Atomictumor

So, with the kids on fall break, and GAC and I both out all day persuing the American Dream, we were left with a BABYSITTING GAP.  Thats an ugly thing to have in this grim year of 2006, and while I appreciate the wistful romaticism of the Latchkey Kid, I’m afraid that Pigpen is just too young and… volatile… to enjoy that distinction just yet.

MastaG, on the other hand (the kid that never gets his picture in the ‘tumor) makes a good LK.

I digress.

So, we needed babysitting, and we needed it now (then).  GAC and I, as is our procrastinating want, waited until the last minute to see if her folks could make the ardous trek from Knoxville up to the ‘Ridge daily to watch the boys while we did our thing.  They were OK with that, but they’d rather just keep the kids down at their house.

Hence, we have a very quiet house right now, because fleas don’t make noise.

Yep, those bastard cats of ours, those thrice cursed, horrible smelling, breaking-all-my-shit little monsters have up and gotten fleas, which I can only assume is some sort of divine and just retribution for some sort of slight the evil bastards have committed before convincing my family to feed and clean up after them.  The fleas of late have developed a taste for my upper sockal region and the tender flesh of my children.  Somehow, GAC seems to be immune from the parasites (the fleas, not the children), leading me to believe that she has something to do with the situation.

Did she bring the fleas in to torment me?

But these kind of thoughts have nothing to do with the story at hand, which somehow I’ve been managing to ramble all around in my coffee fueled delusions.

Yesterday, GAC and the kids were gone when I got off work, and I was starved.  There were two obvious choices: China Wok, or homemade spaghetti.

Well, spaghetti is certainly cheaper, but more importantly, was limitless.  Even on an all you can eat buffet, eventually they’ll come out to scare me away with their loud mongolian chatter, all directed inevitably on what a large, borish, lazy American I am.  It wasn’t the day for that kind of scene, what with the news of so many freedoms being taken away in the night.

Problem is, I didn’t have any parmesan cheese.  As any true spaghetti lover knows, the cheese is what its all about.  Having spaghetti without a healthy sprinkly bit of cheese on the top is not only uncouth, its downright wrong.  Those parms knew their cheese.

Anyway, a trip to the grocery store was in order, and I elected to go to the new Food City.

El Mercado Diablo.

 

Now, I’ve had my beef with the FC in the past, but that was before they decided to close down the two existing local stores, which were convenient for pretty much everybody, and put one store in the middle of town, in a parking lot famously paved by the drunkenest of monkeys.

The beef is now officially ranch sized.  After shopping there exactly two times, I can definitively say that the store is designed to promote some satanic Food City agenda.  The aisles are not made to accommodate the kind of traffic generated by consolidating two grocery stores, so by the time you make it two rows over, you’re so sick of waiting for the slackjawed plebes reading every label to make sure it contains Monosodium Glutamate while their buggy inpedes your progress to the beer aisle and ultimately to the food at your house that you so desperately need, that you are prepared to do whatever it takes to get them the hell out of your way.

Once you have them out of the way, you encounter the people milling outside the video store… wait, is that a video store in a supermarket?  Did I just fall back in time to 1989?  Food City is seriously putting a video store, in this small ass location, right across the parking lot of doom from a big shiny Blockbuster?  Evidently so.

All this means that a lot of the things, like the type of butter I get, are no longer here.  Gas stations stock this butter, but not Food City.  Sure, I could ask them to stock it, but I’m too busy waiting for a manager to show up and Code 7 my damn beer purchase that the only sounds that come out of my mouth are strung together consonates.
(”gggg.ttttttttthhhhh.fffffffffkkkkkkknnnnnn.kkkkkkkrrrrrrrr”)
Well, thats it.  I don’t remember what Kroger did to piss me off, but Food City has totally been added to the list.  As such, the grocery spectrum in Oak Ridge is crapping out, with Kroger, Food City, and a feeble little expensive poorly stocked Food Lion.  Do I need to start driving out to Karns to shop at Ingles?  They do have cheap gas…

Anyway, the moral of the story is that the house is way too quiet with the kids gone for a week.  And, evidently, I shouldn’t write on a coffee rush.

The assignment: To change something’s texture; to make it out of something it shouldn’t be made out of.

The finished product:

A gingerbread house made out of cardboard, extra coarse sandpaper, caulk (for icing), wire caps for gumdrops, a hinge for a door, biscuit shims for shingles and vent filters for snow. If there had been more than two (event-filled) days to work on it, the craftsmanship would have been better.
Yum!

We have this retangular stoneware baking sheet for our toaster oven that’s really handy. It’s great for fixing single or double servings of late night snacks like tater tots, pizza, or tasty chicken nuggets.

The trouble is that a sticky honey-like substance has appeared on the underside of the sheet. This stuff is impossible to clean off. Hot water, soapy suds, Bar Keeper’s Friend could not even do away with it. It’s as if the golden ooze is able to self-replicate.

I asked the Missus the other day if she’d notice this golden ooze. She had noticed it and made a staggering suggestion as to its origin.

“This might disgust you,” she said, “but I believe it’s those chicken nuggets of yours.”

“Arrggg,” I wailed, “not the nuggets!”

“I’m afraid so,” she went on, “I first noticed that golden ooze after you started heating those nuggets up.”

-sigh-

That means no more Tyson Chicken Nuggets for me. Stupid modern prepackaged food.

I had a dream last night.

I was over at a really nice, big house somewhere in Oak Ridge.  I was either dropping or picking up my eldest.  The woman of the house was one of those perfect types: well-coiffed, well-dressed, baking some sort of cake, sipping on a latte and generally being of a snooty nature.

After I’d been there a while, she said that she thought I was finally ready to be brought into the Oak Ridge fold.  I was ecstatic!  Yay!  I’m finally good enough for Oak Ridgers!

AT and I came over the next day and there were a ton of other couples, all similar to the original perfect housewife.  It was our debutante ball, apparently.  We were paraded around, from rich couple to rich couple and introduced.  I think at one point I made a toast to Oak Ridge with my coffee mug.

Someone asked me if I had a Cadillac, what color would I pick?  The choices were cream, brown, pink and seafoam green.  I went with the green.  That was the wrong answer.  Then AT said some things that ought not be said in front of people that snobby, and we were told to leave.

*Sigh*  We’ll never fit in…

Last call for folks coming to the shindig on Sunday, everybody’s welcome, but you need to either comment below or send me an email to get directions to the place. Its super secret so the paparazzi can’t find us. Because you know they want pictures of this…

Also, heres some stuff you need to know.

There will be all sorts of kids there, and we’ll have some teenagers around to keep a leash on em. Be cool, and drop the girls a few bucks if you’re going to be checking your hellion with them. I’m checking both of mine, so I’ll be out also.

This place isn’t a mansion, so we’ll be primarily outside, which works for me, because its freakin beautiful. Seriously, if it stayed this way all year, I’d grow a big grizzly beard and live off the land, eating berries, sleeping under bushes, and eschewing clothing. But then everybody’d just think I was bigfoot.
Anyway, point is, if you have allergies or agoraphobia, best take your meds. Particularly if the label says “do not take with alcohol”, because then you might have more fun.

On that token, I’m going to enjoy no less than 2 beers, and no more than 4. I love to share, but I’m not buying beer for everybody, so we’ve got a byob kinda thing happening.

We’re buying the burgers and whatnot, and Daco’s hooking you up with whats proported to be superior hot dogs, but it’d be super cool if you could bring a side or something when you show up.

We’re going to have some baked beans show up, and a couplea desserts.  I’m gonna make some rocking onion rings with the rockin burgers, so whatever else is up to you folk.