Prickly Love

Wily. I should have said wily Quixote in that last post. Dang. I also should have said John Updike and Balkan Peninsula and Peloponnesian War on my Jeopardy test. (Q's and A's*, or, rather, A's and Q's, can be found here if you're a masochist curious.)

You might say I get hung up on things that don't really matter. This adorable quirk also accounts for why I came home from the store with another package of stew meat, with which I hope to redeem myself very soon, even if it means having beef stew twice in one week. Simon will also hope I can pull it off this time lest I insist on cooking beef stew every night until I can make it my bitch. Beef stew, you better watch yo ass.

I should get major points for even going to the grocery store (with Wombat) in the first place, though. Nine times out of ten we go as a family because it's just easier that way, and the other one time Simon takes Wombat on a day I'm working. I realize that this makes me sound really lame, but please know that I don't avoid going out with the kid because I'm a total wimp--or at least not entirely because I'm a total wimp. It's because whereas Simon is able to go out and about with a child who will sit contentedly in his stroller, waving at passersby and barking at dogs, I can only ever go out and about with a child who will not sit in a stroller or a shopping cart or heel like a spaniel but must cling to me like a barnacle, one that occasionally sprouts hands with which to slap me gleefully in the face or pull at the collar of my shirt in search of the goods. Usually those hands are also covered with slime recently excreted from one of two orifices, neither of which I'm interested in getting to know more intimately, thank you.

Yesterday, though, I had to go to the store, not for beef chunks, actually, but for brown icing and sprinkles (jimmies? Jameses?) because (a) we got new cookie cutters at Ikea, and (b) we just watched the episode of Sarah Silverman where she and Laura compete on Cookie Party, and I damn near ran screaming into the night when I realized we didn't have a single cookie-like product in the house. And then I couldn't stop thinking about them all night and into the next day. So I went to the store for cookie fixins, Slappy McBarnacle in tow, and came home with everything I needed, including my sanity, although just barely.

For some crazy reason, I decided to complicate the cookie-making process by making my own brown royal icing with meringue powder and confectioners sugar, but Safeway didn't have meringue powder (where can I get meringue powder if not at the grocery store? do I have to go to a specialty baking shop? and will I gain ten pounds the second I walk through the front door?), and I also couldn't find premade brown icing, so I had to settle for white frosting, which I then tinted myself with food coloring, trial and error style, an experience that was not unlike sliding down a rainbow made of all the baby poo colors of the world. But (ha!) it was worth it in the end, as it allowed me to produce the masterpieces below:

I may not be able to cook dinner (although Sunday's beef stew was, despite my incompetence, delicious nonetheless), I can indeed make cookies, or at least these kinds of cookies, especially when I put less emphasis on the baking part and more emphasis on the crafting part. Aw! Hedgehogs in love! (The boy hedgehog is the one with more hair, obvs.) I also made polar bears in love, squirrels in love, and moose (mooses?) in love, the last of which I realized was not just a culinary feat but a political act, as both mooses (meese?) have a rack of very masculine antlers.

In other Valentine's Day news, have you been keeping up with Style Lush? There are a bunch of holiday posts up right now, including one in which I encourage you to deface a classic family game in the interest of getting it on. Oh yeah.

Also coming soon elsewhere is a brief guest appearance by Simon on Mominatrix. He's going to tell you how to please your man this February 14 (or whenever, really) (UPDATE: His contribution is part of the Dad-approved gift guide here) , and then he'll also be making a cameo on Work It, Mom's "Problem Solved" with a tutorial that could make your V-Day (or any day; but not every day) a little more jolly. (Read: Boooooze.)

Happy Thursday, peeps (travesty!). What's new with you?

*Yes, it's actually correct to use an apostrophe in this instance. Hey, I don't make the rules, I just enforce them.

wrote Leah at 8:15 AM | Comments (13)