Like a fat kid love cake

It's week two of my return to Canadia land and I celebrated by having a three day eat-a-thon for my birthday. There are definitely pros and cons to living with my parents but the cons seemed to have been outweighed (figuratively and literally) by all the deliciousness that my dad has been cooking for me: fresh plump garlic PEI mussels, juicy medium rare Alberta beef prime rib, tasty pho tai noodles, delicious drunken chicken hot pot, whole steamed lobster, and much much more.

My mother finally told my dad to stop feeding me as I am starting to resemble a Peking duck/foie gras goose (great, i resemble force fed waterfowl), at which point my dad went, "Mmm Peking duck. What say we go out for that tonight?"

I've taken to blaming the dryer here for shrinking my clothes. Damned skinny jeans aren't so skinny anymore.

The only other thing to report here is that for whatever reason, my life seems to be invaded by squirrels. Yes, squirrels.


My parents received a life-sized metallic squirrel nutcracker from my sister for Christmas. This squirrel fights with me for a spot at the kitchen island and usually wins out. I offer it sacrificial walnuts which it crushes and lets fall to his feet. And then it judges me.

The squirrels in my backyard are also taunting me again. My dad took up feeding them peanuts over the summer and when he doesn't feed them, they run up to my backdoor and keep knocking on the glass when I'm drinking my morning coffee. "Hey lady, where's the old man? We want our peanuts!"

Unfortunately for the squirrels, my dad stopped feeding them in the fall when he noticed they weren't actually eating the peanuts so much as hiding them all over our yard. "Give a squirrel a peanut, you feed him for a day. Teach him how to grow a peanut plant, you feed him for life," I said to my dad. He was not amused. His precious garden comes only second to his fat koi pond.

Nonetheless, the squirrels will still occasionally come by and knock on the glass. I usually just make random cat noises at them over my coffee till they realize no peanuts are coming, get spooked and run off.

And yes. That is all from this end. Obviously, the boredom of being trapped in the house because of the snow is getting to me. We're supposed to get 20cm by tonight (that's about 8 inches for all the Americans out there). No squirrels this morning. I figured it was too cold but then I witnessed them fighting over an acorn or something and then knocking each other out of a tree this morning. The metallic nutcracker squirrel sighs and shakes his head at them. "Amateurs."

See? He judges everyone. I'm not going crazy.

This could totally be REAL!

Was just browsing one of my favorite sites icanhazcheezburger.com and discovered this awesome post. I would never have found it funny before I owned a cat. Yes, I've turned into one of those people. Sigh. I miss Mal . . . and Gabe. Yes, and Gabe . . .



see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Back in the Home Country

The mist and clouds outside my airplane window parted and in the darkness below, I could finally make out the glowing lights of Calgary, my hometown. On the PA system, the pilot announced we would be slightly delayed by the snowy -20oC weather and across the aisle, some businessmen were making Saskatchewan jokes.

Yup. I was definitely home again.

The air was so cold it knocked the breath out of my lungs when I went outside. I shivered the whole car ride home and devoured the hot pot dinner my parents had made in anticipation of my "softened" system. Not quite sure how I survived the Canadian winter all those years.

The next morning, my dad (of course) spent breakfast telling me all about his favorite pet koi fish. My feeling is that the koi have replaced his kids in his heart.

He sounded exactly like my little nephew talking about his favoritest Lego and was like, "AND! I show you the BESTEST one! He's like, the BEST! When you feed him, he want you to pet him. And he almost jumps in your hand! Yah! I'm serious!"

So he went on and on about this fish you have to pet and carry in your hand cus it's such a pig. He's so excited when something loves eating. No wonder I'm a chronic eater.

My mom then presented a lovely to do list for me which i am working on. Mostly it's stupid stuff like sorting through all the closets for stuff we don't want (how did I ever think snot green corduroys were a good idea?), helping my dad move furniture, getting my mom a new laptop (I think she wants one cus she says her facebook is "broken". I see I have some explaining to do).

I also had to vacuum the basement. There was literally so much dust that it set off the smoke alarm.

I felt like I was walking through a fog of dusty mouse feces and 10 years worth of sawdust. I wailed, "Didn't u hear that there have been two cases of Hantavirus in Mexico?" at which point my mom assured me they had gotten rid of all the mice in the house with rat poison. Which she then informed me she left all over the house when Jaws, my dog, was around. All I see on emergency are rat poison dogs. Thank goodness Jaws was such a picky eater.

My favorite job so far has been teaching my mom and dad how to use their iPhones.
To give you an idea of what it's like, I can only bow to the IT crowd for they explain it perfectly:

Are you from the past- IT crowd
The Internet- IT crowd

and I posted this one before but it's exactly what I'm up against:

Highlights of my morning include my mom going, "My phone is still broken! See? The little bars in the top left corner are never all the way full. I mean, sometimes they are. But when I move over here, it's just one or two bars!"
"Well mom, does it still receive and make calls?"
"Yeah, but whenever I look at your dad's phone, he always has more bars than me! I have to bring it back to the Apple guy again. It's broken."

"And why does dad's make that click sound when you text? Why doesn't mine do that? See! It's broken!"
"Uh mom, that's cus your sounds are turned off."
"How did you move my icons around? And where did facebook go? My facebook is broken! It keeps saying I have my password wrong. That's IMPOSSIBLE! They want me to "create a new password". That's OUTRAGEOUS! I'm not going to do that! It says the same thing on my laptop! I need a new phone and new laptop! Call Hugh or Thinh!"
"Um, I'd rather not let them know about this."


Sigh. I'm not sure whether to just laugh or scream at them a la the IT crowd going, "I'm sorry. ARE YOU FROM THE PAST?!"

And that is all from here for now.

I have to get back to the "to do list". Sigh.

Have fun, wherever ye be and stay warm!

Seasons greetings

I thought I'd share my latest cat torture device with you all . . . a Santa hat for Malcolm!!!

Enjoy!

Malcolm has a "Derp. What is on my head?" moment


My favorite shot of Malcolm with the hat and the awesome Santa cookie box my aunt gave me for Christmas



"Wait a minute. Are you taking photos of me wearing this thing?!"


Aaaaand it's off. Well, that lasted all of a minute.

Happy New Year everyone!

Alright, so Christmas dinner in NY was WIN!

But driving home in the snow was FAIL!!!!!

There was an epic snowfall on the east coast this weekend and what started out as lovely little flakes in Brooklyn ended up being a horrible sleet blizzard on the New Jersey turnpike. We ended up going about 10 miles an hour and by the time I was finally able to pull over at a rest stop, I thought the urine in my bladder was backing up into my kidneys. I told Gabe if my bladder ruptured and I ended up with a uroabdomen and dying, that he could have the rest of my twizzlers.

We made it home eventually but it took us EIGHT HOURS. Thank goodness for my Canadian winter driving skills.

Back in Baltimore now where there is barely any snow. Good riddance.

Gabe is already back at work and as for me, I plan on hibernating in the warm apartment with Mal all day and trying not to eat all the chocolate in the house. Failing miserably.

The Undomestic Goddess

The holidays are upon me and this Christmas is the first Christmas I haven't had to work in the past two years! Last year, my boss gave me the sh*tty 10am-10pm shift of Christmas day and I was attacked by a 142lb South AFrican Boerbel "puppy". My Christmas dinner consisted of cold chicken and vegetables with steamed rice from the Chinese restaurant down the strip-mall from my clinic.

The year before that, I'd had such a sh*tty Christmas Eve ER shift that I had to haul my ass in on Christmas day to work and finish my million charts and referral letters. I seem to recall raiding the gift baskets and left overs in the staff room for my Christmas dinner.

This year though. This year's gonna be different.

Gabe and I plan to head to Brooklyn for the day to make a (hopefully) delicious dinner for his sister and grandma. Unfortunately, I mostly specialize in microwaved dinners, bag salads and instant noodles. Occasionally, I try to cook, but it never seems to end well.

As an example of my culinary skills, behold!

This is what the cake I wanted to make Gabe for his birthday was supposed to look like:


Aaaand this is what my cake actually looked like:

Turns out whipped cream and bananas are kind of runny.

Remembering my banana chocolate cake and cranberry orange muffins (aka cranberry orange "hockey pucks") disasters, Gabe wisely and delicately suggested we do a test run of our recipes.
"I'll be responsible for the main entree," he quickly added.

He chose a lovely recipe for white wine apricot ginger cornish game hens.

They were delicious.

I decided I wanted to make a side with sweet potatoes. That was all well and good, but then I got it into my head that I wanted to make a fancy and complicated recipe to redeem myself in the kitchen.
And that's when it all went downhill.
I scoured the internet for a unique and interesting sweet potato recipe.
Finally, I found one that was good enough for the likes of me:

"Sweet Potato Balls"


I'm not sure what made me think they would taste delicious. I guess I imagined some sort of sweet potato timbit/croquette hybrid in my head. All I have to say in my defense is that IT SEEMED LIKE A GOOD IDEA AT THE TIME.

Essentially, you take mashed sweet potatoes and mix them with a sh*t ton of sugar. Then you add ORANGE JUICE and orange zest and wrap it all around a MARSHMALLOW and roll the whole mess in COCONUT FLAKES and, you guessed it, MORE SUGAR.

I followed the recipe to a tee and, if I may say so, mine turned out to look pretty darned close to what the picture of the recipe was supposed to look like.

The second I bit into one though, I knew it was a mistake.
My taste-buds, after recovering from the insult, coughed out a feeble:
"You have chosen . . . poorly."


So what was responsible for the Sweet Potato Ball FAIL?
If you haven't already read the recipe link above, then imagine drinking a cup of microwaved orange juice.

"That's not so bad," you say.
Yeah, well try drinking that warm glass of orange juice after I've stirred in nutmeg, some warm orange peel, five cups of sugar, some mushy potato-like stuff, sweetened coconut flakes and a marshmallow.

Gabe had this funny look on his face and was valiantly trying to finish an entire ball. I finally told him to just stop.
"Mmmm, uh, these are reeeeally, um, good honey!"
"Gabe, you don't have to do that to make me feel better."

He looked a little too relieved and put his fork down a bit too quickly. I don't blame him.

I could hear my pancreas going, "STOP! Just STOP! WHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHYYYYY??!!!"

Malcolm, who normally licks and steps all over anything in the kitchen avoided the balls like they were the plague. (Incidentally, scientists believe that cats lack the second gene required to taste sweetness, so Mal may have actually enjoyed them)

Sooo, the long and short of it is that there has been a change of plans.

Gabe's still going with the cornish game hens, but it's been decided that I will be bringing . . .*drum roll please* . . . some canned corn (to microwave) for Christmas.

Oh, and a box of Stove-top instant stuffing. Also to be made in the microwave.

Microwaves. They're a good thing.


Have a happy and delicious holiday everyone!

Good Morning Baltimore

On the cruise, I was subjected to the musical "Hairspray" . . . and found it surprisingly good! It featured ridiculous pep, lots of fat people, a protest, a jail house scene, a home invasion and the ghettos of Baltimore. Heck, it was like a musical version of "The Wire."

Unfortunately, for the rest of the trip, Karen kept singing the opening song to me.

My question is: How did I live for a year in Baltimore and not know this song existed?! I could have had it as my alarm every morning!

Without further ado, I give you the musical reenactment of my life as I went to work every day for the past year:

Hairspray opening

"There's the flasher who lives next doooooor. There's the bum on his barroom stooool. They wish me luck on my waaaay to [work]"