I was driving to the grocery store yesterday when my cell phone rang.
“Hey,” said Fred. “I was cutting my hair*, and the guard fell off, and now I have a big bald spot on the top of my head. Can you buy me some eyeliner or something?”
After some discussion, it turned out that what he really wanted was mascara (“The stuff with the brush”) to color in the bald spot, Fred’s version of spray-on hair. I had my doubts as to how well that would work, but I bought him some cheap dark-brown mascara.
When I got home, he showed me his bald spot, and I had STRONG doubts that he was going to be able to cover it with mascara, but he gave it the ol’ college try and sure enough, that wasn’t going to fool anyone.
“On the up side, the only way anyone would see it is if you deliberately tried to show them, or they were taller than you,” I said. Fred glared at me and went off to shave his head.
Then he whined about how he looked so stupid and how he has a weirdly shaped head and how he needed a ball cap. We ended up going to the dollar store to buy him a cap that fit, and then continued on to Tractor Supply to buy a few more, since he apparently plans to wear caps all the time until his hair grows back to the 1/2″ length he prefers.
“How about I cut my hair in solidarity?” I offered.
“You’d shave your head?” he said.
“Well. No. I’d have you use the clippers and the longest guard to cut my hair.”
“That’s not solidarity. Solidarity would be shaving your head,” he objected.
“And if your head was shaved due to circumstances beyond your control like ILLNESS or an attack by a wild animal, then I’d be willing to shave my head. I think letting you cut my hair to 1″ all over is PLENTY of solidarity.”
But really, I have no intention of letting him cut my hair to 1″ long. If he had a 3″ guard, I might be willing, but 1″? I don’t think so. I think it’s enough that I made the offer and shouldn’t have to follow through on it, right? Right?
If he goes bald due to illness or a wild animal attack, though, I’ve got his back.
*He’s been growing out his hair for the past few months, and finally decided that having to actually comb his hair when he gets out of the shower was more effort than he wanted to expend in the hair section of his life, so he decided to go back to using his electric razor to cut it to 1/2″ long.
I attempted to make a loaf of bread by hand on Saturday. It didn’t go so well. When I’d added twice as much flour as the recipe called for (DOES THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?) and the dough was still super-sticky, Fred came in to see what I was doing.
Fuming, is what I was doing.
“I want to drive to (state where recipe-providing person lives) and kick (person) in the throat!” I bellowed.
“Bessie,” he said in that ultra-reasonable tone that makes me want to kick him in the throat and scratch his eyes out. “Why -”
“FUCK YOU!” I bellowed.
He laughed.
“We have a perfectly good -”
“FUCK YOU!” I bellowed.
“And we hardly ever eat -”
“FUCK YOU!” I bellowed.
“So don’t make the bread?” he suggested.
I turned and lobbed the sticky lump of dough into the trash can.
“You should have put that in the pig bucket,” Fred said.
“Oh, shut up and get out of my way. I need a scone.”
At least the scones – the recipe for which I got here, and then adapted (ie, used Ghiardelli chocolate chips instead of dried cherries) for my own nefarious uses (ie, shoving in my face) – came out really damn good.
Too good, really.
But truthfully, why do I keep trying to make bread? What’s the point? We DO have a perfectly good bread machine that makes okay bread. Which is beside the point, because we don’t hardly ever eat bread! It takes us like three weeks to go through a loaf of bread!
(I still might give that no-knead bread a try, though. Shaddup.)
I finished off the weekend by making a batch of Cooking Light Chocolate Chip cookies (my sister’s birthday is this week, so I made a batch of cookies for Brian. He’s a growing boy and he likes cookies!) and then a double batch of Piggerdoodles. We ran out of pig cookies Saturday night and they each only got one and a half cookies and O THE HUMANITY HOW COULD WE LET THEM STARVE LIKE THAT????? I finally realized that the easiest way to keep Fred and I out of the cookies is to toss the egg into the recipe shell and all. There’s not much I hate more than biting down on a piece of eggshell, so I am never ever tempted to eat one of the cookies meant for the pigs. And the pigs don’t mind the egg shells at all, so I call that win-win.
When I was getting groceries yesterday, what with Tuesday being St. Patrick’s Day, I bought a corned beef brisket and all the stuff that goes with it for a New England Boiled Dinner (cabbage, turnips, potatoes, carrots). The cashier was one of those who comments on everything you’re buying.
“Oh, going to do some baking!” as she rang up the chocolate chips I was buying, and “Getting ready for Easter!” as I was buying some Easter candy and so on. When she got to the brisket, she said “Ready for St. Patrick’s Day, I see!” and I smiled and nodded or shrugged or whatever the hell I was doing. The bagger, a teenage girl, was apparently no big fan of corned beef. She made a face and picked up the bag by her thumb and forefinger and held it as far from her body as she could before she turned and placed it in the bag, apparently concerned that she might get some corned beefiness upon her person.
“I don’t like that stuff,” she informed me when she saw me watching her. “It’s so gross. Yuck.” I was surprised she didn’t illustrate her point by gagging and possibly throwing up a little.
In an alternate reality I was bellowing “Well NO ONE INVITED YOU TO DINNER, PRINCESS!” and smacking her upside the head.
In this reality, I just smiled and swiped my debit card.
Stinkerbelle, high on catnip.
Check out the catnip-crazy eyes on Tommy – and the claws!
Previously
2008: No entry.
2007: No entry.
2006: It’s like I’ve never met myself before or something. “Yeah, I’ll let the spud take the car to school, and I’ll be stuck at home, thus NATURALLY I will feel compelled to do housework!”
2005: Old pictures.
2004: (Bwahaha! That’d be the shortest study in the history of mankind, eh?)
2003: No entry.
2002: No entry.
2001: Takes all kinds, I guess.
2000: A life of excitement, thrills and chills, lemme tell ya!