Cabot Has Gone Cheezy

You know me I love food. I love to buy high quality locally produced food. One of my favorite regional companies is Cabot Cheese. I love Cabot! I respect their high standards and their commitment to top quality delicious cheese from local happy cows. I of course also love that they are based in Vermont. The same state as my good friends Ben and Jerry, Lake Champlain Chocolates, and Green Mountain Coffee. I'm hungry.... What was I saying? Oh yeah... I have been a loyal Cabot cheese customer for years. Since before my kids were born. My kids eat real cheese! No oil based chemically processed cheese food. What the heck is cheese food? I grew up eating the stuff and I have no idea what cheese food is. All I do know is that cheese food obviously it is not cheese! Yes, I am a cheese snob. I am actually pretty snobby about a lot of foods but I don't want to tell you what they are in the fear of offending people and jeopardizing future dinner invitations. Especially this early in the BBQ season.

There I was in Market Basket shopping for our up coming family BBQ this weekend. I walk into the cheese aisle and have a full blown technicolor hallucination. In my state I imagine that I am seeing Cabot brand "American Processed Cheese Food". I slap myself across the face in the hope of snapping out of this strange spell. Nothing. I slap my self again really hard. A little old lady wearing a head scarf looks over at me and makes the sign of the cross. Now my face is stinging and realize that I am not in fact hallucinating. I pick up the package in disbelief. I read the package closely-Cabot brand American Processed Cheese Food. This can't be! I feel betrayed. Is nothing sacred? If a girl can't depend on her cheese what's left to believe in?

I hadn't felt that distraught since Burt sold his company Burt's Bees to corporate America. I loved that guy, his little company, and his amazing products. Now the company is huge and the products are sold in Walmart! Walmart! The new products cost more & have less quality ingredients. Will the same thing happen to my beloved Cabot? First they make processed cheese food? What comes next Cabot cheese in a can? I shudder to even imagine.

I have almost completely stopped buying all Burt's Bees products. I do still buy their lip balm. I hate that they have ruined a great company. But the lip balm is still the best. I will give Cabot the benefit of the doubt for now. I will try my best to over look this little transgression and hope that they see the error of their ways. I will still buy their other real cheese products. But mark my words! If I ever see Cabot Cheese in a can they are dead to me! DEAD!

I Probably Think This Blog Is About Me

I have success to report on the dieting front. I have stuck to my eating plan and even exercised for a few days in a row now. I already lost some weight. What is the root cause of this sudden motivation? Lightening strike? Alien visitation? The hand of God? No much more powerful vanity!

Since I have been on Facebook college friends have been finding me. recently guy friends. A few of them I kissed, one of them I wish that I kissed, but mostly they were just good friends. We were all nerds together. Some nerdier then others. In fact the more I dig around on Facebook the more I learn that my old guy friends thought that my friend X and I were some of the hottest nerd girls on campus. We were still nerds of course, but that's nice to know that the guys thought that were kind of pretty. This collegial appreciation was all news to me and my friend X and Stil all of these years later we got a kick out of hearing about it. Eventhoug college was 16 years ago we both enjoyed hearing that we had admirers.

These nerdy uncool guy friends started posting pictures on facebook and they are damn cute! One of them has lost a lot of weight, taken up running, and embraced his baldness. The other one has given up his skinny heavy metal devil look, filled out, and cleaned up. Who knew that under all that hair lurked such a handsome guy? Most of our old college buddies have turned out great. They have all shed their geeky ways through our the years and transformed into top quality adorable husbands and boy friends.

The problem is that my friend X and I have had our own transformations. We have both been married for about a decade and have kids. Over the last 16 years we have transformed for being beautiful "it" girls to bountiful fat girls. While our guy friends were busy cleaning up we were busy eating up. We have each gained at least 60 pounds since college. I know size shouldn't matter and it didn't matter since we were communicating on Facebook. However now one of the guys has suggested that we all get together in person! Photoshop can not help me in person!

Hence a few of us have been talking about having this mini-reunion this summer and in response I have been transforming my house into the Biggest Loser Ranch. My friend X is casual and laid back as ever. I on the other hand hand view this as a competition. I can't let the guys look better than me. Especially when I once looked so much better than the guys. Vanity, my friends. Vanity motivates. Vanity and vanity alone are keeping me on my eating and exercise plan.

Come on you are asking yourselves. Is she really this vain?

YES! Believe it!

Love Notes

I am the luckiest girl alive. I have a handsome admirer who is madly in love with me. He is passionately insanely in love with me. His love for me is epic. This isn't puppy love this love is Heathcliff and Catherine love, Jane Eyre and Rochester love, Fred and Wilma love. My love asks me on a regular basis to dump my husband and marry him. He tells me over and over how he is the man of my dreams that he will be devoted to me until the day I die. When we are together in a crowd he always steals glances to make sure that my attention is his and his alone. He tells me that he is only complete when we are together. That his heart breaks when he is not by my side. However the truth of the matter is that I am already married. I try to explain this fact to him that Daddy is my husband and that mommy's can't marry their sons, but he doesn't listen.

This morning he is bestowing love notes upon me. Mounds of love notes scribbled 6-year-old letters. spelled phonetically, in one long word. "ILOVEMOMME!" "MIMOMMYSGREAET!" I know he is adorable and he is going to make some girl's dreams come true. Or he is going to make some girls get restraining orders. I am hoping for the former.

Here I am trying my best to get the kids into the car to take Dylan to school on time and my little Romeo keeps handing me notes. Each note is presented in an over the top dramatic style. I am bowed down to, danced for, and sung for. Then after each not is read their is an accompanied hug and kiss. I am making his lunch and packing his backpack. I am a busy mom I have no time for romance, especially in the morning. I am deflecting Cupid's arrows as I finish up. Now I am in the home stretch, I am putting on Alice's shoes, and herding the kids in the car. Dylan blocks the door way and hands me a note. I take the note and throw it in to the depths of my bag and get into the car. Dylan is standing outside of the Subaru.

He tells me that he won't get in until I read his love note. Of course I can't find the darn thing in my big bag. Finally I locate the note under 5-pounds-of wipes, juice boxes, and sunscreen, I can not read his writing. I ask him what is says. This was his reply.

"It says-'It breaks my heart when you don't love my love notes'."

PunctuatioNazis

Ask a PunctuatioNazi about the world and they will tell you that there are two kinds of people. Those who write with perfect grammar and spotless punctuation and idiots. I am and will always be a proud member of the second group. I am an idiot and I am proud.

My whole academic life I have been plagued by these elitist PunctuatioNazis. I was always be labeled as a know nothing idiot. They disregard the content of my work snickering to each other over my misused semi colon. You know which students they are. You know the girls in the front of the classroom whose personal style is more similar to the teacher's than the other students. The ones who raise their hands for every question and ask for extra homework. I don't care if they got all A's and went to Harvard they were still mean!

These little PunctuatioNazis picked on me because I was a great writer but I lacked the mechanics. They never let me in their parties and they suck! I do have learning disabilities and during school I suffered from undiagnosed ADD. I was a straight C student and punctuation might as well have been advanced quantum physics. I could never figure out all the many crazy rules. I still can't. I'll wear a scarlet "I" for Idiot on my chest.

Unfortunately my professors usually agreed. My papers were sometimes filled with so many red correction marks that the words underneath disappeared. Almost all of my college English professors told me at one time or another that perhaps English was the wrong major for me. What was a creative funny girl to do? Major in finance? My passion was and forever will be writing.

Now I am a grown up and a writer. HA! I showed you. Okay not until I am published and worshiped by millions on the best sellers list can I say that. I still have no idea when to use a semicolon. I think it is used before a list. Here is a list of other things I don't understand; commas, quotation marks, paragraphs, periods, foot notes, titles, the list goes on and on.

Professional writers tell me that bad grammar and punctuations is like bad breath. We'll I am sorry for my halitosis. I do try and brush my blogs up. I do my best. I mean I am running a lunatic asylum here on a good day.

Right now I am writing while Alice is on a chair with her face in the craft closet yelling. "Momma do paint! Momma I do painting!" Before I finish typing this line she will have paint all over her body and especially in her hair! I am doing my best here. The other day I was cooking dinner, instant messaging, and talking on the phone all at the same time. Where is the praise for that?

There will always be snotty English Major elitists out there that make people especially me feel insecure and stupid. I plan to keep on ignoring them. There is all kinds of writing for all kinds of people. Personally I prefer to write with out a stick up my...well you can fill in the blanks. I officially apologize to my readers for my mistakes. When I am rich I will be able to hire an editor.

I do have a secret dream. One of my PunctuatioNazis professors sees me on the New York Times Best Seller's list. they snicker and say to their friends. "That little idiot wrote a book? Her readers must be dumber than dirt." All I can hope and prayfor is that when her snotty fellow PunctuatioNazis go home she pulls my book out from under her mattress and reads and laughs all night long.

POOPIES

Yesterday a friend and I are standing on my lawn. Her daughter and my son are playing in the tents in my yard. My son runs inside to get a stuffed bunny to show his friend. He runs back out shows her the toy they both put the toy in the larger tent. Then my son comes out of the tent and freezes in mid step and yells"MOMMY!"

I turn to see the look of horrific shock on his little sweet face. "Poopies" I asked? He nods yes.

"Honey you were just in the house? Why didn't you poop then?"

"I had to get Bobby bunny."

"Sweet heart you need to....." he cuts me off.

"Oh no!" he yells. "Here comes the pee!" A stream of water starts pouring down little water falls down his shorts clad legs. My friend turns her back and tries to stifle hysterical laughter. I hit her.

"Sweet heart you are outside. Why didn't you go pop and pee in the woods? I ask.

"You said that I am not allowed to poop in the woods." He says sternly. My friend is laughing so
hard that she is almost peeing in her own pants. I hit her harder.

"No you can't poop there any time you want to but this was an emergency. An emergency is different."

"Oh. I wish I knew this a few seconds ago." He says with heart felt sincerity.

"Yeah buddy, me too."My friend dries her eyes and turn back around to face the boy.

"Sorry sweety I am not laughing at you. Your mom just made me laugh." She says wiping tears from her eyes.

"Oh that's right I was telling her..." He cuts me off again.

"When is someone going to change my pants!"

"Sorry!" We both say at the same time and run to help him in the house.

We Are Family

Today Alice and I went to the library and as always Alice wanted to go play with the doll house. Today the doll house had many new occupants. At first I thought that the dolls had formed a polygamous sect. On closer examination I found that this was not a polygamous sect but a modern duplex. We had 5 males dolls, 3 female dolls, and one kid. The male doll group had two matching young cute guy dolls, one generic dad looking doll, and one old fashioned bendy plastic doll missing his shirt. This doll had a ratty suit jacket and pants but no shirt or shoes. The girls were one perky Suzanne Sommers looking blond doll, a dark haired grandma-like doll wearing a leotard, and Thelma from Scooby Doo.

I quickly decided that what we had here was obviously a set of trendy Jamaica Plain condos. Jamaica Plain is a cool trendy part of Boston. One of the hottest neighborhoods where utra-cool urbanites, students, and nontraditional families live in artsy cultured harmony.

Yes, Of course that what was before me on the table! I had an old house that was renovated into 3 gorgeous condos in Jamaica Plain. I made the families and set them up. The top floor is for the two matching guy dolls and the kid. They became a cute gay couple Trevor and Sasha and their daughter Violet. Under them lives the cute lipstick lesbian blond doll named Shelia and her butch partner Thelma. They are in the process of adopting from China. Next door lives the older leotard clad doll, Jane the cougar and her newly divorced son Albert. Albert moved back in after he lost his job and his wife left him. Jane likes having Albert there but he is hampering her scandlous sex.

Then at last their is poor Ross the homeless man. He stumbles around the neighborhood collecting cans. He survives on malt liquor and trash. They don't know where he sleeps but every day he wears the same scrappy suit jacket with no shirt or shoes. I lay him down outside the doll house so he can sleep off his hangover.

I step back and admire the lovely house that I have left for the kids. I hope that they ask their parents questions about the tenants and that their parents are brave enough to give them the right answers.

Oh another day shaking things up in Mayberry!

Cupcakes Cupcakes Cupcakes Cupcakes

I love cupcakes. They are tiny, cute, and terribly sweet (all of this things that my parents wanted me to be ). I am no cupcake! I am big, loud, and terribly sarcastic. I don't hold it against them...the cupcakes...nothing can come between our love.

Cupcakes are a beautiful thing. When you are an overweight woman you can't go buy a whole cake with out people staring at you. The cashier, skinny girls, cute guys. Also you can buy a cupcake with out suffering a judgmental raised eyebrow. Society even let's a fat girl can get away with just one cute lil' cupcake.

You can also slip a cupcake past your family. Have you ever tried to sneak a whole cake past them? This is mommy's cake savages-now back off! Yeah right. The best way to buy your cake and eat it too is to buy cupcakes. You can sneak a cupcake into the house and hide it in the fridge behind the hummus. They'll never look in there. Then after they go to sleep you can sit quietly with a cup of decaf or cold milk.

This is how I eat my night time treat. I place the cupcake on a pretty plate. Take off the paper and take that first delicious bite. I always bite right on the side where the frosting and cake meet. Half frosting have cake melting in my mouth. Then sometimes if the cupcake is tall I split it in half right under the top. I put the bottom on the top and make a cupcake sandwich. With the frosting in the middle. So good! I slowly enjoy every bite. slowly succulently sweetly....Oh yeah. That's why I love cupcakes. They satisfy me in a way that only they can. I love being big, loud, and terribly sarcastic, you can be happy and eat you cupcake too.

I have to go take a cold shower now....