The Toxic Housewife

It is my yearly December task to start burning our home videos onto a dvd.  This task is made challenging by the fact that our video camera does not record in a format that our computer's dvd program recognizes.  Which means I must spend hours downloading all the clips onto our computer, then I must spend hours converting all the clips to an acceptable format, THEN I must spend hours importing all the properly-formated clips into the dvd program.  After all that is done, it is only a matter of hours upon hours of sorting through all the clips to  edit them, add titles and chapter breaks, and create the photo slideshow that goes along with the yearly dvd. God, it sucks being a perfectionist. (And, on a side note, how is it even frickin' possible to be a perfectionist when one is also inherently lazy?) My task this year is made a little simpler by the fact that Mr. C

I purchased a copy of the 2003 Wilton Cake-Decorating Yearbook all those years ago when it was hot off the presses. Which led to my desire to make the ‘Autumn Harvest’ cookies listed within its pages; mostly because these cookies had smooth, satiny frosting . . . glorious stuff I’ve never felt capable of replicating. The flaming passion that was my desire to make these cookies was intensified last March, when I found baskets shaped like cornucopias at my local Salvation Army. 25 cents each! Which led to my resolve to make those Autumn Harvest cookies for the Cookie Co-Op this Thanksgiving . . . no matter the (emotional or culinary-sanity) cost. Damn Salvation Army. I knew those frickin’ bell-ringers would find a way to punish me for not donating last Christmas.

I'm rubber and you're glue Ahh, the art of the Snappy Comeback: responding to someone with a comment so quick and audacious that they’ve no choice but to bow down to your intellectual superiority. It is an art I’ve yet to master. I’m very good at the Thirty-Second Comeback: the one that occurs long after the occasion is over, and is therefore of no use to you. For instance, there was that time in middle school when 

I rarely get sick, so -- when I actually do -- it's generally a Pretty Big Deal.  And this last week, this Pretty Big Deal manifested itself in the form of a five-day fever, complete with white throat bumps and prolonged chills followed by sudden heat that drenched my clothing several times a day. This was wonderful, though, because

Cake Ball "Ghosts" One of the big reasons Mr. C loves Halloween is because it involves doors.  He just LOVES to knock on doors and ring doorbells, so Halloween sends him into apoplectic fits of delight, seeing as how it combines one of his all-time favorite activities with the retrieval of sugar.   Unlike last year , we were able to make it all around our block and the next before Mr. C wore out and begged to go home.   In fact, he was enjoying himself so thoroughly this year (and we were getting such high-quality candy) that we made the decision to drive him over to S.B.'s mom's neighborhood and continue trick-or-treating there. I figure we were just spreading the wealth.  People seemed genuinely pleased to have Mr. C knock on their door, patiently wait for them to open it, and (in a very polite and angelic voice, if I may say so) wish them a "Happy Halloween."  He'd choose his piece of candy, and often wait expectantly until they gave him perm...