General Pixel

Pixel. General Pixel, to be exact. She is a walking terror on four furry legs that gives no fucks. Exactly zero. She is unlike any kitten or cat I have ever had before, and in my younger years I owned a lot of cats. I was the crazy cat lady all through grade school, middle school, and the first year of high school. Perhaps I find this cat so damn strange because I've never lived with a cat as an adult. Was my mother and father's relationships with my cats so off the wall or is it just me? I may never know, but what I do know is that this cat is a lunatic and I'm going to share with you all of the insanity I witness on a day-to-day basis.

Here we go, my first time being a cat owner as an adult:

Never before have I had a cat want attention from only one person. It's always been everyone or not one. General Pixel, however, only seems to want attention from my fiance at all times of the day. When he leaves the house she shits in the floor in front of the door and meows for ten minutes like he's made of magic and cat nip or some shit. I'm not sad to see him leave a few hours of the day and I'm about to marry the bag of dicks.

He's trying to sleep, but she wants lovins. Right meow.

When she wants attention, it's not a petting she wants. It's nuzzling... or something like that. She wants you to rub your face and nose against her head and move it down her neck and back. Like, "PET ME WITH YOUR FACE, HUMAN!" What? I didn't even know that was a thing...

Sometimes, and by sometimes I mean daily, if you are busy or reading or playing a game, she will sit on your chest and lay against your face with her spine just under your nose, making you look like you have a massive cat mustache. Or she will sit in front of your face, blocking one of your eyes like a fuzzy eye patch with a bad attitude.

My future husband mustache you a cat-related question.

Trash. She plays with trash. Not nasty trash, we keep that away from her (at least we try). But in her cat tube/safe haven/evil lair she has a square of bubble wrap, crinkly candy wrappers, the bag the candies came in, crinkly paper, a Walmart bag, my first bra (literally, my first bra that was bought for me over 12 years ago that I've kept all this time because it still fits *sad face*), and a balled up gas station receipt. It's like the 12 Day of Christmas in that tube. Know what's not in there? The toys we actually spent money on. Yeah, not making that mistake again. And, yes, it's cute when she's going H.A.M. on the bubble wrap but not when we have to chase her down and take a Trojan condom wrapper from her because no, just no.

Along with paper type trash, she also chases, plays with, and sometimes eats bugs. Giant ants and spiders are batted around the room like she's training to become a professional hockey player. And, yes, she eats them. Like she did to the tiny ant just now...

There is also the sock fetish. She's constantly sneaking into our housemate's room and stealing his socks, and hiding them in her tube or under our bed or under the couch in the living room. She also loves to play with our dirty socks. I don't know why the dirty ones. The first time I was this happen I yelled to my fiance, "Don't let her play with our dirty socks! That's nasty!" To which he responds, "She licks her butthole!" Well... he's right...

Yes, Pixel, we see you licking your butthole and stealing our dirty socks...

Any time someone is scooping her litter she does one of three things:

1. She waits until you are about halfway finished and decides she needs to poop. So you abandon the job entirely and leave one half of the litter box full of hardened poo and ENORMOUS clumps of piss.
2. She waits until you are completely finished and then poops in the fresh, clean litter. So you walk away mumbling "fuck it".
3. She just sits and watches you like a supervisor that insists on micro managing this simple task. It's almost as if she's trying to figure out what you're doing. I have to admit, she probably does think we're crazy, or stupid, or both. We made such a big deal about her finally learning to bury her poop with the litter, and then here we are digging it up.

She poops and pees more than any other cat I have ever had, and I used to own MULTIPLE cats. At one time in grade school I know for sure that I owned five and never had to scoop this much litter. We have two litter boxes for General Pixel. TWO. And she fills them up so quickly. She's a shit storm of piss and rage and I have no idea why. Seriously, I NEVER see her drink water but she pees like a river. Her clumps of cat urine are the size of small shoes, at least.

She prefers the old litter box and I don't know why. We first adopted her off of the front porch of a sweet lady with too many cats when she was just six weeks old. She was so tiny she fit in one of my hands. She's three or four times that size now, if not bigger, so we bought her a much larger litter box and moved the small kitten-sized litter box downstairs for her convenience. She prefers that one. She will run downstairs at full speed as fast as she can to poop in her tiny litter box. Why, Pixel, why!?

She has pounced on my eyelashes. I wish I were making that up. Here I am lying in bed with my fiance, having a normal(-ish) conversation, when the cat pounces on my eye. I didn't know what she was doing so I just picked her up and put her on the other side of my bed, went back to talking like a mostly normal person, and BAM! She pounces on my eye again. What the hell? So I swat her behind and move her again, when she does it a third time! I watch her a little closer and realize she's staring hardcore at my eyes, but not into them (if that makes sense at all). Crazy ball of fluff had it out for my lashes. i just can't even....

It has recently been discovered by the house's feline terror that I have a naval piercing. Upon this discovery and any time she remembers about it she will swat, paw, and gnaw on my naval ring. This is where I feel like I'm borderline hitting mom-mode because I think to myself, "Well, it doesn't hurt, she's being good, and she's not breaking anything, so I'll just let her play with my belly button ring while I'm wearing it." Seriously, I just want her to behave so bad that I'll let her play with my body jewelry while I'm wearing it. Just calm the fuck down, cat, and I'll let you gnaw on these bolts in my skin!

We can't throw away empty boxes because they are her backup lairs. She has her cat tube and any box with a small hole in it. Such as soda boxes, the plastic covered boxes of ramen noodle, and the bulk size boxes we buy her canned food in. So long as you don't tear the whole top off, and just rip a small hole, she will slither in like a footed snake and just poke her head out like a submarine telescope. It's adorable until you realize there's an empty box in almost every room of the house...

She has and plays her own games on my tablet. She's even beaten her own high score. it was in the 400s but now it's over 1000. The strange thing is, when she realizes she can't get the little characters through the glass screen she starts to stick her paws under the tablet. Does she think they're under it? Or that she's looking through a glass front door?

The lazer dot on the tablet. Thank you, whoever thought of this.

Our housemate has a female chihuahua, Bella. Now, this chihuahua likes to hump our cat daily, multiple times a day. he says that's how female dogs show that they like each other, like friends. Come to think of it, I know several people who dry hump their friends, so that's nothing new. The strange thing is that Pixel takes it most of the time, and that's odd because she's usually a bitch about everything. She doesn't try to move or run away or anything, like it doesn't even faze her. But she also doesn't make any noises. She just sits there as Bella humps her, like she's waiting for the dog to finish and roll over. It looks like they're lesbians in a straight marriage and Pixel is the wife who is like, "Hurry up, I've got things to do." Then there's the off chance that Pixel has had enough and she rolls over to claw and bite while rabbit kicking Bella's belly. There is no middle ground with this lunatic cat.

She has a scratching post. She loves the scratching post. It lays in the floor. She also loves to stand right next to the scratching post, make eye contact with us, and begin scratching the carpet next to her post. It's like the episode of Orange is the New Black where Crazy Eyes makes crazy eye contact while pissing in the floor of Piper's cell. Just like...really? You're doing this RIGHT THERE!? And she's like "What are you going to do about it? That's what I thought."

You're not gonna do a damn thing.

She does the 3-Pet-Walk-Away. She lets me pet her a total of three times before walking away like she wants nothing else to do with me. Most of the time she walks over to my fiance for face-petting and stares me down while it's happening. It's like she wants to throw in my face that someone else is petting her and I'm not allowed. No, you're not a bitch at all, are you, Pixel?

If I'm in the bathroom she HAS to be in there with me and will make her way in there. When this first happened she would stick her paw under the door and pull the bathroom door open. Whaaat? I didn't even know cats could do that. Anyway, General Pixel likes to on the side of the tub or sin on my lap or play in the drain of the sink or the tub. She also likes to claw at the tall tower of toilet paper like it's another scratching post. I've gotten so used to it that I leave the bathroom door cracked for her because I know she'll be in there soon. Oh, and if I lock her out she'll sit at the door and meow.

Yes, I'm on the toilet. Oh, okay, sure, I'll pet you. Yeah, now is fine.

She's afraid of the dark. Felines have excellent vision in the dark, but that does not make our cat a brave warrior of the night. If she is in a room and you turn off the light she will make for the nearest exit and go towards the light. My fiance insists on leaving the hallway light or our lamp on for her at least until sunrise. Yes, a nightlight for the cat, it would be more believable if I were making it up.

Pixel will not sleep alone and hates to be in a room alone. If everyone leaves a room or she wakes up and finds herself alone in a room she will hunt down the nearest human and play or sleep across the room from them or next to them. At night she sleeps in our bed with us. She even has a side of the bed. She sleeps against the wall or between us or on us, no exceptions.

You can never leave me alone... or turn off the light.

She sleeps all day. Like, 18 hours all day. I'm not sure if it's because she's growing or if it's because she's storing and building up energy so for the six hours she's awake she can go completely ape shit and fuck up everything, jumping all over the place, clawing up everything she can get her claws into, and bite all things smaller than her mouth and most things bigger. She was biting a small bag of noodles today. Why? Why a small bag of noodles!? It's a daily six hours of WTF!? followed by 18 hours of IS SHE SLEEPING AGAIN!?

I have so many pictures of her like this. Just sleeping away. She's actually sleeping next to me right now...

I can't help but feel like this strange, picky cat is a prequel to parenthood for us will all the strange things we're willing to do for her, from letting her play with body jewelry to keep her behaving and downloading special games for her to play on my tablet. I also can't help but feel like she's so damn mean and ornery that she will still be alive by the time we become parents. This cat will probably outlive our grandchildren.

But, this is the list of strange things my cat does. If I think of more I will update the list because I'm sure as time goes on this cat will only get stranger and even more stubborn. 

Oh joy.

-Tome Raider

I see you've put out some clothes to dress in after your hot, long-awaited shower. Yes, these will be excellent for me to sit on, thank you.  "Um, you're welcome, General Pixel...?"

Twice In A Week!? Really!?

Are you serious? Is this really happening again!? You can probably guess what I’m talking about.

That’s right. Another slow cooker disaster. Only days later.

The contents boiled over. That may look like a small puddle but there was more behind it. I just… no.. all of my no.

It’s like I’m grabbing a book of evil sorcery instead of a recipe book every time I walk into my kitchen. I’m going to have to start calling the kitchen my evil lair because every time I use the slow cooker it looks like I’ve concocted a poisonous potion bubbling like it’s being boiled with hellfire.

Is this really a witch’s cauldron I own? Do I need to find the shipping address to Hogwarts and send it back? Or is this a sign that my Hogwarts acceptance letter is 14 years late?

I.. I just… can’t…even….

But, at least it tasted good. Everyone enjoyed it and so long as it’s not wasted (like the dumpling disaster was) then I’ll not be too sour about it.

I’m telling myself, “Self, look on the bright side: At least it’s edible this time.”

This just means I get to practice extra hard at using a slow cooker. Oh joy.

-Tome Raider

It Was Easier The First Time Around

In my last blog I included how wonderful and what a godsend slow cookers are. I sang their praises and said that they were so easy to use that it wasn't funny. Well, the second time was kinda funny...

By kinda funny I mean it was a total failure.

This is the first time I've tried making chicken and dumplings. It was more like a dumpling disaster with bits of chicken hanging around. 

Let me back up and tell you the whole story.

My fiance has told me on several occasions that he loves chicken and dumplings. And I do, too, so I figure Why Not? I'll find a recipe and throw it in the slow cooker. What better way to cook it? It's going to be perfection!

So, I mention to my fiance's grandmother that I want to make chicken and dumplings and she tells me a recipe. Now, with the luck I have you think I'd write down everything, including the measurements and temperature, but NOPE! I tell myself 'Oh, yeah, I'll totally get this right' and just go with it. She hands me a few ingredients that I don't have on hand and I proceed home to piss into the wind.

I put into the slow cooker a can of chicken broth and a can of evaporated milk. Then I proceed to add flour until I get a thicker, gravy-like consistency. Once I have the perfect texture I realized that the pot is barely full. Odd, that won't feed everyone (like the cake pop story, we had our DND friends over). I decide to begin adding milk and flour til it's much fuller. The consistency is less gravy-like, but only slightly. I add my cut up chicken and pick apart canned biscuits for the dumplings, turn him on and let him cook, just like last time.

We leave for the day, going to visit some of his extended family I've never met before and ended up deciding that I like them. A good day a-visiting was had and we return home to a houseful of hungry yet happy friends and a savory smell lingering in the air. I go to my trusty slow cooker and find a bubbling swampland where monsters are surely lurking.

What the Hell? I don't recall making gruel. It's like sadness sauce with lumps of pity. I've concocted an evil potion brewed in the bowels of Hell that's presence is surely supposed to start the apocalypse. 

How did it turn brown? I thought this was supposed to be a white gravy style dish? Is it even brown? Maybe it's gray. Or the color of depression. This is what it looks like when food just gives up on living and tasting good. My housemate says it was cooked it too long and should've been turned off a while ago. Really? Because it looks more like the Grim Reaper himself snuk into the kitchen and stuck his bony finger in it.

We decide to be brave and at least try it. My fiance make himself a little pizza first as a back up. I can't even be mad. I bravely scoop out a bowlful and seated myself at the kitchen table, crossed myself and whispered as much of the Hail Mary as I could remember just to be safe, and tried a spoonful.

Like the cake pops, it tasted better than it looked. It didn't taste as chickeny as it should have, but it didn't taste like gruel either. It was actually a little bland. It kind of tasted like how you would imagine the color white would taste. 

I chalked this one up to a disaster and left the rest in the pot, deciding to throw it out tomorrow and let the post soak. I swear the slow cooker gave me a dirty look as I chose to let him set with the horrid contents inside of him until the next day. If he had hands he'd have used them to chuck a knife into my back as I heartlessly turned and walked away.

How could you do this to me!?

The next day I had trouble scraping the concoction out of the slow cooker. If he looked sad last night he was downright livid today. The strange evil potion had almost completely solidified into a poisonous cake like creature ready to eat our souls. This disaster is gonna be an all day soaker.

All in all, my first time attempting to cook chicken and dumplings was a complete disaster. I'm on the lookout for a new recipe so I may try again until I succeed. Oh joy.

-Tome Raider

No One Told Me It Would Hurt This Way

Do you love the sappy, heartache title? Because it’s totally not about my love life. Really, my fiance and I are great. It’s about weedeating. Seriously.

Let me back up and start from the beginning, all proper like.

I decided to tackle two firsts in one day. Using a weedeater and using a slow cooker (most people call them Crock Pots, but Crock Pot is a brand name and I don’t have that brand of slow cooker).

Now, as it turns out, using a slow cooker was super easy and super successful to a point that it’s not funny. Seriously, there was no humor to it at all.

I cut up the ingredients and put them in with some creamy soup stuff. After it was full I turned it on high and left it alone for eight hours or so. Boom. Done. Delicious, perfect meal. 

Clean up was a breeze, too. You just take the thing out of the thing and fill it with soapy water and forget about it (like preheating an oven). Then when you remember it’s on the counter you just dump out the soapy water along with Ghosts of Meals Past and wipe it down. OMG, best invention ever. 

Thank the Heavens I have a generous soon-to-be grandmother-in-law that had an extra slow cooker that used to belong to her mother. That’s right. I own my fiance’s great-grandmother’s slow cooker. I like to think that it brings back warm, happy childhood memories for him when I cook with it. I know it doesn’t, but, hey, I can dream, right?

Using a slow cooker for the first time went off without a hitch, therefore I don’t need to dedicate an entire blog entry to it. What I do want to explore in depth is the process of using a weedeater or weed whacker or whatever the proper term may be.

Morning comes, morning-ish anyway, and I decide that today is the day that I’m going to cut the grass. As I said in the introductory blog entry, I am technically the only one in the house healthy enough to do this. My fiance has bad knees (he owns two knee braces, not to switch them out or anything, but to wear one on each knee simultaneously) from doing a metric fuck ton of dumb shit as a youngster and stupid shit as a teenager (oh, there were many, many manual labor jobs, too). Our housemate, who is buying the house, has severe allergies. And when I say severe allergies I mean cutting the grass, or going outside after the grass has been cut by someone else, will give him a nosebleed so bad we will have to take him to the emergency room to have his the inside of his nose cauterized. I’m not even joking. The grass could kill him. You can’t make shit up this crazy. 

Any-doodle, today is the day, I’m going to borrow a weedeater from my future grandparents-in-law who live three or so houses down and cut the grass on my small, mostly hillside yard. I don’t know why I said “mostly”. It’s basically all hill with a small flat patch where someone built a tall, skinny house. No complaints, though. It’s cozy and comfortable and keep my skill-less ass off of the streets.

First thing I decide to do is trow dinner in the slow cooker. I did this on a whim that paid off big time, you’ll see why.

Dinner is in the works and I go with my guy to retrieve the grass cutting device that I’m not exactly sure what to call. Down the hill, grab the thing, back up the hill. Whoo, I’m getting a workout before we even start! Abs of steel, here I come! (If only it were that simple.)

We get back up to the house and stand out in the road (like I said, the house sits on a hill, when the hill ends so does our yard and the road begins) as he shows me the basics. 

He quickly explains and points here and there, “You push this a few times, click this up and then back down, and push this in, but not all the way, hold it like this, and then pull this.”

Yeah, I have no fucking clue. There was a bubble looking thing, and a lever, and a trigger, and a string. Whatever. 

I follow the motions, not knowing exactly what any of it is doing, and eventually get the thing started. It was a lot louder than I expected it to be, but not so loud that it hurt my ears. And it vibrated harder than anything I’d ever bought from an “adult bookstore”. I mean, if they could find a safe way to put a motor like this into something handheld… well, you get it. Just a suggestion, anyway. 

I swing this heavy bastard around like a small friend trying to help a big, drunk friend to the car (my upper arm strength is a joke) mowing down patches here and there but making no real progress when my fiance says to hand it to him so he can give me a few pointers and a demonstration. He takes it and moves it up and down the hillside in no time, making it look easy as fuck. I guess it would be easy as fuck right now if I has started over ten years ago, too, wouldn’t it?

He hands it back and I try to copy his movements, still only managing to hit patches here and there. I’m given a pat on the back and a “You’ll get it” as he walks back up the stairs to help our house mate clean off the front porch.

I continue to try and figure out the ins and outs of maneuvering a piece of small machinery I’ve never worked with before, trying different angles and speeds. One thing I did get really good at was creating huge dust clouds and chopping big, brown bald patches into the grass. This yard is going to look like a brown and green dalmatian by the time I’m done. I tell my housemate this and he says he doesn’t give a fuck so long as the grass is cut. See, indifference can be a good thing!

The first thing I had trouble with was the clovers. OMG the damn clovers. They won’t mow down, they just spin in circles no matter how close I get the head of the weedeater to them. It’s so damn frustrating! So I get the big idea to try turning it sideways and go in with a killshot. The clovers mowed down, mostly, and thus my first huge dust cloud wafted up and surrounded me. Check it out, I’m a backwoods ninja sneaking up on grass!

I eventually manage to mow down these awful clovers that seem to want nothing more than to dance with my weedeater string and head up the stairs to to start mowing the small flat area. It doesn’t seem all that complicated, really. I just have to weedeat sideways from time to time causing major tan clouds to crop up with my newly found ninja skills. 

Until I hit a chain hanging off of the porch steps. Several times. It wrapped and twined around the weedeater head like a bow on a gift you don’t really want and I’d have to kneel down and untwine it. Several times. Why is there even a chain hanging around the steps? Oh. Our house mate found it on the porch and left it on the steps because he didn’t know where else to put it. Yes. That makes sense. Whatever. I pick it up after the third time and leave it ON the steps so he can decide what else to do with it. 

I make my way across the flat part. And then backtrack. And then back across. Oh, and backtrack again. I can’t shake the feeling that, even though I see the grass being cut, the yard looks no different than before I started. Am I imagining this? Has the yard become an optical illusion? Am I hallucinating? Did I have way too damn much coffee this morning-ish?

I mosey my way around to the side yard and do some undetectable mowing over there when I hear someone yelling behind me. I turn off this infernal contraption and look around. My fiance is waving me up tot he porch holding a bottle of water telling me it’s time for a break. At first I resist but he insists that it’s important. Instead of being a mega cunt and turning the machine back on I decide to be happy that he cares enough about me to make sure I’m staying hydrated and go sit with him inside and drink the water as he asks how it’s going. ‘He’s not being an ass,’ I remind myself, ‘he’s showing that he cares in a nonchalant way.’ 

I start to tell him about the yard becoming an optical illusion when I realize that my right hand, the one I’m holding the weedeater with closest to the motor, is still vibrating and shaking a little. It’s also really itchy. I look down as I scratch my palm to find my hand surprisingly swollen. When did I borrow Mickey Mouse’s glove? it looks like I’ve been stung by a hive of fucking angry bees. I don’t remember getting into a nest of anything. Have scientists discovered silent, angry, invisible bees that make your skin itch instead of hurt upon stinging? Have I angered a gypsy?

"What the Hell!?" I ask holding my hand in the air for my fiance and housemate to see.

"Yeah, that happens," I’m told, "it’s from the weedeater’s motor vibrating so much. It’ll happen the first few times. Then your body will get used to it.

Get used to it? How many times do I have to look like I’m wearing a catcher’s mitt before my body is like, “Oh, she’s just weedeating, okay, we’re good.”

I drink the bottle of water and enjoy the rest of the chatting. I’m starting to regret agreeing to taking a break because I’m really not wanting to go back out there and finish. I have this same problem at work. Going to break, for lunch or otherwise, and not wanting to go back at all. It’s like a light feeling of dread. It’s one of those moments where all you can say is ‘uuugh’. 

I sneak some of my fiance’s energy drink and drag my ass back out to the side yard to finish up. I try to remember the sequence he showed me earlier when turning the machine on. Push this, flip this up and down, hold this but not all the way, and yank this? Or was it flip then push then hold then yank? I’m not really sure, but I managed to start it after several tries. 

I jump right back into it. I see the grass being cut down as I slowly glide the machine side to side like I was shown in my brief tutorial. Across the yard, the steep slopes that lead down to the road, and even part way up the hill in the back yard. And every time I look behind myself the scenery still looks unchanged. What. The. Hell. I can see the grass being cut down!

I keep going, trying not to worry about whether or not the yard looks any different. ‘Just keep swimming,’ I tell myself, ‘like on Finding Nemo, only you’re not swimming, you’re stalking grass and making dust clouds like a strange ninja.’

I continue on, trying to get a better feel for this task normally appointed to teenage boys, and at one point I hear a sputter followed by silence. My long ass machine is dead. The Hell? I try to start it back up when I hear a voice from next door.

“Are you out of mix?”

I turn to see the boy next door hanging out of his window.

“HUH?” Sorry, I’m preoccupied with failing as an adult. Could you repeat that?

“Are you out of mix?” he asks again.

"I don’t even know what that is!" There are so many mixes in this world, he could be talking about anything. Cake mix? Brownie mix? Is he wanting to borrow a box of mix so his mom can make a nice dessert? I could spare a box of mix.

"It’s fuel. Hang on, I’ll be over in a minute." He disappears from his window for a few minutes and is on his way.

Since when has fuel been called mix? I’ve heard it called gas, gasoline, and juice, but never mix.

He opens the little plastic tank on the side of the motor and peeks in, announcing that I am indeed out of ‘mix’. he says he might have more in his basement and goes to check. I didn’t even have to ask, he just offered, how nice. If he ever does need a dessert mix I’ll make sure and give him a box. He returns empty handed and says there is none in his basement, just the usual survival kits and prisoners (I’m joking). I thiank him anyway and go tell my fiance what’s going on.

"Oh, you ran out of mix."

The look on my face must have told him he sounded batshit crazy to me because he promptly explained that you have to mix gasoline with weedeater engine oil because straight gasoline is really hard on a motor and will wreck its shit. It’s called 2Stroke easy mix or something to that effect. Well, there ya go.

I asked if it’s normal to use a whole tank of gas in a weedeater to do half of a small yard, and I get a no and a chuckle. So I should have been able to get it all dowe with what I had and in way less time than it was taking me. Well Hell.

He surely saw the look on my face and gave me a pat on the back, telling me that it took him a really long time and a lot of gas to finish yards when he first started cutting grass.

'When you first stared cutting grass ten years ago!’  I finished in my head, but didn’t say out loud because I didn’t want to start a fight when he was being genuinely thoughtful. So instead I smile and lean into him.

He goes down to his grandparents’ house to see if they have more, and comes back empty handed just like the boy next door. He says we’ll go out tomorrow and get more gasoline and mix. 

I have no problems with this because as soon as I sit down I realize how tired and drained I feel. Like all of my energy and motivation and even my will to live have been zapped. I feel like a literal human shell. I am beyond ready for bed, but I’m also pretty damn hungry. I bet this is what it feels like to be a zombie.

Damn, I still have to fix dinner. I start to tell them I’m going to take the night off from cooking when I look over my shoulder and see my housemate taking the lid off of the slow cooker and stirring the contents. He tells us that dinner is ready and I almost cry from happiness and relief. At this moment that is the greatest news anyone could tell me. 

We ladle out our helpings of dinner and it’s amazing. Holy glory hallelujah, it’s amazing. Why don’t people cook in these more often? Like, get two slow cookers and alternate days with them, cooking with them almost every day. I guess you would get tired of it, but at this point in time it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever consumed and it took no effort, so it’s basically a gift from Heaven. The gods and goddesses of lore surely had these in their kingdoms, Asgard, Mount Olympus, The Underworld, etc., and blessed mankind with the knowledge to construct and use them. 

After dinner I dragged myself upstairs to the shower. I was so drained and tired I didn’t want to shower. The very idea sounded awful, even though I was covered in grime and sweat and grass. But I made myself stand under the water and soap up anyway. To my dismay, it perked me up a little, so when I finally did go to bed, I couldn’t fall asleep for several hours. Another reason I hate showers so much. But I hate baths more. I don’t feel clean if I’m sitting in my own dirty water. I know the soap keeps the dirt from getting back on your skin but it FEEELS gross, lol. Showering is obviously the lesser of two evils so I go with that one as often as I can.

The next morning came and Oh Heavens I hurt all over. All. Over. Places I didn’t think would hurt at all. I literally had to crawl out of bed and force myself into a standing position. I felt like a port start that had been way overbooked on her first day of work. Like I had walked into my porn agent’s office and he greeted me with:

"Hey, hey, it’s Foxy Roxy Loves the Coxy! Excited for your first day? Good, so are we! Afraid I have some unexpected news. We may have booked you to shoot five or more videos today. I know, I know, sounds like a lot, but you’ll do just fine. I was able to pull some strings and you can shoot with Shane Diesel last. Yeah, you’re welcome. Oh, don’t give me that look, you get your coochie out there and make some sexy movies! Yeah. You’ll do great!"

Needless to say, I wasn’t looking forward to finishing cutting the grass. But I wasn’t going to back out. My fiance and I went to the store to buy some mix and a gas can and a few other things, and upon coming home we realized we had forgotten something. The damn gas. How the Hell am I gonna weedeat without any gas at all? I tell him and he says we’ll go tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow.

Basically, tomorrow didn’t come for over a week. I didn’t really care, though. After that first morning after I wasn’t looking forward to it a second time. When the morning finally came to cut the grass again my fiance said he’d do it if I washed the dishes. He had let them go for two days or so and didn’t wanna tackle the mountain. I thought about it for a second, asked if he was sure his knees would be okay, and took him up on the offer. Do you blame me?

All in all, my first time cutting the grass was a complete disaster, but I was able to learn the basics. All I need now is practice. Oh joy.

-Tome Raider

I've Made Cake, so I Can Make Cake Pops, Right?

Some things I have never done before: make cake pops, use a mixer. Today I will dive head first into both. This is a task I am going to do completely alone, asking no stupid questions (except maybe to myself) and asking for no help. Seriously, how badly could I screw this up? Well... I did screw up that Reese's dessert that required no cooking, only microwaving, but that could happen to anyone. Right?

So, I read the directions on the back of the box and, no surprise, find myself confused.

"What? I bake it like an actual cake first? I thought they were supposed to be on these sticks?"

To be safe I read it again, a little more carefully, and see the crumbling and mixing with frosting part. I thought the frosting went on the outside of cakes, but evidently I'm melting white wafers for that. Okay. Sure. We'll do that.

First thing's first, preheat the oven. I don't know why anyone would ever complain about preheating an oven. You just turn it on and forget it's on. I do that all the time, even when I don't need to preheat. Okay, it's on and I'm walking away. Next step.

Something I learned the hard way a few years back, before you cook something make sure you have all of the needed ingredients. Nobody wants to throw away half mixed batter. I grab an egg and a measuring cup and a gallon of water because we have that sulfur well water and no one wants a cake pop that smells like you put waaaayy more than the required amount of eggs in it. I splash the water into the measuring cup, oh, too much. Waste not want not, better sip some of the water out. Sip, sip, sip. Still to much? Sip, sip sip. Still too much? What the Hell, water? Sip, sip. Close enough.

Oops, didn't check to see if I had oil. Dammit. Hmm. Extra virgin olive oil or canola oil? Of course, the directions don't say. So I'll assume it's safer to use the canola oil for baking because olive oil is what the Italian restaurants use to keep the Alfredo from ever really touching the plate.

A tablespoon?! People actually measure that out? You know, I bet I could eyeball that. Bloop, bloop. There. That looks like a tablespoon.

Now for the part that I've been warned about over and over. Using the mixer or beater or whatever the proper title of this thing is. Right before I started this process my housemate told me to be sure and put it into the batter before turning it on, and since this is technically his house (he's buying and I'm renting) I'll try to keep from covering his red kitchen in yellow cake batter.

The directions say to beat on low speed for 30 seconds, but the mixer or beater doesn't say Low, Medium, High. It says 1 2 3 4 5. So we're gonna play the guessing game like teenagers in love and put it on 1 for now, and if nothing goes wrong we'll go up to 2.

Thirty seconds of no disaster and I feel that it's safe to turn it off and go to the next step. Scrape the bowl and mix for an additional two minutes. Are you fucking serious? Why do I need to scrape the damn bowl and remix? I just mixed it. Why didn't it just say to mix for two and a half minutes? Do I scrape the whole bowl or just the sides? Do I scrape it into something? Am I scraping the lumpy batter or just the bowl? Am I even supposed to scrape the inside of the bowl?

Whatever, I take a spoon and scrape around every inch inside the bowl whether it has batter on it or not and hold it at an angle so it all pools at the bottom because, surprise surprise, I've selected a bowl that's way too big for this small amount of batter. Is this handful of batter really going to make 12 cake pops? Shrug. We'll see, I suppose.

Let's see... bake for 12 to 15 minutes in 8x8 pan. Hmm... I don't know if this is an 8x8 pan, but it's the only one I have that's deep enough. The others are the flat pans for cookies and french fries, so we're using this and hoping for the best. Let's scrape this strange looking batter into the too small pan and put it in the forty-something year old oven.

Cake batter is in the oven and I've started to type this blog. TIME WARP! Best to get this stuff down before you forget it. I bet I've forgotten almost as much as I've learned over the years. I can't start the next step yet because it involves the yellow cake batter. So I type until I notice that the cake batter has been in the oven for sixteen minutes. Oops. I pull out a lumpy, strange-looking, browner-than-it-should-be tiny yellow cake. Directions say to let it cool completely. I guess I'll sit it on the stove and finish typing my journey so far and come back when I'm finished. Surely it will be cooled down by then.

Did I turn the oven off? Hmm.. no, no I didn't. Well, it's off now, so let's go upstairs where my fiance is litter box training our cute but needy, six-week-old kitten. As soon as I sit on the bed with my laptop the kitten, Pixel, climbs onto the keyboard, opening a ton of windows, and begins to snooze. She didn't even want me to pet her. She just wanted to sleep on my keyboard. Since I'm not completely heartless yet I will allow this tiny kitten to sleep on my keyboard and take pictures of her with my tablet. Because my friends and family on Facebook NEED to see this kitten sleeping on my laptop while I'm trying to blog about cake pops. Who wouldn't want to see that? Don't you want to see that? Here, I'll share with you, too.

Eventually she wakes up long enough to move from my laptop to my bed and goes back to sleep. Seriously, again? How long is this kitten gonna sleep? All day? All night? I just tell myself it's because she's growing and leave her to her cute slumber.

The lumpy, brownish-yellow cake is probably cooled off by now. Time to see what the next step is. I think I'm supposed to crumble it up and mix it with frosting now. Because that makes total sense. Shrug. Whatever works.

Yes, the next step is to crumble up the cake into a bowl and mix with the small frosting packet. I take this strange looking cake, that now has a hole in it because a wasp had fallen onto it, to crumble it and realize it feels like a sponge. That's weird, Spongebob is nowhere on the box. Did I bake a cake or make a home made dish sponge? It even lifts out of the pan easily, whole and intact. It feels rubbery, too. Maybe it's an eraser sponge?

I crumble the sponge-eraser-cake into a bowl, wishing I had not used my largest bowl for mixing the weird-feeling batter, and find the small frosting packet. The directions say to squeeze this packet ten times. Exactly ten. I suppose nine isn't enough and eleven is too much? How did they find this out? Who made a bajillion batches of cake balls just to find out precisely how many times to squeeze this tiny packet of white frosting?

I squeeze and count to ten and dump the frosting in. I thought the amount of cake batter was small, this frosting that I assume is going to act as a type of paste is even smaller. This is all the frosting-paste I need? Really? Was this another variable in the bajillion batches of test cake balls? Whatever, I just grab a fork and stir and stir until it looks the same as it did when I first crumbled it. Really.. it doesn't even look like the frosting made a difference. Huh. Oh well, just following the directions on the box.

Next I am instructed to make tightly compacted one inch balls and place them on a cookie sheet covered in wax paper. Really!? Could you have at least listed wax paper up at the top with the eggs and oil in the designated picture area? I have never bought or used wax paper in my life. I don't even think I ever saw my mother use it come to think of it. Looks like we're improvising. I wrap a cookie sheet in aluminum foil and make the tightly compacted balls, aiming for twelve, and line them up on the foil. And I came up with nine. Yes. Three short. Then again, that one looks like it's the size of two or three, and everyone is trying to pre-claim it as their own. (Part way through this process two friends came over bringing video games, DND supplies, and beer. Good times.) So none of them seem to be the same size and I shrug and leave them be. Next step.

Place half the pack of white wafers into a bowl and melt in thirty second intervals, stirring between microwaving. Do not overheat. This feels tedious. How are these so popular?

So I microwave and stir and microwave and stir and microwave and stir..... I swear the microwave goes off as soon as I sit down. Is thirty seconds really even doing anything?

Next step, dip each stick half an inch into the newly melted white puddle that sucked out years of your life in thirty second intervals and push into each cake ball. I believe this is to help keep it on the stick. I think I'd like to have direction that tell me why I am doing these seemingly odd steps. 

Dip, stick, sip, stick, dip, stick.... okay done. And now we're refrigerating them for fifteen minutes or so. One of my friends that brought the DND and beer asks if they're ready to eat now and I have to break his heart and tell him no. At least everyone is getting excited about them.

Next step, add the rest of the white wafers to the frosting you just used for dipping and sticking and melt in THIRTY SECOND INTERVALS. Who picked out this dessert again!? Oh yeah, my fiance...

So, I'm back to melting and stirring in thirty second intervals and trying to cook Hamburger Helper at the same time (some of the hamburger meat may have burned, I dunno, they all ate it). Finally it has a smooth-ish but still kinda tough consistency so I grab the cake pops out of the fridge and put dinner on simmer with a lid.

The first one I grab and dip it into the new frosting and give it a spin like you would a fondue fountain. I pull my stick back up and there's nothing on it. What the Hell? There's a ball cracked completely in half laying in my puddle of melt-me-in-intervals frosting. I try to poke the stick trough another side but it breaks again. Damn it all. I scoop it out with a spoon and offer it to my fiance who shakes his head. Whatever, I'll eat it myself. Hmm... not bad, really. 

Since the obvious step didn't work I have to improvise yet again. So I scoop a bunch of the frosting up with the spoon and kinda try to frost it the way would a cupcake, twisting the frosting and the spoon until it's spread poorly across the lumpy ball. I say fuck it and throw some sprinkles on it and lay it on the tray.

That same drinking friend is pretending to complain that it doesn't look the way it does on the box and everyone ignores him. I frost seven more with similar results. Patchy, lumpy, sprinkles look crazy. Whatever. In the fridge. They need to be in there for about 45 minutes. So I walk away and forget that I made them until my house mate comes up stairs much later and says:

"These are fucking delicious!"

I'd call that a success. They may not be pretty enough to sell at Starbucks for the same price as the whole box of mixes but they're "fucking delicious".

I don't have a picture of the end result because they were eaten so quickly but I'm sure they looked something like this:

All things considered, I'd say my cake pop adventure turned out well. Oh, look, we have a second box. Joy.

-Tome Raider

                                                                 Cake pops delicious!

I'm HOW Old and I Still Don't Have My Shit Together!?

It's a common belief that the youngest child has the easiest life. Though that may be mostly true in the beginning, after some time the easiness wears off and everything starts to suck. It could be worse, yes, and I'm grateful it's not. So there is no other word for it. This just sucks.

I have never really been taught anything as far as basic skills and knowledge that adults need and should know by the time they are living on their own. Skills like writing a check, driving a car, changing the oil and tires on a car, using a weed eater or any sort of lawn maintenance, cooking, sewing, and several other basic things my friends seemed to have learned from parents and other relatives and friends.

I scraped by in high school, taking the easiest classes, and dicked around in college skipping classes, learning nothing. Purposely only applied to entry level jobs that I could walk to from my apartment instead of learning to drive and saving up for a car. Letting others make my decisions for me and never once thinking, "Hmm, I should really learn to take care of myself." Apartment hopping kept me from yard work and basic maintenance, walking everywhere kept me from learning to drive or take care of a car, and always eating at the restaurant I worked at, skipping meals, and living off of the microwave kept me from learning to cook. I have successfully weaseled my way out of every major and optional life lesson.

So, what's a pitiful, youngest of four, broke bitch with the world's worst luck supposed to do? Self teach through trial and error and ask as many annoying questions as possible along the way, of course. If there's a dumb question with an obvious answer you bet your ass I'll ask it because I have no damn clue what I'm doing.

And now is the perfect time for all of this  anyway because I finally live in an actual house as an adult with two men that are willing to eat my experimental cooking and answer all of my questions, no matter how many or how dumb, because they know I will purposely annoy the shit out of them if they don't. The yard is small and won't be an overkill to learn basic yard maintenance on and I'm technically the only one healthy enough to tackle it.

I invite you to come witness my misadventures as I teach myself to cook and use various amounts of machinery and figure out this strange thing called adulthood that seriously needs to come with a handbook. We'll laugh, we'll cry, we'll sit around with puzzled looks on our faces and long for the days when all we had to worry about was making sure we didn't put our underwear on inside-out. Seriously, the ones I have on right now are  inside-out, and they're my fiance's. The fuck am I even doing?

-Tome Raider

                                                           *I have no idea what I'm doing*