Maggie Hates Hot Cookies

Maggie 4-1/2 months ago

I need to take a new picture of her, but I gotta get a new SD card first. Current one bit the dust and there is no transferring images to the computer without one.

In the interest of healthier treats, and to use up the Skippy peanut butter no one in the house will eat, I started making peanut butter doggie cookies(biscuits) for Maggie. I make them like this recipe but I use 3/4 c. milk and add 2T sugar.

She loves them. Unless they're hot from the oven--then she is terrified of them. I have not yet figured this dog out, she's really the craziest little hound I've ever known, but she's funny so that offsets the confusion I often experience around her.

Anyway, I made a batch last night took one to her while the others cooled. It was hot but not hot enough to burn my fingers--I carried it to her in my unprotected hand--but it was hotter than anything else she eats and she didn't know what to make of it.

At first, she peeled her lips back to try and take it with just her teeth, but she couldn't bring herself to bite it. So she just bit the air around the cookie several times and bounced back and forth.

I put it on the floor in front of her and she RAN AWAY from the evil-hot-cookie and hid across the room, behind the table.

Naturally, I had to milk this. I picked it up and pretended to eat it and she came rushing at me, barking like an insane thing, and I couldn't resist chasing her around the room with the hot cookie. She hid again. I sat again and pretended to eat the cookie--that never fails to bring her out of hiding. She might not want that cookie but she'll be damned if I'm going to eat it!

It was quite cool by this point, but she couldn't risk it. I know she could smell what it was, the whole house smelled of peanut butter, and she wanted it but still couldn't bring herself to eat it. Thus began phase 3 of her attempt to eat the cookie: running back and forth in front of me, biting the air by the cookie once as she zoomed past, and then barking more until she got turned around and ready to take another bite at it on the next lap.

This went on for a good twenty minutes and may be my new favorite game: Chasing Dog with Hot Cookie... Or Chasing Dog with Previously Hot Cookie... She refused to believe it had cooled off until I broke it into several pieces and lay it on the floor again. Once it no longer looked like the cookie, she came and gobbled it up.

I recommend ya'l bake doggie cookies and chase your dog with them. Best. Baking. Ever.

A to Z Reflectorationating

I know, I fell right off the blogosphere after A to Z. I got distracted by blog design thoughts and off I ran with my pencil and a half-baked idea. Those are the best kind, you get to be surprised by the end product, and they're all gooey in the middle. Well, maybe not gooey, but it sounded good and now I want brownies. MOVING ON.

What else suffered neglect while I wielded my pencil like a kindergartener with a fat crayon? Forgot to feed my sourdough starter. Doh! Olde South Yeaster Island, my yeast colony(Did you really think I wouldn't name my starter?), suffered a terrible flour shortage and starved. Here's hoping I can rebuild. Come on New South Yeaster Island!

Stuff I learned on A to Z.

The Pros:

1. I can post something everyday if I need to, tho quality is hit or miss.
2. I really like deadlines.
3. I even like writing posts ahead of time, even though I didn't do many that way. I wrote N   before the challenge started, and then at W I wrote the last 3 so I could focus on getting to more blogs.
4. I had an utterly bizarre(but fun) childhood(yay weirdos!). Also: My dad may be Wile E. Coyote.
5. I talked about Potty Tree in public and the sky did not cave in on me! I wasn't too sure about that one before. Potty Tree is okay, but I will never speak of Internet Porn Mom. I don't think I could tell that story without putting one of those warning doodahs up to verify 18 and over first. Plus, my mom would kill me if she found out. And I am even a little afraid of the kind of traffic those three words will bring to the blog already. The post with Mullet-Man brings people Googling for images of 'teens fighting'. End tangent...
6. It's kind of of fun to embarrass yourself online.
7. Ridiculous titles get attention. Just ask My Cousin: The Tree Pooper. 
8. Read lots of amusing, inspiring, and poetic blogs out there. I didn't get to them all, but I did follow a wad of new folks and I'm enjoying their offerings as part of my daily reading :) Well, you know, when I don't have tunnel-vision from running amok with a pencil. Which you probably shouldn't do. No running with a pencil, scissors, or a sucker in your mouth. That's what I heard, anyway.
9. I love comments. I also love visitors. I don't know why this is a revelation to me. I am an Attention Ho. But I'm a thankful Attention Ho. New followers: Thank you for taggin along :)

Cons:

1. I really neglected other writing projects while composing little story posts for every day.
2. Sometimes you have to stretch to come up with a unique topic for a certain letter. Lots of talk of Apocalypse on A-day.
3. I absolutely cannot stick to a theme 100% of the time. I can do 90%, but those other days I wander off the beaten track. Really far off sometimes.

I may give it another go next year, if I can come up with a good theme. But, I will probably leave signing up for it until March 30 again. I have commitment issues . . .

P is for ... Party Games of Survival

My little brother was born on Halloween. When we were little, we'd have his party, then get dressed up and Trick or Treat. But at around ten, he didn't want to Trick or Treat, but we all still wanted to get dressed up and eat sugar. This began big Halloween parties with lots of candy and danger.

First party was in our old farm house with 10ft ceilings. For the game, they put prizes into balloons stapled to the ceiling, which we popped with the aid of metal rods with a nail on the end.

The balloons popped, candy and quarters rained down on us. No one lost an eye, but there were a few light stabbings. Well, light pokings. Some Scrapings. Holes in costumes... But we did alright! No one got tetanus. Good time for all! Oh, and there were also a bunch of holes in the ceiling after that. Whoops. Every little kid loves being given a tiny sword with a really long handle to stab the ceiling with. It was AWESOME. Everyone remembers this game.

A couple years later we had another party, this time in the barn. Mom and my aunt spent a week decorating and converting the barn(it had four rooms) into a haunted house/birthday party. Not just for all the many cousins this time, friends came too! It was actually very impressive. I'm still impressed with what they managed to do to the barn that week. But what everyone remembers is THE GAME.

Open rafters meant a new game. Popping balloons had been a hit, so they tried a new game: spinning metal wheel with balloons tied to it. And a bb gun. For the kids to shoot at the metal wheel. Well, to be fair, they tried darts, but it didn't work so they switched to the bb gun(forgetting the wheel was metal).

After the first shot, which ricocheted, each shooter wore safety glasses and mom shouted... DUCK AND COVER YOUR EYES! Then we'd hear POP... PING! ... OW! (bb's sting even after bouncing off a few surfaces). In short? Another hit! We loved that game too. But I think mom feared having to top it--we stopped having big dangerous Halloween parties after that.

N is for ... That Sick Feeling You Get

I've finally overcome my inability to spell nauseous,  but for years if I had to write that word, in a fit of laziness I would write nauseated  instead. I didn't need a dictionary for that one.

The special case of two very similar words with the same meaning bugs me. What's so special about feeling the urge to hurl that needs two naus+suffix  words to express it? And it's not just one naus+suffix  word that has the same meaning. There's a nauseous/nauseated  combo, and there's also a nauseous/nauseating  combo. Is it something to do with the same illustrative mechanism that causes us to have a million ways to say blowing-chunks? (This could get its series of posts. I have no idea why puking euphemisms make me laugh, I am older than 12, but 'Shouting Groceries' might be the best vomit euphemism ever.)

This pattern doesn't work with other illness-related words ending with -ous.  For instance:

• Infectious. To infect someone. You can say infected,  which doesn't mean the same thing, but you can't say infectiated.  No infectiating.
• Contagious. Could spread disease.  There's even fewer options for contagious.  No contagiated.  No contaged.  No contagiating.

I want to endorse nauseated  as the goto word for that going-to-hurl feeling, but I can't. Sure, it's easier to spell, but people will always want a -ous  sick word for it, and nauseous goes better with infectious  and contagious.

Instead, I call for a ban on all other forms of naus+suffix  words. Seems like nauseous  can mean anything anyway, at least this way I only have to remember how to spell one version of this word. Even if this plan does mean supporting a word which has more vowels than is healthy. Seriously, three vowels in a row? Pfft.

Maximum Overdrive

When I was  a kid, a horribly cheesy movie was made about machines coming to life and killing people. The movie is full of tractor trailers running over folks, kitchen appliances attacking unwary housewives/waitresses, pop machines shooting people in the head with bazooka soda cans blastinglike a potato gun, rampaging steam rollers squishing soccer coaches... It's probably one of the goofiest movies ever, and I have absolutely no idea why I love it and watch it every year. I think it is something to do with the same reaction I have to bulldogs: so ugly they're cute. The movie is so bad it's awesome.

I don't remember if it ever scared me, it might have mildly done when I was little, but I feel positively macabre admitting now that I pretty much laugh through the whole thing. It's on TV every October, but this is the first year I'm watching it from a storytelling POV. So, although I've probably seen it twenty times, I only just realized that it has possibly the lamest, UNhot kissing ever filmed.

I don't really know why there is a 'love story' nested in this crazy, truck-stop bazooka-firing madness. It does nothing for the story arc, so why am I surprised about how utterly cold that kissing was?  And what is there to learn from this horrible lovescene/kissing? 

It is easy to identify hot/romantic kisses when we see them, but it is less easy to put our fingers on what makes these scenes moving.  But this scene makes it really easy to identify what makes the emotion believeable by identifying what is missing. Closed lips, fast pecks with more time between kisses than actual lips-touching time. (Less helpful but still funny: heroine has a Eww look on her face that makes me think Emilio may have had some serious monkeybutt breath.)

Can you think of any movies/television/books-even which highlight What Not To Do when trying to write the sexyfun?