What I Learned During NaBloPoMo

So this post wraps up my one a day posting marathon. I survived. I wrote, mostly crumby, some funny, even some really good stuff, but I wrote. Here's what I learned.

11. I can sum up pretty much everything in a Top 11 List.

10. Not a single person batted an eye lash at my choice of 11.

9. Real people comment if you make it easy enough, but so do Chinese porn spammers.

8. I may have 900+ friends, but only about 10 are gonna read my posts.

7. I feel better when I crank out something, even if it's just short thoughts.

6. Reading old blog posts isn't as cool or arty as reading old poetry, but it still makes me smile.

5. The habit has been started, I might not do every day, but I'm gonna at least try to keep a couple posts a week.

4. I wanna read other people's blogs, but it's so hard to keep up.

3. Statistics are totally addictive. I spend more time analyzing my blog than writing it.

2. No real promotion still gets readers. It's nice to know I have a core of people who care what I think.

1. People LIKE deep stuff, but SHARE funny stuff.

What was your favorite post? What do you think should be my next topic?

11 Words or Less: Pregnancy (Puking Redacted)

11. Ovulation

10. Confirmation

9. Heartbeat

8. Movement

7. Contractions

6. Pushing

5. Holding

4. Nursing

3. Cuddling

2. Sleeping

1. Knowing

Dreaded Decorating Doofiness

I am a big fan of expressing individuality, I mean, I haven't worn matching socks in well over a decade, I have shaved my head squeeky clean bald, and I rocked Flamboyant Fridays in college... however, my dislike of Christmas has lead to a tertiary concern with bizarre decorating trends and themes. Don't take offense, don't take it personally, I'm glad folks groove to the season, but still, some of these seem, well, Doofy. (And, no, I'm not getting an Amazon kick-back, but I'm linking in case you're feeling cheeky and decide to purchase something).

Top 11 Doofy Decorations

11. Big Blow-Ups
This is my husband's pet peeve. They are loud and generally tacky. My least favorite would be the 6 foot snow globe with actual carasol inside. If you're going to that much work to decorate, can we seriously think of some better outlet? Only $329.99. (Side note: I'll be installing my mom's tomorrow. It's giant penguins with doctor accessories. It's super duper tacky... and I love it.)

10. Bottoms of Tree Toppers
I cannot possibly be the first person to feel weird about cramming pine needles up the dress of an angel. Is no one else confused by the symbolism of sticking the pointy tops of trees up the bums of a variety of toppers? I'm sure someone in the marketing division of stars should get on that. It's probably more creepy than doofy, but today, we're doing doofy.

9. OrnaMENTAL
I think it's nice when decorations and ornaments can reflect your personality. Here's a tip: TV is not your personality. Seriously, this is marketing on a whole new level. Not pictures of your kids, or even pictures of yourself singing, or, for Pete's sake, pictures of you watching the show. Just three judges watching someone else. To recap, that's a memory of you watching TV of people watching someone else. Doofy. (If you should choose, you can purchase the above ornament for $13.50 from Amazon.)

8. Icicle Lights
If you plug it in and it lights up? Not ice. Not even close. Sure, they are pretty and twinkley and give you more shimmer per square foot, but icicles they are not. 'Nuf said.


7. Faux Popcorn
Seriously? Fake strands of popcorn? If I hadn't helped a preschool teacher return sewing machine needles prior to attempting to thread garlands of the salty stuff, I'd find this UNBELIEVABLE. I guess it doesn't go bad? Why?! 9 feet of fake buttery goodness can be yours for $6.99.

6. Random Acts of Weirdness
Again, individuality is awesome, but I'm often confused by this. What does that giant wooden Barney have to do with the holidays. How about the giant elephant? If you're looking for more examples, I'd suggest UglyChristmasLights.com for further amusement.
5. Anachronistic Nativities
Maybe it's my love of open ended play being crushed by single use bizzaro-ness. Maybe it's the whole cave vs. stable argument. Maybe it's the part that angels don't sing... Let your kids play with whatever you choose, but if you're going to decorate? Maybe this is not the least doofy choice. (Having had personal experience with this set, the sounds when the batteries wear down are well worth the $44.99).

4. Highlighting Horribleness
If your home has a less than perfect feature... or a REALLY bad code-violating type issue. Trimming in lights is a poor choice. I can't think why folks would do this. Check it out this year whilest driving around. You will be amazed by the lovely hanging gutters, rotting porch railings, and other architectural sadness which is now enhanced by having small electrical devices stapled
to them.


3. Inappropriate Santas
Believe me, you can find the creepy old elf doing just about anything. I guess it's amusing, but why would you decorate to celebrate a holiday with this? Why? If you know, well, for $6.95 it can be yours.

2. Multicultural Atrocities.
Let me start this rant by pointing out that my family is fond of appropriating a wide variety of holidays. I'm all for sharing in a lovely tradition, I just feel like the forced overt PC-ness is a bit much. Celebrate your holidays, make them personal, but don't feel like you have to mention and mix them all lest you offend someone. Seriously, the Kwanzaa dreidel feels a little forced guys, especially if it's not pictured next to my Festivus Pole.

1. Terrible Trees
Can someone tell me why this product exists? It's a Whimsical Yellow Laser Artificial Christmas Tree... ARTIFICIAL?!? You mean it's not a REAL whimsical yellow Christmas tree? You can get similar ones in a variety of flavors/colors/painful horribly doofy styles. If you'd like this one, it can be yours for $8.05, that's right, this 30" beauty is on sale!

Got a favorite pet-peeve decoration? Know a place for specialty doofy products? Wanna share YOUR horror stories? That's why blogs have comments!

Creepy Christmas Carols

I'm not a big fan of Christmas... I know, I know, Bah Humbug! Anyhows, the part I do like is family and tradition. In that vein, I was helping decorate the tree at my mom's house today with my sister. We put on some "holiday" music, and soon we were giggling gleefully at the horrible irony of so many of the lyrics. In honor of the weirdness that is Christmas music, here are my Top 11 Creepy Christmas Carols.

11. Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer
Pretty self explanatory, I mean, seriously? A song about family whose drunken matriarch is trampled by a beloved myth... yep, automatically included.

10. I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
OK, here's my issue. I know we're going for cute, but this is either Daddy dressing up knowing he'll be seen by the child, in which case the make-out break is a little creepy; or, the dress up is solely for the benefit of Mommy, in which case, that's a little weird kinky if you ask me. Or, I suppose, it's a song about how the beloved jolly fellow is in fact an adulterous fiend and Mommy is a hussy. Creepy.

9. I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In
My theory here is that this a song about an awesome heist. I mean, it smacks of Ocean 26 type planning. Christmas day... the only day when the guards are on lower alert... yeah, it's not a Christmas song, it's a song about thievery. Maybe more amusing than creepy, but amusing none the less.

8. Twelve Days of Christmas
It may have been said before, but this is just a bizarre dance of materialistic insanity. (No, it's not a memory aid.) It's just a creepy idea of what someone wants for Christmas, or at least, what they got from their insane "true love." I think this is one creepy display of capitalistic affection.

7. Some Children See Him Lily White
The song is pretty much randomly racist. I guess it's supposed to be how we all see God in a different way, but I can't help but think it's just a way of legitimising misconceptions and stereotypes. I'm just sayin' I'm pretty sure he was an Arabic looking Jewish fellow. Just sayin'.

6. The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire)
This choice amuses me based solely on the ability of the lyrics to effectively summarize many creepy holiday themes: dangerous pyromaniac tendencies romanticized, scary mythological entities harassing innocent victims, simplistic ethnocentrism, and the theme that everyone should know and approve of these ideas. Ahhh creepy.

5. Little Drummer Boy
The whole thing is just an unsupervised child apparently busking for a living, not sure why he's headed to visit the baby, but it seems no one is interested in caring for him. Sure, it's a nice sentiment that he wants to bring the gift of music, but is anyone gonna help out the young street musician? No. No they're not.

4. Mary Did You Know
Let me just cut to the chase. Yes, she did. I'm pretty sure we're clear on the whole angelic messenger explaining it. Plus, having recently been a new mother, the last thing I'd like is generations of folks harassing me to see if I'd done my home work on parenting. It's not like there's any pressure for her, raising God incarnate. Oh, and you think God was going to pick someone who didn't get it? Really?

3. Frosty the Snowman
Mythical anthropomorphic characters are the hallmark of creepy holiday songs. I think this fellow embodies the whole idea to a tee. Sure, sounds nice to have an enchanted friend, but the next time a giant snow demon bangs on your door after chasing your children around, let me know how lovely you find the sentiment.

2. Santa Claus is Coming to Town
Stalker. Voyeur. Sees you when you're sleeping. Knows when you're awake... Suppression of feelings: Better not pout, better not cry... really? This is supposed to be a happy song? It just scares the goodness outta me.

1. Baby It's Cold Outside
This was the most disturbing song of the afternoon. It pretty much reeks of a very uncomfortable intimate power/control situation. The lady says repeatedly she'd like to leave. She says "no" more than once. He tries to give her more alcohol and take away her coat. He uses verbal coercion to let her know that her reputation is already ruined. Seriously creepy.

Sorry if I've ruined a little part of your holidays. Got another creepy hit that amuses you? Let me know in the comments.

The Penguin Cherpumple

This Thanksgiving, I was finally able to slice into my very own cherpumple. Cher-wha? Last year I was introduced to the fabulous idea of the cherpumple via this video:

I knew I must have one! Basically, it's a cherry pie baked into a white cake, on top of a pumpkin pie baked into a yellow cake, on top of an apple pie baked into a spice cake, all frosted into one amazing three layer cake of AWESOME.

Here's how I made mine. I started off with lofty goals of going all from-scratch... but I'm not that awesome. Did I mention I have a 10 month old? Anyway, started off with the apple pie filling.


Most of my recipes are really annoying to share since I fake my way through it. Here's my best guess:

4 Granny Smith Apples, sliced up
4 tablespoons orange juice (I usually use lemon, the idea is that the citrus adds a little punch and keeps the apples from browning)
3 tablespoons of flour (to thicken it up)
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon of nutmeg

I put all of this into something that seals, stir, then shake it up. (This part is a great little release of angst). For the other two fillings, I did store bought; the pumpkin required adding evaporated milk and and eggs.

For the pie crust I went with a basic crust for all three. Here's my guess at about a pie's worth of recipe. (So I made about 3x as much).

2 cups flour
2 1/2 tablespoons of Oil
1 teaspoon of salt
4 tablespoons of water (or how ever much you need to get the right consistency)


Next, I poured the fillings into each pan. (The trick here is to get pie pans smaller than your cake pans. I did this by buying 8 inch disposable cake pans to use as pie pans, thus fitting nicely into the nine inch cake pans.)


Then I added lattice to the cherry pie and a cover with pricks to the apple pie. Neither of these is really needed, but I figured it would make flipping them into the cake pans a little easier later.


Baked all three pies at 350 degrees for about a half hour... until they looked golden brownish.


I let them cool over night.


I also opted for super easy on the cakes, by using mixes; in this case, white, yellow, and spice. I literally bought the cheapest kinds. They each required three eggs, 1/3 cup of oil, and a cup and a third of water. (The white one just used egg whites).

I spread cake batter over the bottom of the pan, about a centimeter thick. Then flipped the pie into the batter. It sorta didn't go all in one piece. Luckily, I just kinda smushed the rest back down into there.


Finally, I spread batter to fill in around the edges and cover the pie. *Note that there is A LOT of batter... too much really*


I spread the extra batter into another cake pan to make a mini-pie-less cherpumple... which wouldn't really have any of the reasons for the name... If you were making nine inch pies to go into twelve inch cake pans, I'm guessing you'd have just the right amount of batter.I repeated with the Apple pie in yellow cake. (I only had two cake pans, so I only did the first two.)

Into the oven they went at 350 degrees... for about fifteen minutes... when I smelled the smoke. You see, they were totally too full and dripped. This was a total fail since it was Thanksgiving morning and the turkey was very shortly going to bake in that oven. GRRRRRRrrrrrrr!


Took the cakes out, cleaned the oven, then finished baking. Next, went about making the third cake. I was a little more careful not to over-fill. We baked that bad boy next the turkey. Here's the drippy cake:


At last, it was time to assemble this behemoth. I had to de-pan the cherry/white layer to bake the apple/spice layer. It just popped right out. The apple/spice layer was a tad more difficult. It seams I didn't grease the pan as well since I was in such a hurry. I ended up breaking the whole darn thing in half.


Luckily, I used a spatula to loosen up that bad boy, and just set it right on top.


I cut around the edge to trim it into a circle. The bottom was also slightly burnt, so I just scraped off the darker/burnt part since I'd be frosting it anyway.


I frosted the bottom layer. I cheated here too with a store-bought frosting. It took three cans total.


Next I sliced around the edges of the pumpkin/yellow layer and placed it on top.


I frosted there as well.


Finally I added the third layer.


I frosted all the way around.


And on the top, if you're generous, it's easier to spread the frosting.


Because it amused me, I added some silly safety green decorations. My sister also let us put the mini-cakes she had brought around it. The whole thing was in a large tupperware dish because we needed something really sturdy... the thing weighed 8-9 pounds.


After an incredible feast, it was time to chow down. It takes a bit to slice, and you don't want to make a large slice as it is already pretty tall with all those layers.



I found out it was easier to dish up with a spatula AND the knife. Here's a few more pictures of the glories of our cherpumple success.



What do you think? Have you tried it? Are you going to?

Thanksgiving Escape

Today may not have been the most typical of Thanksgivings, or, maybe it was. I'm too exhausted to type much, but lets just say it included a tire swing, for one thing.


It started bright and early with some work on the cherpumple (full briefing on that to come tomorrow)


It was a great chance to kick back with some immediate and extended family.


Even better, it included a tiny man being paraded with a lovely parasol.


Back to family time. I'd love to hear about yours. Special thanks to Aunt Sweet Sweet for the lovely pictures.

Family Time, Sister Time

This afternoon we arrived at my parents' house for our Thanksgiving trip. Time for some super duper family time. My family has always been close, but geographic proximity makes it feasible for get-togethers to happen with more regularity. Lately, I've been taking advantage of this time to get a little less time in with my son.

I know, it sounds bad at first, but lets be honest. The brand of parenting I have chosen involves me being within arms reach of my son almost constantly. I was doing the math the other day and thought part of the reason I get so tired of being with my son is that I am pretty much always with him. There are plenty of awesome parents who see their child for an hour or two in the morning, drop them off with another care provider for the work day, then spend a few hours with them in the evening before they drift off to the blissful twelve hours of sleep they are oh-so-lucky to experience. Lets just say that, by my own choice, this is not my experience. I am not saying these parents don't also deserve a break, I'm just saying I'll let myself off the hook a little here.

The point of all this is to say that I had two hours or so of shopping time with my sister-in-law. I love that this was some of the best "Family Time" I've had in a long long time. Not to take away from time with my son or husband, or even the large family gatherings where eight or nine of us gab in a glorious pun making riot of hilarity based on jokes that someone misheard and referenced twelve years ago. This is different. Sure, I've known her for seven or eight years, but she's a fresh face, someone who isn't obligated to love me.

I have always treasured my biological sister, and since high school the sisterhood of Sukwat, but I am particularly grateful right now for a sister-in-law with whom I can be my complete honest self. I am so thankful for her ability to share wise and kind words and still make me laugh. I wish everyone could be so blessed as to have their family blossom with flowers as fragrant as she.

What is "Family Time" like for you? Does quality family time involve different people at different times for different reasons? How? Why?