Delicious Ice Cream

I live very near Lincoln Park.  It’s a great park, if you can get past all the dogs and children and the unsavory statute of Lincoln.

Unsavory, right? Well, you should see it from behind. Unsavory indeed.

While walking home from work a few months back, I came across this small market on the park called P&C Market.  It is a super cute shop, selling delicious gourmet and European items.  This means it’s crazy expensive, but that’s for another time.

So the first time I went in there, I noticed that they had a local ice cream in the freezer.  I decided I’d give it a whirl.  Big mistake.  BIG.

The ice cream is made by Trickling Springs Creamery.  I grabbed two containers – chocolate and butter pecan.

One quick clarification.  When I buy ice cream, I usually buy one pint that HC will like and one that he will hate.  Chocolate, HC will eat.  Butter pecan, no sir.  Allergic to nuts.

Let’s pause here too.

HC claims to be allergic to all sorts of stuff.  These so-called allergy claims are based on a test HC took when he was five years old.  FIVE YEARS OLD!  Some of these allergies are real, for sure.  But others?  I think he just trots them out to annoy me.  When just one of his allergies does to him what a cat does to me, I’ll be more sympathetic.  Until then, bor-ring.

Anyway, so back to last tangent.  Ice cream pints…. right.

So I buy two pints – one HC won’t eat and one he will – to guarantee that HC will not eat all the ice cream before I get to it.  The last time I did this, HC got all bent with me.  I got Giffords’ pints – one chocolate chocolate chip, one coconut.  HC, again, is allergic to coconut.  So these were great choices.  And not only because HC wouldn’t touch the coconut.  It was delicious ice cream.  Just ask AM, who, along with me, stood in my kitchen, digging into the pints as soon as I got them home.

This time, I finished the chocolate chocolate chip, leaving only the coconut, because, llet’s be honest, a specialty flavor like coconut can’t be eaten with the same speed as a basic flavor like chocolate.  You would have thought that I murdered HC’s puppy.  He was upset, angry, and verbal about it.  I still don’t think he’s over it.  I know this because, the last time he picked up ice cream, he got some Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Fudge Brownie or Half Baked or something, both of which I find less than appealing.  Whatever.

Anyway, back to the original story.

I got two pints from Trickling Springs Creamery – chocolate and butter pecan.  I got them home, and HC and I dove into them, finishing both in minutes.  This was, hands down, one of the best ice cream brands I’ve ever had.  EVER.  Seriously.  So fucking good.  Like AMAZING.

Because of this episode – killing two pints in one night – I’ve steered clear of the P&C Market ever since.  Until yesterday.

Yesterday, I went into P&C to get some tomato sauce for dinner.  I walked out with a delicious pastry – almond and chocolate, needless to say, fucking delicious – tomato sauce, and one pint of TSC coffee ice cream.  I managed not to eat both the pastry and the ice cream last night.  Major success.  But tonight, I couldn’t stop myself.  Killed the whole pint.  I started it while making myself dinner, and finished it after I finished eating dinner.  An absolutely disgusting – and delicious – display.

I guess I have to start avoiding P&C again.  Damn it, TSC!  Why are you so delicious?!

Gross and Weird

A few days ago, AED sent me a link to a post on babycenter.com.

Let’s pause here for a second.

Why would AED send you a post from some nefarious website called babycenter.com, you might ask.  Well, I’ve come to learn it’s because AED hates me.

I G-Chat with AED pretty much every single work day.  On weekends, I BlackBerry Messenger her.  Occasionally one of us with call the other.  But, inevitably, the call is missed, leading to long, rambling voicemails.  So we generally go with virtual communication.

Anywho, AED, probably more so than anyone else, has had to endure my complaints about mysterious stomach illnesses, theories about plagues and whatnot, and overall bad moods because of the lingering “illness.”

Despite knowing more than she bargained for about my queasy state, AED sent me the following link via G-Chat:

Turn your placenta into a teddy bear

Posted by Kristina Sauerwein in Babies, Crafts, Labor & Delivery, Lifestyle, Pregnancy, Toys, Trying to Conceive | October 11th, 2009 | Trackback

For all of you who expressed repulsion at eating placenta, toy designer designer Alex Green offers you the option of crafting your baby’s placenta into a unique teddy bear, according to Inhabitots, a parenting site for those interested in sustainable design and green living.

The site’s Managing Editor, Beth Shea, wrote in last week’s post that designer Green’s Placenta Teddy Bear is a “crafty alternative for those who don’t necessarily want to eat their baby’s placenta, but want to pay their respects to the life sustaining organ by turning it into a one-of-a-kind teddy bear. Green’s Twin Teddy Kit ‘celebrates the unity of the infant, the mother and the placenta,’ and enables preparation of the placenta so it may be transformed into a teddy bear.”

To make the teddy bear, Inhabitots reports that the placenta “must be cut in half and rubbed with sea salt to cure it. After it is dried out, it is treated with an emulsifying mixture of tannin and egg yolk to make it soft and pliable.”

But is it soft enough to cuddle? Apparently not. The teddy is meant to be displayed in a protective glass box or dome.

Hey, I have an idea: Why not use the placenta teddy bear as the centerpiece for your dining room table? After all, it would be a conversation since it’s a one-of-a-kind piece.

OK, so I’m being snarky. I consider myself green, and I’m all for reusing things, but placenta? Disgusting. It’s beyond yuck. Or maybe I’m being judgmental? Is turning your placenta into a teddy bear, or anything else for that matter, a lovely idea or simply gross?

WHAT THE WHAT?!

Seriously, this is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard.  And I find this shocking.  SHOCKING!  You’re telling me that, following the birth of a child and all the disgustingness and pain and ung-dliness associated with it, a woman will collect her placenta and consider:  A) eating it… EATING IT!  B) Turning it into a child’s play toy.  Or – as you would have learned if you read the comments to this post – C) burying it and plant a tree.

What the fuck is wrong with these people?!  EATING the fucking placenta?!  Are you fucking kidding me?  Making a gross looking teddy bear?  Burying it?

Guys, c’mon.  This is gross and – I am not afraid to say it – crazy.  Anything that does not include the hospital discarding it is not something I can get behind.  Fine, to each her own.  But Jesus, this is weird and gross.  Truly.  And, frankly, I will judge.

Now I feel sick again.  Thanks, AED!  Dude, you’re killin’ me!

Glee

I think I’ve mentioned my love for Glee here before, right?  Because I love it.  Just love.  Seriously, it could be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.  And I mean that.

Anyway, last night, HC and I were watching Glee.  Despite continuing to feel under the weather, the show was – yet again – a bright spot in an otherwise not-so-bright week.  And I mean that.

The performances were fantastic.  Endless Love duet?  Amazing.  Love the song, love hearing Kurt’s thoughts on Finn and Diana Ross, love Shu’s eyes, LOVE Lea Michelle.  Mr. Shu’s mash-up?  Love.  (Do you see why I want someone to sing a song about me?!) That fab performance of Lean on Me?  Well, it was fabulous.

But the highlight of last night’s show was probably this.

Rachel, who has realized that she was walking down the road charted by Amy Fischer and, um, Pepper, put the brakes on and apologized to Mr. Shu for her behavior.  Shu tried to say the things an adult recipient of teen affection should say – and I’m paraphrasing:  You’re going to find someone who likes you for you.  Someone who likes even those things that you hate about yourself.  In fact, that person will love you because of those things.

At that moment, HC leans forward and says to me:  That’s not true, by the way.

Rude.  Just, so rude.

Death by Plague

I may be dying.  Seriously.  Dying.

In addition to being obscenely busy at work, I’ve been under the weather lately.

Before you go jumping to any conclusions, it’s not the swine flu.  I don’t have a fever or feel like I have a cold.  I just feel off.  Like majorly off.

And no, it’s not depression.  Jesus!  You people think you know me, but you don’t.

Okay, so I did ask HC if he thought that all my sickness symptoms were just a byproduct of depression.  He asked, “Are you depressed?”  I responded, “I don’t think so… but maybe I don’t know I’m depressed.”  HC chalked this whole thing up to me being a head case, but not actually being depressed.

While I still leave the depression door open, I’m growing increasingly concerned that I might have some slow-moving plague of sorts.  The number one reason why I think I may be dying is that I have had chronic nausea for going on three weeks.

Let’s just stop here one second.  I have an iron stomach.  I can eat anything.  The only time I actually have an upset stomach is when I’ve been over-served the night before.

So you can imagine that, feeling nauseous for three weeks sans alcohol overindulgence is really messing with me.  It’s not so bad that I have to stay home sick, tho I desperately want to.  And it’s not like I’m actually throwing up or anything.

Except that one time.

So I was walking to an appointment on K and 21st.  I was not feeling tip top.  It was 8:15am, which is way too early to do anything.  I had to park the car, then head into the appointment.  Thankfully, HC was with me and offered to get me something to eat, hoping that perhaps food would help-not-hurt in this situation.  HC went off to forage for food the way urbanites do – you know, at the closest Starbucks.  I started toward the office building.  People were walking toward me, and I was growing more and more unsettled.

It was too late.  I turned inward toward a building, instead of outward toward the street, frantically looking for a safe spot to stop and collect myself.  then I saw it – a flower pot.  Perfect.  I stood over the flower pot, trying desperately to pull myself together.  Then it happened.  Yup, threw up into said flower pot.

You would think, 1) good thing you found the flower pot so that you didn’t have to throw up on a pedestrian heading for work and increase your overall embarrassment, 2) good thing you have the type of urban survival skills that would allow you to quickly assess your surroundings to locate a next-best to a toilet or garbage can while on the street, 3) good thing you actually threw up, because you should feel better now.  You would think all of this, but you’d be wrong.

While I was pleased that I minimized my embarrassment by finding a sheltered flower pot and did not have to inadvertently ruin some stranger’s day, I did not feel better.  The sickness lingered.

And three weeks later, it continues to linger.  So either I have a slow-moving plague OR I am going to be nauseous for the rest of my life.  I will tell you know, I choose the plague.  Because I’m not sure I can stand even one more day of this nonsense!

The worst part?  I might actually have to go to the doctor to deal with this.  And that’s annoying.

You’re doing what now?

I have one question.  Doe you think she knows the definition of teabagging?

That's what she said!

Mary J

So, you know I’m a Yankees’ fan, yes?  Well, I am.  I grew up on the Yankees.  Those games were a big part of my childhood, in no small part because I watched the games with my grandfather, who would tell us about watching Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio play, and my dad, who would tell us what about the games he saw at the stadium during the Reggie Jackson years.

So, basically, you can go fuck yourself if you think I’m making any apologies for root, root, rooting for the Bronx Bombers.  I mean that in the nicest way possible, of course.

Anyway, to all the haters out there, you missed one hell of a series.  There were highs.  There were lows.  There was history.  There were old rivalries reinvigorated.  And there was everything in between.  Seriously, it was good baseball.

But possibly better than everything short of the Yankees winning the series, is this:

Oh.  My.  Goodness.  WHAT?!  This is un-fucking-believable.  Seriously, I have a lot of love for Miss Mary J.  And I am a sucker for the National Anthem, but this is above and beyond.  That hair.  Those glasses.  Those quintessential Mary J tears.  The Yankee gear coupled with skinny jeans, a cinching belt on the jersey, and those heels… WHAT?!  Good lord, so good.  I don’t think this eeks out pre-Bobby Whitney’s performance of the song back in the day.  But Mary J makes me want to stand up and be proud to be an American.  And a Yankee fan.  Of course.

AAAHHHHHH!!!!

I am freaking out.  Seriously. FREAKING.  OUT.

There I was, peacefully sitting on the couch, surfing the web, looking for corner desks to go in the office so that, someday, that room can be used for something other than file storage, when HC started nagging me about the second bedroom.

Because of a fight I lost the day we moved into this house – a fight that I didn’t even realize was happening because my mother and aunt, who very nicely agreed to come to the nation’s capital to help me move in, had already made the decision without consulting me – Hal’s clothes went in our bedroom closet and mine were relegated to the second bedroom’s closet.

If you’re wondering, my mother and aunt explained it to me this way:

Aunt:  Hal’s got all his suits.

Mom, quickly and cutting Aunt off:  And those shoes!  I’ve never seen a man with so many shoes. G-d, and they’re so big.  You could kill a person with those shoes.

Aunt:  His stuff needs to be in this closet.  He’ll only annoy you about it later.  You can have the two big closets in the second bedroom.

Me:  What?  That’s bullshit.

Mom:  Now that room is yours.  Trust me, it’s a better deal.  You’ll see.

While I was annoyed with this decision for a long time, Hal was present when the conversation was happening and grabbed onto their loopy rationale.  The decision was made.  I had to cut my losses and learn to be okay with having my stuff split between two rooms.  I’m still not okay with it, btw.  But I make due.

Anyway, what’s nice is that, usually, HC ignores that second bedroom, rarely commenting on how it looks and how neat it is.  Our bedroom, on the other hand, which is where all of HC’s closes pile up, gets constant scrutiny from me.  Okay, maybe this is an okay deal.

This morning, however, for reasons that I won’t go into other than to say that he used AM to make a point, HC made some comments about the unkempt-ness of the second bedroom.

Let’s go back for a second.  I’ve been out of town a lot lately, living out of a suitcase in a way reminiscent of a vagabond.  That’s a longer story, but suffice it to say that I had some family matters to attend to over the last few months which brought me to NJ, like, A LOT – AND – because my brother and parents hate me and want to make sure I know it, my brother got my parents those cats, which my parents love more than me or my brother, which I am highly allergic to, precludes me from spending more than 20 minutes in my parents house – my childhood home, if you will – let alone spending the night.

Wow… anyway…  I still haven’t totally unpacked myself from that trip.  Instead, my stuff and HC’s bag are just laid out all over the bed in the second bedroom.  Normally, I would have gotten to this already.  But I have been so sick lately that the idea of doing anything that doesn’t involve my couch and TV remote are simply off the table.  So there the room sits, with our stuff strewn about, going on two weeks now.

Fine.  I should deal with it.  I know that.  But I want to vomit all over the place, so I figured I’d ignore it further.  Then HC starts in with his AM nonsense and how she’s coming over for dinner tonight and we never tidy up for her and that’s rude and blah blah blah.  Whatever.  What HC doesn’t realize is that, by NOT cleaning up – yes, you got that right, by NOT cleaning up – before AM comes over, I’m actually showing her the highest for of compliment and closeness.  Basically, it means:  Honey, you’ve seen it all.

But fine.  I should deal with it.  And AM is coming over tonight.  So fine.

I headed up in the bedroom and surveyed the area.  Not that bad, really.  Shouldn’t take too long.  Then I looked out the window and saw it:

AAAAAHHHHHH!!!!!!

OH.  MY.  FUCKING.  CHRIST.  You’ve got to be kidding me.  This thing is fucking HUGE!  Seriously, I’ve never seen a spider this large in real life before.  Yes, there are bigger spiders in the world.  You know, on TV.  On the Discovery Channel.  But this thing is gigantic.

Once I caught my breath, I confirmed that it was, indeed, outside the window.  Oh, thank G-d.  But it was still there.  Just sitting there in it’s largess.  I quickly walked into the hallway.

“HC!…  HC!  Can you come here for a minute?  I need you to look at something.”

HC gave a big sigh to indicate his irritation that I had interrupted his private i-Pod listening session about how the glaciers are melting or how the penguins need saving or whatever and headed upstairs.

“HC, can you please go in there and look at the window?”

HC shuffled over to the window, still irritated that he was not lost in his climate change world, looked out the window and our convo went sorta this way:

HC:  Whoa…  Cool.

My face, What the fuck?

HC:  Wow.  That guy’s big, huh?

Me, in my head to myself, but no audio is working yet:  Big?  It might be a tarantula.  We have a fucking tarantula a outside our fucking window.

HC, in amazement:  Did you see that web?!  Man, that’s like a Spider-Man web!  That’s awesome.

Me, finally able to speak out loud:  What?  No, I did not look at the fucking web.  I can’t get past how fucking big that guy is.

HC, still mesmerized:  That’s pretty cool.

Me:  HC, I’m going to throw up.  Seriously.  I may start crying.  (And almost on cue, the tears started.)

HC, not noticing the tears or taking my anxiety attack seriously:  Well, it’s not poisonous.

Me, internally again:  How the fuck do you know if it’s poisonous?!

HC, finally noticing that I’m melting down a la the Wicked Witch of the West:  Casey, it’s fine.  It’s outside.  There’s a window there.  It can’t open the window.

Me:  I know it can’t open the fucking window.  Okay, I know that.

HC:  Put a sheet over the window.

HC starts fumbling with some pillow covers, and I say:  Wait, not those.  They’re clean.  (What the fuck am I talking about?!)

Me:  I can’t deal with this right now.  I have to go downstairs.

HC:  Okay, it’s okay.

I immediately proceeded downstairs and begin this post.  HC came down a few minutes later and said that he had covered the window, “So, you see, it’s gone.”

Gone?  GONE?!  Does he think I’m five fucking years old?  I know it’s still there, HC.  I know that you did nothing to protect us from this prehistoric killer.  I know I can’t do anything about it, because it’s just too big.  But we may have to move.

Perhaps it’s apropos that I saw this prehistoric killer on Halloween morning.  But I don’t like it.  Not one bit.  And I may never go in that room again.  Ever.

Feminism and Palin

AM just sent me this article from U.S. News and World Reports about a new book on Sarah Palin.

Palin Book: Feminists Jealous of Sarah’s Rise

October 26, 2009 04:23 PM ET | Paul Bedard | Permanent Link | Print

By Paul Bedard, Washington Whispers

Talk about timing. With former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin readying the release of her own 432-page campaign tell-all, Going Rogue: An American Life, now would be the perfect time to pop out another Palin book, and that’s exactly what Weekly Standard’s Matthew Continetti has done with The Persecution of Sarah Palin.

With his 226-page defense of Palin and slap-down of the media coverage she has faced since being selected by Sen. John McCain as his 2008 veep, Continetti is likely to ride the next wave of Palin frenzy that will accompany her book release set for November 17. If you like Palin, it’s a good read. If you don’t, well, check it to see what the other side thinks of the potential 2012 presidential candidate. We won’t review it here because Whispers just received the book earlier today. But here are some highlights:

— The press, duh, didn’t like Palin and didn’t fact-check all of its stories on her. Worse, writes Continetti, the press had it out for Palin because she didn’t fit the image of an Ivy League-educated national candidate, just as former President George W. Bush didn’t. “The left recoils at a certain swagger, a manner of speech, and a lack of cultural embarrassment that the two share. Neither Bush nor Palin mind the fact that they are not part of this country’s cognoscenti. But until Palin showed up, one could have written off the liberal reaction to Bush as simply anti-Texan bias. That wasn’t it, however. Palin proved that at its root the reaction to these folksy Western politicians is a form of anti-provincialism; revulsion toward people who do not aspire to adopt the norms, values, politics and attitudes of the Eastern cultural elite,” he writes.

— McCain’s aides messed up her debut and campaign. First, the book says that the McCain press office had no biographical information ready when Palin was picked. Not only had the campaign not done its homework to defend Palin, but it wasn’t prepared for the media backlash. In their defense, aides note that had the campaign flooded the state with officials snooping for info on their veep pick, McCain’s surprise would have been ruined. Continetti does cite some press tactics that worked, such as the anti-Obama “Celebrity” ad.

— Liberal-leaning feminists, especially comic Tina Fey, the 30 Rock star who portrayed Palin on Saturday Night Live, were jealous of Palin. “Palin’s sudden global fame rankled those feminists whose own path to glory had been difficult. To them, Palin was less a female success story than she was the beneficiary of male chauvinism,” writes Continetti. He holds out Fey and her TV character for special criticism. “It was telling that Fey should be the actress who impersonated Palin. The two women may look like each other, but they could not be more dissimilar. Each exemplifies a different category of feminism. Palin comes from the I-can-do-it-all school. She is professionally successful, has been married for more than 20 years, and has a large and (from all outward appearances) happy family. And while Fey is also pretty, married, and has a daughter, the characters she portrays in films like Mean Girls and Baby Mama, and in television shows like 30 Rock, are hard-pressed eggheads who give up personal fulfillment—e.g., marriage and motherhood—in the pursuit of professional success,” he writes. “On 30 Rock, Fey, who is also the show’s chief writer and executive producer, plays Liz Lemon, a television comedy writer modeled on herself. Liz Lemon is smart, funny, and at the top of her field. But she fails elsewhere. None of her relationships with men works out. She wants desperately to raise a child but can find neither the time nor the means to marry or adopt. Lemon makes you laugh, for sure. But you also would be hard pressed to name a more unhappy person on American TV.”

So let me get this straight.  This guy is comparing the real Sarah Palin to the fictional character of Liz Lemon and suggests that Tina Fey’s impersonation of Palin was due to jealously that the fictional Liz Lemon – not the real Tina Fey, who, you know, has a husband, and a daughter, and a thriving career – has about being single, childless, and struggling to succeed in show business.  Is that right?  Is that what he’s saying?  Because that’s crazy.  And now my head hurts.

Sarah Palin does add some positives to the feminist dialectic, I think.  (And I realize I might be alone here.)  She’s seemingly doing it all – she has a husband, kids, a career, was governor, and knows her way around a rifle.  Oh, and she looks damn good while doing all of it.

Now, I’m not saying I want to shoot animals or anything, but she does present a very important vision of a woman into the world – she’s a mom and she shoots things.  I like contradiction (to a point), and I like the idea that women can do whatever they want (that doesn’t break the law, of course).  So, again, while I don’t want to shoot anything, I like the image.

But the problem with Sarah Palin is not with the choices she made as a woman or with the woman she is.  The problem with her, to me, is two-fold.

First, in many ways, the problem stops and starts with her brand of politics.  She is an ultraconservative.  This brand of politics wants to further entrench traditionalism, a system that has been incredibly unfavorable to women for generations.  A woman can be a wife and a mother and be a feminist.  But what Palin seems to want to do is advocate the necessity of the traditional family – and all the traditional roles that go along with it, roles that necessarily have negative connotations for women – for all of us while allowing herself an escape from the confines of that reality.  I don’t like the hypocrisy of that.

Second, Palin embraces mediocrity.  By this, I mean, to Palin, a C average not only earns you a “Good Job!”, it’s what everyone should strive for.  Because if you’re not folksy, you’re not real.  If you’re not “average”, you’re an elitist.  If you are well read or knowledgeable of the world, you just can’t relate to average Americans.

This is what kills me about her.  Because in my brand of feminism, you can be a wife and a mother and a professional and an avid hunter and maybe even be anti-abortion.  You can be pretty and wear make-up and be a fashionista and like boys (or girls) and do all those things.  But what you simply can’t be is someone who prides herself on mediocrity.  Not only is that not a way I want to live, it’s not the way I want any woman to live, and it is surely not the way I want the future generations of girls to be brought up.  We, as women, as a collective, simply cannot tolerate the perpetuating of women dumbing themselves down just to be liked.  Sure, you can like me because I’m funny, but not because I’m dumb.

Actually, now that I’m thinking about it, maybe my biggest problem with Sarah Palin is that she’s not funny.  Or, at the very least, I don’t get her jokes.  Like AT ALL.  And let’s be honest, if you’re not funny, there’s no chance I’m going to like you.

New York

I’m sure everyone in America has heard the new Jay-Z, Alicia Keys song about the Big Apple, but just in case:

Even with the difficulty of finding a good video or a live performance – LOVE!  Seriously, I love this song.  Okay, so I’m partial to Alicia Keys.  Sorta in love with her.  And I like Jay-Z.  But c’mon?!  This is fantastic.

Also, if you want to catch a live performance of this song, tune in at 7:30p tonight to Game 2 of the NY Yankees/Phillies series.  (Thank G-d for the rain, or I would have missed it!!)  And, with a little luck, this will give the Bronx Bombers the little something extra they need to win tonight.

Happy Halloween

A friend sent me this yesterday.  It cracked me up.  Animals in uncommon situations make me laugh.  And animals in Halloween costumes?  Really too funny for words.  The absurdity of it.  The insanity of the owner.  The degradation of the pet.  The cuteness of it all.  Love, love, love.

Balloon Pup, Octo-pup, and the Wizard of Oz pets?  All nice efforts.  But this is my favorite shot:

I love this picture.  Is this the saddest princess you’ve ever seen, or what?!  And that hat?!  I love it.