Craft Rage

It's been an incredibly busy Christmas season, but we came through it rather well, and all of us (the cats, the dog, The Hotness, and myself) got spoiled quite rotten.

The last month or so has been a pretty bad one for blogging. Most of this is because The Hotness is home a lot these days, and it's hard to maintain a "secret" blog when he's around, because he's wicked curious. I guess there's no real reason for me to keep it a "secret" - it's not like I ever say anything on the blog that would make him feel exposed or disappointed; heck, y'all don't even know his name!

Still, I don't know - I don't have a circle of girlfriends or anything like that, so this kind of feels like my social outlet.

Wow. Pathetic, party of one!

At any rate, starting this week, I'll be back to my normal three or four posts a week; I'd love to promise daily posts, but a dirty lie is no way to start the new year!

I have all sorts of great gifts I'll probably mention in upcoming posts, but my favorite was actually one I gave to The Hotness.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, The Hotness got a dog a few months back. The dog, whose name was up in the air for a few weeks and is now named Pepper, is going to be a bird dog when she grows up, or so The Hotness believes.

Since she still can't figure out what the word duck means, I worry that he's setting his sights a little high, but who knows!

At any rate, one of the gifts I bought him for Christmas is the Retreiv-R-Trainer, which is a thingy that launches bird-shaped or vaguely bird-esque dummies into the air so that you can train your dog to hear the gunshot and look for the falling bird. It looks like this;

Labels: awkward moments, dog

When I was eight, my mother banned me from the kitchen.

There were a few episodes of burned pots (hot chocolate that only made it to the stage where you put the milk in the pot and the pot on the stove, then get caught up in the latest episode of GI Joe, and then suddenly, the kitchen is full of smoke), and one episode of a recipe for green bread from some kid's TV cooking show (which also ended in a kitchen full of smoke).

Unfortunately, such a ban is only enforceable if you're actually there to enforce it, so I still did kitchen-related activities on the sly.

One day, I decided to make hot chocolate with marshmallows. Remembering the last burned pot, I stood over the stove, listening to GI Joe instead of watching it, and made a perfect pot of heated milk.

Since we'd had mashed potatoes the night before, the electric hand mixer was sitting on the counter, with the drying beaters on the tea towel by the sink. I got a bright idea - instead of stirring the hot chocolate mix into the hot milk with a spoon (how old-fashioned!) I'd use the mixer to make it really fluffy!

Remember I was eight, so the idea made perfect sense to me.

So I plug the mixer into the wall, put the beaters in the pot, and very carefully use the mixer to make frothy hot chocolate. Yay me, right?

I finish watching GI Joe, then Transformers, and half of the Smurfs before I remember that I'd better have everything cleaned up before Mom comes home. So I go to the kitchen, wash the pot, wipe down the stove, and try to eject the beaters from the mixer.

I'm an eight-year-old city kid - I have hand strength approximately equaling that of wet bread. So I push on the button, and push, and push, but nothing happens. I try with both thumbs, and still nothing happens.

Oh crap. Now Mom's going to come home, and the beaters are going to be covered with hot chocolate, and she's going to know I used the stove, and I'm going to get in some real trouble!

Again, I'm eight. I have the perfect solution!

I fill up the sink with soapy water, and with the mixer plugged in, I climb up on the stool I use when mom and I are doing dishes, and I drop the beaters into the sink and turn them on.

All is well so far - it's making a sink full of foamy bubbles, and when I pull the mixer out of the water, I see that they're sparkling clean! I'm awesome! I'm She-Ra! I can figure anything out!

I hop down from the stool and face my second dilemma - I need to dry the beaters. I grab a tea towel and start dabbing at the beaters - remember, that thing is still plugged in. Suddenly, I DO remember that the thing is still plugged in, and I get the bright idea that the best way to dry them is to put the tea towel into the beaters and turn it on, then pull the towel out the other side.

I'm not entirely stupid - I realize that there's a risk to this endeavor, but I figure that I am cool enough to take the risk.

With the mixer still plugged in, I gently tuck a corner of the tea towel into the beaters, and hit the power button, pulling my hand away from the towel quickly.

The beaters whir to life, but the towel falls to the ground - I let go too early.

I pick up the towel and tuck the corner in again, and hit the power button, once again pulling my hand away from the towel. Once again, the towel falls to the ground.

Now I'm kinda mad. Why isn't my brilliant plan working? How will I ever earn a spot on the Joe Team if I can't figure out how to dry these beaters?

I'm determined that it's going to work this time. I tuck the tea towel in, hit the power and THEN try to let go.

Problem.

Those beaters? They move FAST.

That tea towel? It's laying on the ground.

My fingers? All four are woven through both beaters, with part of my palm wedged in between the two and my thumb sticking out.

Somehow I have the presence of mind to take three big steps backwards, pulling the plug out of the wall, but that doesn't solve the problem.

EJECT! EJECT! EJECT!!

OMG OMG OMG, I need to get this thing off of me! But wait - remember my weak fingers - if I couldn't eject the beaters with both hands, then trying it with my left hand by itself certainly isn't going to work.

As I dance around the kitchen, I start shrieking in panic, (because even though the pain hasn't really set in yet, I'm very aware of the fact that it soon will).

I dance around for a few more seconds, then realize fully that no matter what I do, I will not get this mixer off by myself. Waiting for my mom to come home is not an option - she might leave me in the mixer to punish me for using the stove (hey, that's what I THOUGHT, not what my mom would actually have DONE).

I suddenly remember the next door neighbor, Christine. She has a son about my age, and we walked home from school together. She waved at me from the doorway when her boy got home, so I know she's there. Without stopping for shoes, I bolt for the door, the mixer's power cord dragging along behind me like a tail.

Now, for just a second, imagine you're Christine. You're making dinner and suddenly the doorbell rings. You wipe your hands and start down the stairs to answer it, and when you get halfway down the stairs, you hear this strange, inhuman whimpering. When you throw open the door, you're confronted by the sight of the strange kid from next door IN HER UNDERPANTS with an electric mixer attached to her hand. Oh, did I forget to mention the underpants? Yeah, the last time I got busted for using the stove, it was because I got hot chocolate mix on my pants and my Mom saw it. So in order to enhance my stealth, I'd taken off my pants before I started cooking.

I can only remember my childhood in snatches and bits, and some of my memories are foggy. That said, the memory of Christine's face as she opened her door and took in my half-naked, finger-tangled glory will stay with me forever.

She stared at me for about ten long seconds, then slammed the door in my face, laughed hysterically for about five more seconds, then opened the door again, face completely composed. She grabbed the mixer and tried to eject the beaters, but no surprise, since the things aren't easy to get out in the first place, the process is no easier when there's a bunch of flesh wedged between the beaters. So she grabbed her kid, bundled both of us in the station wagon, and took me to the ER.

It's anticlimactic, but in the end, nothing was broken except my spirit, since EVERYONE laughed at me - the nurse at admitting, the ER nurses, the doctors, my parents. I wonder if it would have been as funny if I'd been wearing pants.

Labels: awkward moments, childhood

I had a near miss fender bender today - the guy in the turning lane next to me got a little ambitious, and tried to force himself into the space my car was already occupying. I straightened him out with a honk and a one finger salute glare. I personally do not give people the bird, so when such a thing happens, I blame it on CrazyRachelle.

See, there's Rachelle (that's me), and then there's CrazyRachelle.

I, Rachelle, am mild mannered, easygoing, and largely unconcerned with what's going on around me unless it directly affects me. When people are bitchy or rude, I normally barely notice, (which is probably bitchy and rude of me - oopsie.)

CrazyRachelle, on the other hand, is a traffic-fuelled rage-monkey. She only comes out when I get behind the wheel, but this chick is NUTS, yo!

Tailgaters beware; if she's in the slow lane and you're so close to her that all she can see in her rearview mirror is the hood of your car, she WILL take her foot off the gas and coast along however fast the car takes her, until you finally pull around her. And if you're in a really expensive car, talking on your cellphone while you're tailgating her with an empty fast lane beside you both, she might consider slamming on the brakes briefly, just to watch you drop your phone and scream.

That big empty lane beside you? The fast lane? They call it the fast lane for a reason, you jackass. Move over into it - there's no traffic over there, and if there is, THEY want to go as fast as you or faster.

And speaking of the fast lane - CrazyRachelle wants to make absolutely sure you are aware that they call it the fast lane for a reason. CrazyRachelle doesn't care that you're behind the wheel, watching a Disney movie on the drop-down widescreen, in-vehicle theatre in your giant, gas-sucking, minivan, and that you and the kids are singing "Bare Necessities". CrazyRachelle loves that song, too, and wishes she could hear it.

But there are two problems with what you're doing, and CrazyRachelle isn't even going to BOTHER talking about the fact that you're hurtling down the road in a two thousand pound vehicle which currently contains the fruit of your loins, and you're not watching the road.

She worries about your children, and hopes they make it through the trip, but frankly, what really pisses her off is that you're doing this IN THE FAST LANE. At 10KM below the speed limit.

She has two pieces of advice for you - one, GET OUT OF THE FAST LANE, DUMBASS, and two, before a long road-trip with the kiddies, take them to the library and let them pick out some books on CD. CrazyRachelle reccommends the unabridged versions of Charlotte's Web or Harry Potter (CrazyRachelle knows, you have the movies in your minivan, but trust her, there's stuff missing in there, including YOUR SAFETY!)

Anyway...

Nothing illustrates the difference between Rachelle and CrazyRachelle like the incident that happened to us last summer.

So there we were, turning left. CrazyRachelle waited our turn and got about halfway through the intersection when a Canada Post van came careening around the corner, across two lanes of traffic, and slid into her.

CrazyRachelle pulled over to the side of the road, and got out to survey the damage. She was so angry she was shaking, and when the mailman got out of his truck, she proceeded to ream him out, very rudely. She screamed said things like, "Where did you get your driver's license, Wal-Mart?" and "Maybe if you were tall enough to see over the dash AND reach the pedals, this wouldn't have happened!"

The mailman made a half-hearted attempt to blame the accident on CrazyRachelle, but the skidmarks on the road made it pretty obvious that it was his fault.

Fortunately, other than the fact that we were I was a little shaken up, there was really no damage to the vehicle, just a small flattened area and a smear of paint transfer from his white truck to my purple car, which rubbed off without a problem. By the time the mailman brought out his insurance information, CrazyRachelle went away, and I resurfaced. Unfortunately, for the unsuspecting mailman, that wasn't about to improve his situation.

The poor guy walked over to me, looking lumpish and mortified, clutching his insurance card. I gave him a toothy grin and said "You know, there's not much damage - I'm probably not going to claim anything, so if you want, we can just skip the whole insurance exchange thing." He brightened visibly, and said thank you, then started to turn to go back to his van, but I was suddenly wracked with guilt for all the mean things CrazyRachelle said.

So what do I do? Well, rather than just letting the guy go away with his dignity intact, I blurted out "Wanna hug it out?" then didn't bother to wait for a response - I grabbed the poor guy and awkwardly hugged it out, including some side-to-side rocking, and some enthusiastic back-patting.

Awk-ward!

Rachelle? Nice, but kind of creepy. CrazyRachelle? Not nice. And kind of judgmental.

Labels: awkward moments, CrazyRachelle