Lessons in Cool.

We had some people over for dinner on Sunday night. Sound innocuous enough right? Um, yeah. One couple I knew the other I didn't but both of the women have read The Book. So I'm already at a disadvantage because they now know all these dorky things about me and I feel like I'm starting the evening with a rating of "Uncool." And you know I can't have that - people walking around thinking "dork" when they think of me. So what to do?

Well, my first point of attack was to not eat much that day. Really people that's the key. There's just no quicker delivery system for wine than an empty stomach. And what you'll be looking for here is speed. Speeding to Cool.

Also, I don't really drink much wine. I'm more of a beer girl. And that wine can be a tricky little bastard, no?

So first things first, I must make sure that these people (who happen to live in a funky part of town and have cool groovy jobs) know that I'm not a Buckhead Betty. This is important so it was my first order of business. I decided to swear a lot. Really. I went drunken sailor on them right off the bat. I mean what self respecting Betty would call her friend a bitch to her face? Right? I was doing awesome.

Then while discussing our kid's schools I made a point to let them know that I don't really dig how racially un-diverse our school happens to be. Except I kind of made it sound like my plan was to go around gathering up small ethnically diverse children and sort of surrounding myself with them. It might have sounded like my plan was to become the Michael Jackson of Buckhead. Now if Scott had been sitting with us during this part of the conversation I feel quite sure that he would have been able to put a stop to it, but I had him grilling the meat. My bad.

So now we're eating dinner. I'm being kind of loud because apparently red wine turns off the receptors in your inner ear and you are unable to gauge your own volume. That's a little known fact. So I'm loudly discussing books. I'm telling them how I don't just read a little bit every day, I devour books whole. I read for 18 hours straight until I'm finished. I forget to feed my family because I get so involved in the reading. And I'm thinking to myself, Self, you should tell them about that Russian literature phase you went through after you read War and Peace because that will make you sound like ten kinds of brilliant. Except what came out was, "Oh My God! How can you NOT know about Twilight!?"

Um. Yeah.

Then to proove my point about how uber-sophisticated I am I proceed to gather up the SEVEN different magaznes I have with Twilight people on the cover and I toss them onto the dining room table. Making a point to open to my favorite pictures. I'm a forty year old woman people.

At this point Scott is imperceptably shaking his head at me and I can tell he's thinking, What. The. Fuck.

So to proove how CON-NECT-ED I am with my husband and how silly and playful I am to the dinner table I jokingly toss a fluer de sol caramel at his head. Except appartently I cranked up my arm and put my hips into it and launched it at his skull where it bounced off with a thunk! and left a welt. Yes, he has a bump on his head from the freakishly hard sea salt caramel. That I threw at his head.

They left shortly after that. I think it went well. I'm pretty sure they think I'm super cool.

So those are my lessons for you. Drink + Swear + Toss = Cool.

.

Carolyn and Darcy prep for the feast.

This is part of an email conversation between me and Darcy from Post Picket Fence. We were preparing for the feast of course. Darcy and I email a lot. Daily. Which was why we wrote The Book.


To: Darcy
From: Carolyn

I just dropped the giblets and bloody water out of my turkey's asshole and all over the carpet runner in my kitchen. So now I need a new carpet runner in my kitchen...

To: Carolyn
From: Darcy

HAHHAHHAHHA... I am currently peeling 16 thousand pearl onions. And Bridget came home from pizza in town with three other kids. Great. And I bought all the veggies for the crudite but forgot the stuff to make the dip. Now we know why New Englanders call the Wednesday before thanksgiving, Drinking Day.

To: Darcy
From: Carolyn

I didn't know you could actually buy pearl onions. I thought they just appeared as if by magic in the green beans... Little bald balls of slime. Ugh. I also just made pumpkin bars (freakishly yummy) but I used self-rising flour instead of all purpose. Remember that episode of I Love Lucy where she makes the bread and it kind of busts through the oven and attacks? Yeah.

To: Carolyn
From: Darcy

Question: do I flour pizza dough thoroughly before rolling out and stuffing with sausage, pepperoni and cheese? Or will that fuck it all up? Also, the onions look like eyeballs swimming in blood. It's all about the pre-sen-tay-tion.

To: Darcy
From: Carolyn

Huh. I think with pizza dough you're supposed to tug and spin - not roll it out. And I think you use corn meal instead of flour. But you've probably already rolled it all out by now. And when your peeps eat it they'll be too drunk to notice if the dough was done properly.

To: Carolyn
From: Darcy

Oh dear, Looks like the freaking loch ness monster.

To: Darcy
From: Carolyn

Oh my... Looks more like Nessy is a MAN.

To: Carolyn
From: Darcy

And you know what? You're so right: everyone will be too tipsy too notice that I have in fact brought an edible penis to Thanksgiving.

Time to dance on some graves.

Wake up people! You have a feast to prepare to celebrate the decimation of an indigenous population. Sorry . . . to hear my kids tell the Thanksgiving story it sounds like the pilgrims devoured the Indian's food for three days then slaughtered them and danced on the still warm corpses. I guess they're teaching the story a little differently than they taught us. A little less candy coating.

Anyway, I'm just here to help you out with your food. You need to brine your turkey. Have you made your brine yet? Well get on it sister, that bird's not gonna soak itself. Here's the recipe I use - it's an old one of Martha's:

3 cups Kosher salt
5 cups sugar
2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
2 medium leeks, white and pale green parts only, coarsely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and coarsely chopped
2 celery stalks, coarsely chopped
2 dried bay leaves
3 sprigs fresh flat-leaf parsley
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 teaspoons whole black peppercorns

Combine all ingredients with 10 cups water in a large stockpot. Bring to a boil, stirring until salt and sugar have dissolved. Remove from heat; cool completely. (That's the bitch of it - the cooling completely part.) Soak your bird overnight. Take it out of the brine, pat dry, and let it sit at room temperature for 2 hours before you cook. This whole brining process makes all the difference. For real. Go, buy leaks. You don't have all day.

I hope you all have a great Thanksgiving. Unless you are one of my Canadian people. Then you know, have a nice Thursday. And I I know when I come back here after the feast I will be a snarky bitch (because I'm having the in-laws over for dinner) so before I go all unthankful on the internet I just have to say how grateful I am that my family is healthy. It's really all that matters. I hope Anissa continues to improve. I hope my friend who just found out that she's sick gets good news soon from the doctors. I hope I never forget how easily your life can turn upside down.

And you can be thankful that this will be the last time I bring up anything to do with the stupid Twilight series. There was a bit of dissension in the comments of my last post... Apparently Spot and CaraBee are under the delusion that Team Jacob is somehow superior to Team Edward. Ladies, I offer the following comparison into evidence:

I mean . . . People please. It's not even close.

.

Seriously? My life has come to this?

I just spent 40 minutes searching my house for my iPod earplugs so I could listen to Sex on Fire really really loud without my 8 year old going, "Mommy! I love this song." And then proceeding to sing: Yo! You're such a bad liar.

They're trying to ruin music for me. I can't have that.

Also? Last week I blew off my dying mother for a vampire movie. For real. Except she wasn't actually dying, she just had a fever. But she's old. Sort of. And she asked me to bring her a Diet Coke because she needs Diet Coke like most normal people need coffee. And you know what I told her? I told her to eff off because I already had tickets to the 10:45 am New Moon movie. I totally suck. And? Way too much Jacob and not enough Edward...

And? Yes, there's more. And I dragged Tempel to a freezing cold rainy field to watch Parker play in a soccer tournament on Sunday. That's only bad because Tempel has pneumonia. Well, she had pneumonia. She was done with her meds by Sunday so I guess she was all better. But apparently I was looking for a relapse. Because I'm awesome like that.

And did I make my 8 year old play in that god-awful weather? Why yes I did. Thanks for asking. And she had a bad cold. But I already pretty much told you what an awesome mom I am so just shut up already.

Did it make it all worth it because they won the tournament? Yep. And now I'm that mom.


And to top it off, my poor husband who supposedly works hard all day at the office and never has any clean socks to wear because he can't get that wife of his to keep up with the laundry came home from work early to find me hiding from the kids in my room watching Twilight clips from YouTube.

I mean seriously?

.

Scott is going to kill me for this one.

I'm pretty sure Parker wants to get into the movie making business.

The very lucrative Pee-Oh-R-En movie making business.

This is the flier she made for her auditions:

I can tell it's a Pee-Oh-R-En because the stick figures doing the acting have little hearts drawn in connecting their mouths. There are two scenes apparently. First, when the dishwasher repair man shows up at the house of the lonely housewife. And second, when they hit the bed. Except she drew the scenes out of order. Because it's an art film.

I think Parker is behind the camera. Sheesh. Everyone wants to direct.

.

Just another Monday, hiding from the fuzz.

I completely forgot that I was going to tell you people why the Department of Family and Child Services might be after me. As soon as the wounds heal the whole story zips out of my head apparently. But I was going through pictures this weekend and remembered. Ahh it's so fun to the the mom....

Ok, so the cool thing was that when Tempel was running and slipped and smashed her head on the stairs the wound actually spurted blood. Yes. Spurted. Horizontally to the floor. I mean nothing bleeds like a head wound and all but that little feat was unexpected. She freaked the eff out too. I don't blame her, it was pretty scary.

Blood's pouring down her little face and I'm trying to put pressure on the wound and Parker's crying (out of sympathy, not guilt) and Scott's screaming, "Stop pushing on it! We need ice!" and I'm going, "But I'm trained in girl scout first aid and we're supposed to push!" It was an interesting few minutes.

So her eye swelled up grotesquely, the cut on the eyebrow looked bad but not stitch worthy, and the bruising began immediately. If I had an eye patch I would've sent her to school the next day with it as a pirate. Argh. I really am long overdue for owning my own eye patch.

So anyway, the next day I got a call from the Vice Principal. Because she had seen the eye and it looked bad... Um yeah right. I think they were just checking on me. You know, a not too subtle we're watching you kind of thing. Hello! I did not hit my kid in the face and give her a black eye.

The third day her eyeball went red. It was pretty gross. And my pediatrician said to take her in. It was too late for his office so we went to the Clinic. Where they made a point to separate her from me twice to check our story. Awesome. She was fine by the way.

But the best part of the eye fiasco week was when I picked Parker up from soccer practice...with a budding shiner. Yep, she had a black eye too. So by Friday it looked like my kids had gotten on my last nerve and in a fit of red hot rage I grabbed each one on the back of the head and smacked their skulls together Three Stooges style.

Do you think it would be weird for me to make them wear a helmet around the house? Just til this thing blows over?

On another, non violent note, I'm guest posting over at The Mouthy Housewives today. Some poor girl needed some love life advice. I suggest a threesome. What? Not what you would've said?

Someone bring me some pizza, I'm busy.

My blog is moving. I don't know the details exactly. It's kind of like the Witness Protection Program. They're going to swoop in and wisk me away to a designated location and I'm just riding in the back of the van with the cute agents and their US Government issued sunglasses.

I'm busy. Busy. Busy. Please send pizza to feed my family.

Actually, Desperately Seeking Wordpress is doing all of the work on the blog transfer. That's not why I'm busy.

I'm busy because my very mean friend Becky gave me the Twilight books for my birthday and I accidentally started reading and now I can't stop and it's just a sick and frantic flipping of pages for every spare hour I can find and I'm pretty sure that Scott is so sick of me living with my nose in a book that he will at some point this week put a pillow over my head and put me out of his misery.

So while I'm reading, and then gasping for breath, can you go in and change your subscriptions to Carolyn...Online? Technically I'm moving from CarolynOnline dot Blogspot dot com to CarolynOnline dot com. See? I'm ditching the "Blogspot" part.

Basically if you're subscribed to Carolyn...Online in any way - either getting it in your email or through your feedreader - you need to resubscribe. I'm sorry. What a pain in the ass right?

I'm sure this will cause untold issues and the mess will be months in the fixing and the growing pains with be quite intense. I hope I don't lose any of you. If I do I promise to be like that dog and cat in that Disney movie that chased their family across the Rocky Mountains when they got left behind after the family vacation.