McJackinaWhatnic

I've come up with a new business idea,

and don't even think for a minute

about stealing it.

It's already patented,

copyrighted,

bonded,

certified,

justified,

and sanctified.

As a matter of fact,

 one just might open soon

at a busy intersection near you!

Realistically speaking though,

if you'd like to offer me a gabillion dollars

I might consider selling you a franchise.

That's just the kind of

girl

I am.



Anyway it's called

McJackinaWhatnic

and it's a combination of all the things I like best about

Fast Food.



But wait.

Before we get too far into this...

Please, please, please,

from the depths of my heart,

with all that is good and decent,

I beg you.

Do not

tell  The Chief

about this post.



You:  "But wait a minute Lu, are you telling us that The Chief doesn't read your blog?"

Lu:  "I'm not saying he hasn't read it before. 
He has. 
After I shamed him into it. 
I told him it would seem bad, tacky, and downright non-supportive if he didn't at least LOOK at it once."

You:  "Well what did he think?"

Lu:  "He said it was exhausting enough living through my escapades on a daily basis,
and if it was OK with me,
he'd rather not re-live them again
in print.
In the blog."

Lu Again:  "And you know, I'm OK with that."

"Bless his Heart"



So like I said,

If you'll all just not mention this one to him,

I'd really appreciate it.

And it will make all my whining about not being able to lose weight,

much more

credible.


Thank You.



Here's how it all came to be:

1)  The "Mc" is of course for McDonald's.  They have the best Diet Coke around.  Something about the ratio of syrup to carbonated water is just right.  The other places could learn alot from the mixologists at The Golden Arches.  Since none (and I do struggle with this) of the Drive-Thru's serve my beloved TAB, I've been forced to do a five year, comprehensive, extremely scientific meta-analysis comparing the quality of fast-food Diet Coke, and Mickey D's is the winner hands down.

2)  Then it's Jack in the Box.  Shamefully, I love their onion rings.  But, just when they're hot, mind you.

And I have to admit that it's difficult for me to include Jack's place here as their Tacos were responsible for the worst gastrointestinal episode/event/illness that I have ever experienced in my life.  The Chief actually found me on the floor in the bathroom at the farm (yes, amongst the scorpions) at which time I asked him politely to "Please go get one of the guns, drag me out behind the barn, and shoot me.  I'd like you to end my misery."  To which he replied, "Well, let's wait at least an hour to see if you get any better." 

Another Big Shout Out to The Chief!


3)  Whataburger's next.  I can't explain it, but this place has the best ketchup on the face of the earth!
Their fries are good, the hamburgers are OK, but OH MY GOODNESS SAKES the ketchup!  Seriously, do you not know what I'm talking about??  And the little tubs...  They're so much more utilitarian than those awful squeezie things.  And cuter.  Much cuter.

4)  And finally, last but not least is Sonic.  Sonic ice.  My love.  The stuff of my dreams.  Sonic ice alone got me through 2 pregnancies. Well, it's possible I may or may not have eaten more than just Sonic Ice during those pregnancies, but you really can't prove it,  now can you?

 I've asked The Chief to install a Sonic Ice machine in the kitchen of my future retirement home.  "It will make me a happier, and just generally a nicer person," I tell him.

So far he's not buying it.

The happier/nicer thing,

or the ice machine...

I personally believe that ALL drinks in Heaven will be served with Sonic Ice.

It says so somewhere in Revelations.



So,  if you want to talk business,

if you'd like to investigate the possiblity

of getting in on the ground floor of this exciting new venture,

or you can't wait to find out what else is on the menu,

go ahead

and have

Your People

call

My People.


Sincerely,
A Businessperson to Watch
Lu

Anyone Seen My Mojo?

Excuse me?

Anyone?

Have you seen my Mojo?

It's missing and I need it back.

And by the way

I never saw the movie,

but how on earth

DID

"Stella Get Her Groove Back"?

Because,

well,

my groove has gone

rogue

along with my Mojo.


It kind of all started Saturday.

I stopped by the mailbox to get the mail,

which on a typical day I can usually pull off without

a hitch.

I parked my car close to the curb,

stepped up to the mailbox,

removed the mail  from said mailbox,

stepped back down off the curb,

twisted my ankle like a pretzel,

and fell sideways into the driver's seat of my car

hitting my back/shoulder on the steering wheel.



Do yourself a favor and don't try to conjure up a mental picture.

It ain't pretty.



Anyway, my ankle hurt SO bad at the time

that I didn't give much thought to my back/shoulder,

until later that night when

I woke up with a start

ABSOLUTELY SURE

that The Chief had

commandered

a cattle prod

from the farm and was

plunging it into my shoulder.

Big hurt.



But, I mean, I have things to do

you know?

Places to go, cakes to ice, Father's to celebrate,

So at 6:30 in the morning I got up

to make 7 minute icing for a coconut cake I made for

Father's Day.

And for all you non-bakers - 7 minute icing is a mixture of sugar, egg whites, water, vanilla, and corn syrup that must be beaten for EXACTLY seven minutes in a double boiler over boiling water.

I had forgotten a teensy little detail.

My hand mixer was at the farm.

All I have is my big Kitchenaid,

and

By Golly,

although you can do all kinds of wonderful,

delightful things with that Big Boy,

you can't beat anything over boiling water.

SO,

being the industrious,

inventive,

totally desperate person I am,

I decided to use the immersion blender.

Which, I might add, is NOT made for beating 7 minute icing.

Or anything else.

Ever.

If I tilted the blender even the slightest bit,

burning hot sticky sugar sap flew everywhere!

The counter, the cabinets, the floor, the fridge, MY FACE!

I yelled!
Loud!

It burned.

To try to protect myself, I held a dish towel over my face,

which as you would guess,

rendered me blind

to the bowl,

the blender,

everything.

And as you can also guess

made things

significantly worse.


I finally tied the dish towel around the lower part of my face,

like a bandit,

and did my best to finish off the icing.

After about 30 minutes of my intermittent yelping and howling,

The Chief wandered in from the bedroom.

"I thought someone was killing you in here," he said dryly,

"You sure have been yelling a lot."


And to be honest,

I haven't yet decided how to respond to that...



Then he wandered off to take a shower,

shaking his head

and muttering something

about the definition of insanity...

and doing the same thing

over and over

and expecting a different result.



Well, Thank you Dr. Phil.



That was Sunday morning.

I have ALMOST

removed the last vestiges

of the syrup,

from my kitchen

although,

just this morning I did see

Weegie

run his tongue all the way across the floor

Again.



And then last night to top things off

I decided to

flood

the laundry room.


I was hand washing

one of The Chief's shirts

in the sink in the laundry room.

(And no, I don't generally handwash the man's shirts,
I'm not sure what had gotten into me...)

I was rinsing the shirt,

when I suddenly remembered

that I had the bread

for The Chief's corned beef sandwich

on the griddle in the kitchen,

so I ran in to take it off before

it burned.


Then I made his sandwich.


Then I ate some of the corned beef.


Then I contemplated how

good it was.


Then I ate some of the pineapple-mango salsa

I made to accompany the sandwich.


And I contemplated how good IT was.


Then I drank some TAB.


Then I heard something that sounded alot

like a waterfall.


It was.

A waterfall, I mean.

In the laundry room.



It was really, really bad.

And without going into the gory details

of the clean-up,

of The Chief's appearance at PRECISELY,

EXACTLY,

the worst time,

let's just suffice it to say that

I'm trying to decide which angle to work...


Isn't the flooding  REALLY The Chief's fault since

1.  It was his shirt I was HANDWASHING??

and

2.  It was his  HOMEMADE CORNED BEEF SANDWICH WITH PINEAPPLE-MANGO SALSA

that I was preparing?????

or should I go with blaming our

HOMEBUILDER

since,

who on EARTH ever heard of a very deep sink in a laundry room not having

an OVERFLOW DRAIN DUMAFLITCHY????



Anyway,

I think you can see,

I need to get my groove/mojo

back.

And Quick.

So if you come across mine-

Please send it home.


Thanks.

Monday

Here's what's going on around here today.

And please,

only continue reading

if you think

you can handle the excitement.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 I decided to go out this morning and take a few pictures

of my flowers.

While they were still alive.

I don't think it will be long.

It's hot...

The gardenia looks pretty, but is disappointingly nonfragrant.

I guess it's putting all it's lifeblood into just surviving the heat,

and really can't be bothered about smelling good.

The hibiscus that I planted in the courtyard to replace the ones that froze

(it's kind of mind-blowing and bizarre to think about things freezing isn't it?)

looks pretty spiffy also.

Also in the courtyard are

the Scaveola (also called Fan Flower or Blue Wonder)

This other pretty hibiscus,

one of the shrimp plants,

and my beloved,

and heavily guarded

lemon tree

Some of you may have noticed the sorry,

embarrassingly pathetic 

state of my mulch.

The 10 gabillion bags that we bought for the courtyard contained what looked

mysteriously like

ground up two by fours,

mixed in with

a paint stirrer here and there.

Low quality,

and a disgrace to good mulch everywhere.

In the side yard are my okra

And my herbs

which were instantaneously

and tragically

eaten

overnight

by the monster plant

in the foreground...

It's Sweet Potato Vine,

or according to

The Chief,

"The Devil Plant".

He sees it as invasive,

obnoxious,

uncontrollable.

I kind of like it myself,

especially the charteuse variety.

It grows fast and makes things look lush overnight.

I like lush.

Granted it does grow at a rate of 12 inches per hour,

and annihilates everything in it's path.

And I'll admit,

if I don't have it arrested soon

it will make all my herbs look like the sticks

that sadly

used to be my cilantro

in the following photo.

And yes, a good photographer always gets a shot of her own foot in her photos.

Thank you very much.

Let's see.

Then I decided to go to the grocery store.

But my car battery was dead.

After 61 phone calls to The Chief

asking him how to use the battery charger,

I got it hooked up.

I would like to publicly and vehemently protest the fact

that red is positive

and black is negative.

Everything in me says

red is negative (Stop! Caution! NO!)

Where's the logic I ask you????????

And on phone call #62 when I was asking exactly how to go about

disconnecting the whole

rigamaroll

when I was done,

I thought it was pretty funny when The Chief said,

"Lu, you don't have to worry about damaging the battery charger."

Because,

well,

honestly,

it never once occurred to me,

for even a split second,

to worry about the welfare of

the battery charger.

I was,

I suppose,

quite selfishly,

more concerned about the state of

my face.

You know that pesky battery acid and stuff...

And then I decided to make Corned Beef.

Which is about as foreign to me

as the

Battery Charger.

I'll let you know how it turns out....

How was your Monday???

Just Call Me an Authority

Not to brag, but there ARE a few things I'm an expert on.

Expert in.

On.

Whichever.

I'll keep the list short for two reasons.


First, I don't want to seem cocky.

And second,

well,

The list is just short.


Here they are:


1) Pancakes

Why do you think my pancakes are officially named

"Lu's World Famous Pancakes"?

Huh?

It's not because they're not good, I'll tell you that Mister.

And the fact that I actually made up the name myself

is,

just

well,

a technicality.

So don't challenge me to a pancake throwdown.

You'll regret it.



2)  Making up words for things I can't think of the name for.

Dumaflitchy, dillywhopper...

All from me.

And rumor has it that my  famous

and most frequently quoted "hooie-hoo" is just

this close,

I tell you This Close,

to making Webster's.

hooie-hoo: (noun) - a general term describing the object you can't think of the name for

(i.e.)  Where is that darn hooie-hoo I just had on my desk?


and

3)  Sweating

Let me tell you,

You wont find anyone else with as much

experience,

expertise,

and I daresay finesse

in the sweating department.

And  I ask you kindly,

if you are under the impresssion

that I am

supremely

sophisticated,

and refined,

stop reading now.


You'll be

disillusioned


But for the rest of you,

Here are the facts.

(The Chief loves it when I Stick to the Facts)

I sweat.

Frequently and copiously.

It's not an underarm problem,

it's my upper lip

and

my knees.

It's really hard to look cool, calm, and collected

when your

lip is dripping

and your socks are soaked.

I'm so sorry if this offends some of you.

It's just that I like to stay seasonal with my topics here on Mudpuddle.

And for me it's sweating season.

And although I don't sweat when I'm nervous,

(I actually yawn when I'm nervous - which is really inconvenient during important things like

job interviews

or

my own wedding...)

But I do sweat when I'm hot.

And man is it hot.



So if you need any advice on the above topics,

just give me a shout.

I'm your go-to girl.

Desperation Eating

Cooking at the farm is always a challenge.

An undertaking.

An experiment.

We usually leave on Friday afternoon to go there.  I'm just not organized enough during the week before we leave to plan what I'm going to cook while we're there.

And I know it will shock some of you,

but that's not the only thing that I'm not organized enough to do.

So here's how Friday afternoon packing goes -

I get home from work at about 5:00.

I should note here that The Chief only works half day on Friday, but he usually spends Friday afternoon working on  his most current "project" (which usually involves the complete remodel of a home)

and I'm not kidding.

At all.

The man is a working machine.

Anyhoo, I get home.

I spend 10 minutes throwing "farm-type" clothes in a suitcase.

**(Farm-type clothes are those clothes that used to be good, cute, and even fashionable,

but for whatever reason

aren't

anymore.)

Farm clothes are those that you don't mind getting cow stuff, rust, oil, or blood on.

Farm clothes are "hyper-casual" in that they may actually be missing an integral component like

a button,

hem,

or  even a sleeve.

Seriously.

You're at the farm - no one notices.

After clothes packing it's time to pack the food.

I begin reciting the following prayer during clothes packing:

Dear Lord,

When I go into the kitchen to pack the food,

please let there be something edible to take with us.

Whether it be a morsel of unmolded bread,

half a bag of stale cookies,

a wilted stalk of celery,

anything Lord.

I'm not picky.

Amen

And so then I gather the meager "pickings" from the pantry and fridge.

You never know what you might end up with.

And that brings me to the situation I was in the last time we were there.

We were hungry.

Farm hungry.

Which is totally different from

regular hungry.

I had the following on hand:

27 cans of Black-eyed peas

assorted unidentifiable things in the freezer

3 containers of Dill Weed (old)

a stick of Hickory Farms salami someone got for Christmas (green)

half a purple onion (molded)

I think you get the picture.

Anyhoo, I managed to scrape up the following:

Some sliced smoked turkey (that we had picked up Friday evening at Country Cousins in Centerville)

Hickory smoked almonds (that I got recently at Buc-ees in Madisonville)

green onions

mayo

dill weed (WOOHOO!!)

salt

pepper

I mixed some mayo, dillweed, salt and pepper, chopped the turkey and almonds, and sliced 2 green onions, mixed it all together with some of the cranberries, and got the most delicious turkey salad ever!

To be honest, I have no idea what the measurements were, but go for it -

I don't think you could mess it up!

Trust me.

Sure Things

Some things are inevitable.


Given.


Definite.


Gonna Happen.


The following are sure things.

Please don't say I didn't warn you.

Sure Thing #1

If you have been in desperate need of a haircut for three weeks,
and your bangs hanging down in your eyes
have made you so miserable
that 
you have
no less than three times
taken it upon yourself
to
cut them,
with scissors
not meant for haircutting.

Without wearing your glasses.

If you have endured
the appearance
of the awful,
bizarre
cowlick
that only appears
on the right side of your
head
when
your hair is too long
and touches your shoulder,
(because your neck is unnaturally short)
and you have looked
asymmetrical,
scary,
and somewhat
crazed
for days,

And have FINALLY
scored an appointment
for a haircut
which you will actually
be able to get to
unlike the appointment
that you
tragically
missed
last week
because of a
horribly, horribly,
long meeting,

I guarantee you that the following will happen immediately before the haircut appointment:

No fewer than 6 people will comment on how great your hair looks,
and that they really like it that length,
not
shorter.

Sure Thing #2

If you feel
really, really  bad
about the three
five
days in a row
that you
haven't
prepared
a decent meal

for The Chief,

and you spend
hour
upon
hour
hunting for
fresh meat
with a spear,

growing your
own
organic,
heirloom
tomatoes
which you crush
with your
own hands into
a delicate tomato sauce
seasoned with the herbs that
you lovingly transplanted from your former home...

If you make
fresh,
homemade pasta
with your bare hands
using the secret recipe that you
begged from a chef
who spoke a language
that you didn't,
and you
aspirated an
unhealthy amount of
flour
in the whole process,

I  personally guarantee you that the following will happen:

The Chief will come home and announce
that he was taken to lunch
by a salesman
and
stuffed himself on
really, really,
good

Italian food

and couldn't possibly

eat
another
bite.



And Finally

Sure Thing #3

If you have gone on and on
at dinner
about how good you've been on your
diet,
and how you've eaten nothing but salad
for lunch
for the past
21 days,
and how the thought of more lettuce
makes you want to
just gnaw
your own leg off,
and
How you can't understand
for the life of you
why your
Hips
are still so
unbelievably,
unattractively,
unnaturally
wide
after all the walking and
By Golly
Running that you do each evening,
and
The Chief
has
nodded
sympathetically,

and then later that night you just
finally
have an emotional,
psychological,
theological,
and
frankly
complete and total
meltdown,

Wherein
 you find yourself,
(after The Chief has already gone to bed,)
in the kitchen
simultaneously
eating
Blue Bell Rocky Road
out of the carton
with a fork
and
Nutella
out of the jar
with your finger,

I propose that the following will definitely, without a doubt, happen.

The Chief will
inexplicably
come out of the bedroom
(where he has been sound asleep for over an hour)
and announce that he needs to check
to see if his
truck
is locked,

passing through the kitchen,
on his way to the garage
and therefore,
seeing
you.

Eating.

Everything.

And he will,
once again,
nod

sympathetically.


I rest my case.