Bourbon Rum Friday with a Side of Hangover Saturday

I have absolutely no excuse for being MIA from BloggyLand, except that I've been exorcising the last of ManCold, we had a soldier whose house burned down this week, I've gotten about a blue million custom orders for Mother's Day, and we've had to make daily life-changing decisions...Do we want to move to King City, CA for Neal to take a job on Ft. Hunter Liggett?....Do we want to move to Ft. Knox?...Do we want to stay here and hope something opens up at the state?....Do we want to sell the house?...Do we want to keep the house?...Do we want to launch ourselves into outer space until the job market opens up and people start bathing in 100 dollar bills, y'all?

And the answer to all of this is...We don't know. Kind of anti-climatic, isn't it? It's no wonder that Neal is awake from 3-5 every morning and I'm having dreams of waitressing at a bar while holding Lulu like a baby the whole time. Last night, I had a dream that Neal left me at a bar because I was topless. Things will have to change eventually. In the meantime, I have every intention of returning to you all this weekend. I miss you all like crazyjuice and your blog titles taunt me from my Blogroll. They whisper, "Come read us! We are highly entertaining! And we go better with a glass of wine!" Darn you, witty and snarky bloggers! I still have to do my business taxes...but then I still have 5 days. No reason not to put that off, right?

So, I hope that everyone had a knock-out Champagne Friday yesterday. It seems that Shana had something better than Champagne...she had Orlando Bloom sitting on a balcony across the way from her office. I would drink that up any day! Cheers to you, love! And I owe you a top 5 Friday, which I was not sober enough to write yesterday. Sorry about that. Y'know how it goes when there's Wild Turkey in the house....

5. I finally did it...I finally gave in to the spell of Sookie and Bill and created my first and only Peace, Love, Vampire Blood necklace. It felt so good...so right...sort of like selling out. Oh well, True Blood is not Twilight...it's got way more sex and I can dig it.
4. Jaron and The Long Road to Love has a new song out on country radio. It keeps popping up on my BlackBerry's I Heart Radio app and it just never gets old. Here's a little snippet...

I haven't been to church since I don’t remember when
Things were goin’ great ‘til they fell apart again
So I listened to the preacher as he told me what to do
He said you can’t go hatin’ others who have done wrong to you
Sometimes we get angry, but we must not condemn
Let the good Lord do His job and you just pray for them

I pray your brakes go out runnin’ down a hill
I pray a flowerpot falls from a window sill and knocks you in the head like I’d like to
I pray your birthday comes and nobody calls
I pray you’re flyin’ high when your engine stalls
I pray all your dreams never come true
Just know whereever you are honey, I pray for you

Bwahahahaha....you can't say that you've never thought these words about somebody. Honesty is a beautiful, shiny thing.

3. A picture of 3 gorgeous ladies headed out for a friend's Grand Opening...before the 7 cotton candy martinis and 2 trips to the photo booth.
2. I am soooooooo addicted....

via

1. I saved this for #1 because it's the perfect example of what happens when you're sitting across the desk from your husband and you've both been working all day and it's 75 degrees outside. Sometimes, you just have to go for a walk...
with Lulu on a leash.

Happy Weekend, everyone! Happy Birthday to my girl, Lori, and many thanks for the carton of Cherry Coke Zero and the 12 ounces of rum last night. Next time we'll see what we can use that gin for.

Love Tank is Full; Funny Tank is Runnin' on Fumes

In the past 3 days, I have discovered something interesting and especially obnoxious about myself. The more jewelry I create (and describe and post on Etsy), the more brain farts I have in the writing arena. Sort of like...I have X amount of funny, wit, and snark stored in the parietal lobe and when that's all gone...it's all "yo mama" and "talk to the hand" and "well....bite me." Good for business...bad for blog. It probably doesn't help that I'm watching Lock Up: Raw and listening to Kris Delmhorst while typing this. Yes, Alex...I'd Like ADHD Tendencies for $500, please. Oh, look...it's the Daily Double.

Anyway, in true junior-year-of-college fashion, I have 25 minutes to make good on a promise to post a recipe, 2 awards, and a short anecdote on Neal's version of trail mix. So..here we go...because in a lame attempt to chase off a headache, I drank a glass of wine and all that did was make me wish I was more horizontal right now. And not in a slutty way. In a biteguard-in, lights-out kind of way.

The One Thing That Will Make a PMS'ing Girl Spend Her Last $5 on Chips Instead of Tampons:

Chocolate-Dipped Ruffles
with special thanks to the Real Simple Magazine. Aside from comforting me about my OCD habits (so glad I'm not the only all-spices-face-North-freak in your readership) on a monthly basis, your magazine has provided me with this recipe AND the best fake-it-don't-make-it blackberry cobbler recipe EVER.

2 ingredients. If you can't handle that, you should not be allowed to even have access to a kitchen. You should be cooking your snacks over an open flame, sitting on the edge of your toilet (thank you, Lock Up: Raw, this is invaluable knowledge).

1. Family-size bag Ruffles (go ahead and get 2 because we all know the top 2/3 of the bag is full of air and corporate greed).
2. A bag (or 4) of chocolate chips (I spring for the Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips because of the antioxidants. And because life is too short to eat generic, off-color chocolate. I will buy Kroger-brand Nyquil, I will not buy Kroger-brand chocolate.)

Directions:
1. Melt chocolate in a container in the microwave. (I'm sure you should be using a double-boiler or something fancy and fireproof, but I have a glass storage container that works perfectly. Plus, if you run out of chips before you run out of chocolate, you put the airtight lid on and save it for an encore...preferably for breakfast.)
2. Dip the Ruffle chip in the molten chocolate and place it on a piece of wax paper.
3. Store in the freezer for about an hour (the cryogenic process improves the crunch factor and keeps you from burning all of the important taste buds off. But if an hour is too long to way, I shall not judge).
4. Eat with pure abandon as you re-watch Steel Magnolias and cry when Shelby dies. Again.

Enjoy.*
*But in moderation. And by moderation, I mean in the way that Baptists enjoy wine...not in the way Catholics enjoy wine. If you live on these for 2 weeks after 30 grueling days of P90X, I am not to be blamed. You've been warned.

Last Saturday, Snowmageddon arrived in Bluegrass Country (although it seems Mother Nature saved her true bitchy burst for Salt, The Anti-Journalist, and The Scholastic Scribe. Sorry about that, girls. Here's hoping you don't lose anything important...like your car....in the aftermath of Arctic El Nino). It snowed about 6 inches, according to our incredibly scientific method of sticking a ruler in the middle of our yard. I sat at home all day and dreamed, sketched, and planned the perfect snowman. When Neal returned home from playing Army, I announced that I was off to fashion a Frosty. I gathered the necessary accessories and donned every waffle weave and goose-down garment I own. I hadn't built a snowman since 7th grade. Snow sculpture urges had been accumulating in my blood for many years now. Time to let out the beast.

Until Neal picked up a handful and said, as it ran effortlessly through his fingers, you can't build anything with this. Too dry. We could hose it down. And then visions of dragging out all 20 feet of garden hose just to wet half of the yard, prepping it for the perfect snowman, flashed through my mind. Um...no. Let's just go for a walk instead. Neal agreed and disappeared inside for...well...awhile. It was so long that I thought about going in to get him, but then decided that if it was a last-minute bathroom run, I didn't want to walk in on that. So, I waited. And waited a little more. And thought about making snow angels. But then decided that I liked my underwear exactly as it was. Dry. Finally, he emerged and off we went.

We have a 4-mile loop that we walk a lot in the summer. About 2 miles in, Neal turned to me and said, Do you want something to drink?
Oh yes, please. (No water all day makes Ally a thirsty snow hiker).
And then he whipped out the flask. With bourbon. On a walk. A leisurely walk. Through the middle of the neighborhood. The neighborhood that doubles as an advertisement for Honda mini-vans and the importance of competitive swimming in building a child's self-esteem. So, what to do? Yes, drink of course. It burns...oh it burns...all the way down. Ring o' fire.

I need a chaser....I don't do straight bourbon, remember?
To which he pulled out a bag of chocolate-covered coffee beans...a holdover from his stocking, 2 Christmases ago. So, through the family-friendly neighborhood we went, swigging bourbon and noshing on coffee beans. Because really...what's more American than that?

OK...awards...I have 2. I'll post them tomorrow. It's after midnight, Cinderella...and I still need to brush teeth and find a non-intrusive way of getting the words "I got soul, but I'm not soldier" out of my head. And I think this is over 500 words. I will also post my Who Dat necklace. My team allegiance lies in what Michael's had in stock. Fleur-de-lis(es?) abound in that place. Horseshoes? A little harder to find. In the Derby state. Go figure. Secretariat is rolling over in his horsey grave right now.