who was from Canada! Maybe you know him?”  Canada is f-cking huge. It’s larger than the United States. What makes you think that I would just happen to know one of the 34 million people from there? Good lord.

These UFC fights are insane. This guy’s face is completely f-cked. His eyes are more swollen than a pregnant woman’s feet after a walk for heart disease. I don’t know how he can even see. It looks like he got hit in the face with a pumpkin. Like he was standing under a building and a pumpkin got dropped off the roof and hit him square in the face. I don’t know why people sign up for this. I generally like to avoid pain, and by generally I mean as a rule of my being at any and all costs. Four minutes later, this man’s face looks like he got slapped with a weed-whacker, and there are lemons beneath the surface of his skin. This is a bludgeoning. They just stopped and put a giant bag of ice on his face. There is no other option at this point. He looks like Quasimoto.

.

.

I am typing this in real time as I watch this match. The other dude’s nose is a wreck. It is completely smashed. I would be bawling like a baby. At this point, my body would have taken over and forced me to pass out to protect me from any further suffering. Holy shit. His face looks like a steak that just got tenderized with a spiked mallet. His upper lip is so swollen, it looks like a chalkboard eraser. There is blood everywhere. It’s like he got sprayed in the face with hot sauce. This man is going to need 4 Vicodin, a shot of morphine, a bottle of Goldschlager, and several pounds of ice when he goes home. A coma is the only way to perservere through this beating. Put this man out of his misery. It looks like somebody dropped him off a house and he smacked his face on the curb.

Well, I guess…..that’s……it. That’s it. Bye.

____________________________________________________________________

B:   “Oh. T.I. has really nice teeth.”

T:   “T.I.’s got enough money to have any kind of teeth he wants.”

Never trust a skinny chef.

My roommate (husband) has been watching Masterchef for the last couple of hours. Or should I say Masterdouche.  I’ve seen freshman cat fights that have been less dramatic. I would very much like to choke each and every person on that television show. More importantly, I would like to slaughter this man simply because of the way he looks.

.

They say to never trust a skinny chef, but my personal policy is to never trust someone who is large enough to eat you. This man is a hog. Like, he might actually be a direct descendant of swine. He is such a fat bastard. Like, he could have guest starred in Saw III as one of the pigs that went through that giant destructive machine that turned all the dead piggies into a pig smoothie of sorts (gag).

.

V – Uncanny resemblance.

.

I went on an absolute cleaning rampage today. I went to bed with plans to go measure and inspect a few properties in the morning, but awoke to torrential rains and nonstop crackling thunder and lightning. Something came over me and I cleaned the shit out of our apartment. I turned into a Merry Maid in the blink of an eye. Apparently turning 23 put me into domestic housewife mode (temporarily). I mopped the kitchen floor, vacuumed the entire house, did two loads of laundry, washed the dishes, cleaned the toilets, scoured the shower, disinfected the counter tops, cleaned the sinks, took out the trash, organized the living room, and then topped off the extravaganza with a quart of Febreze, a Bath & Body Works Wallflower, and rubbed my dog down with a Downy dryer sheet for good measure.

.

I won’t touch another Lysol wipe til Christmas.

I want you to go ahead and search images of “vacuuming” on Google right now.

…..

Oh my god, you lazy f–ks, here:  http://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1108&bih=624&q=cleaning&gbv=2&oq=cleaning&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=1265l2097l0l2764l8l3l0l0l0l0l139l272l0.2l2#hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=vacuuming&oq=vacuuming&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=137056l138035l0l138092l9l3l0l0l0l0l536l768l1.1.5-1l3&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=f065e8756ae6259d&biw=1108&bih=624

Just browse the photos. Why are all these people smiling? Nobody is traipsing around their living rooms having the time of their life whilst pushing around a bulky vacuum cleaner picking up pet hair and dead skin cells. Who are these people?

The vacuuming needed to be done so badly. I purchased a $32 Dirt Devil from Big Lots upon my arrival to Greensburg, and it worked for about 11 seconds before it turned into a useless hunk of plastic that clogged constantly. Had I been blindfolded and someone attached a dead cat to the end of a vacuum handle and had me run it back and forth across the carpet, I wouldn’t have known the difference. The Dirt Devil did nothing more than move carpet particles and tufts of dog hair around the room. My next door neighbor, Kathy, let me borrow her prehistoric vacuum cleaner that was probably made in 1985. It weighed about a hundred pounds. I was drenched in sweat by the time I finished. It looked like I had run the mile. Dammit it worked though.

Nothing ruins a delicious frozen fudgsicle treat like the wood stick it is frozen onto. I cannot stand the feeling of my teeth on that wooden stick, nor can I stomach the taste of the wood on my tongue. It is truly like nails-on-a-chalkboard feeling to me. Why don’t these companies put popsicles and things of the like on plastic sticks? This would solve the problem. It would also be recyclable that way. I am going to start boycotting wooden stick treats. You should all join me.

Sign up sheets are at the back of the room.

Ok, bye.

_______________________________________________________________

“Did you ever play this game as a kid?  ‘The floor is lava!‘  They all meant the same thing. You were poor.”