Donkey!

The husband and I watched part of the Republican debate last night, because we needed something that would bore Dan-El to sleep wanted to learn more about the political process. Our indepth analysis follows.

Lois: Has Fred Thompson always looked that bad? He's way too ugly to be president. It looks like his face is melting.

Husband: He looks like Shrek.

Quote of the Day

Jak-El: My grandma has Rugrats!

Husband: Yeah. And I think grandpa has crabs.

Holiday Leftovers

After much thought and too much turkey, here are the top three things I'm thankful for today.

1. Healthy Kids. Dan-El had minor surgery yesterday--ear tubes--and came through with flying colors.

2. Sprinkle cookies. Jak-El and I whipped up a batch of these over the weekend. They're made of basically flour, sugar and butter--lots of butter. They taste like butter rolled in sprinkles. They are the best thing ever.

3. Italian Spider-Man. Action! Romance! What more could you want?

A Thanksgiving Appetizer

Happy Turkey Day all!

Cooking With Lois

Since here in the U.S. we'll be celebrating Thanksgiving on Thursday, I thought it would be fitting to share a few recipes that you can bring to your holiday table.

Note that I will not be giving you advice on how to cook a turkey, because:

(a) The good folks at Butterball need to have something to do. And,

(b) I've never cooked a turkey.

I've cooked chickens and Cornish game hens, and every side dish necessary for a Thanksgiving feast, but never turkeys. The prospect has always been a little intimidating to me, and as we're always invited someplace for dinner it hasn’t been necessary. As we have a voucher for a free turkey from the market, I may actually attempt cooking one next weekend, but that's a story for another day.

(I should add that there is a family precedent for turkey-ineptness. One Thanksgiving when I was a kid, my mom put the oven on "broil" instead of "bake." This is a great technique if you want a lovely golden skin on the bird, and the inside meat raw. We ate a lot of mashed potatoes and pie that day.)

Anyway, here is today’s recipe.

Indian Rainbow Pudding

level of difficulty: high

Ingredients:
* one snack pack of butterscotch pudding
* one handful of M&Ms

1. Open container of pudding.
2. Drop M&Ms into pudding.
3. Mix.
4. Enjoy!

I was first shown how to create this masterpiece on a Girl Scout camping trip when I was about 10 years old. It didn't occur to me until several years later that this couldn't possibly have been something eaten by the Indians during Pilgrim time, because they didn't have M&Ms. And it didn't occur to me until years after that that they didn't have snack packs of butterscotch pudding either.

New Who!

Doctor Who - Children In Need Special: 'Time Crash' 2007
Uploaded by soundship

All Tuckered Out

Between the parades and the dancing and all the baked haddock(!), it's been a busy Raccoon Week. We're going to take a nap, but the rest of you, please carry on. Have a great weekend!

With Apologies to Clement Moore...

‘Twas the middle of Raccoon Week,
When all through the room,
Not a creature was stirring,
Not even a coon.

The licorice was hung
By the chimney but…who cares?
No one wants to eat it,
Not even the bears.

The children were nestled,
All snug in their beds.
While visions of baked haddock,
Danced in their heads.

And mama in her jaunty hat
And I in my Capri pants,
Wondered why Jerry Lewis
Was so big in France.

When out on the lawn,
There arose such a big bang,
I knew I forgot to put the lid
On the garbage can—dang!

Away to the window
I flew like a flash,
Tore up the shutter
And yelled, ‘stop that, you [censored]!’

The dinosaurs in peril
Looked at the new-fallen snow,
And wondered if the robots
Would ever let them go.

When what to my wondering eyes
should appear, but a miniature sleigh
for the dinosaurs—look here!

With a little old driver, a bit past his day,
I knew in a moment, it was the ghost—
Of…Robert Goulet!

More rapid than eagles, the raccoons exclaimed:
Hey Bertie! Hey Clyde!
Hey Victor and Lester!
Hey Robespierre! Hey Nat!
Hey Algernon and Lex!
Get into that sleigh and you’ll
No longer be vexed!

To the top of the garbage cans,
To the top of the shed,
Goulet drives pretty well,
For a guy that’s quite dead.

Now that the dinos were safe,
The coons felt a bit hungry,
so they rummaged through
the bins, all messy and sundry.

And then in a twinkle,
I heard on the roof,
The dinos were back—
What d’ya mean, you want proof?

As I drew in my head,
And was turning around,
The late Robert Goulet
Offered to buy me a round.

He was dressed in a suit,
And of wine I’m quite fond.
Who cares if the buyer
Is from the great beyond?

We toasted the dinos,
As they played poker with the raccoons,
Who were smoking some bacon
And laughing like loons.

Their eyes, how they glowed!
Their mascara, so black!
Their fur, so soft!
It would make a good hat!

They chewed on some corn cobs,
And nibbled on old spaghetti,
Then wiped their mouths clean,
With brochures of the Serengeti.

They had broad faces
And little round bellies,
I bet they’d like buttered toast
With just a spot of jelly.

They were chubby and plump,
That happens when you eat trash.
I laughed when I saw them,
And they tried to bite me in the [censored].

Goulet winked his eye,
I suppressed a small scream
Would he dare to sing, I wondered,
“The Impossible Dream?”

He spoke not a word,
But whistled to the raccoons.
Who were happy to follow his orders,
Like a supervillain’s goons.

And laying a paw aside of their noses,
They quickly set to stealing
The neighbor’s garden hoses.

I thought this quite odd,
But then Goulet whistled.
The dinos saluted,
And the robots plotted and bristled.

But I heard him exclaim
As he drove out of sight
“Happy Raccoon Week to all,
And to all a good night!”

Tinseltown Goes Coon Crazy

(Hollywood) In a surprising move this morning, the heads of all the major movie studios and television networks announced that starting immediately, all of their productions would be written by—and star—raccoons.

“Yeah, it does sound weird,” admitted one exec, who asked to remain anonymous. “But when we showed a focus group an episode of “Boston Legal” starring Denny Coon, the numbers went through the roof.”

“Besides,” he added, “most people don’t know this, but twice a month the cast of ‘ER’ insists on being paid in fish. And Jimmy Kimmel is always tipping over the garbage cans outside the ABC commissary. So it’s really not all that much of a departure for us.”

The bold move has already spurred the BBC to ready a raccoon-themed spin-off of their classic sci-fi series “Doctor Who.”

“We’re just jolly keen on this idea,” said Sir Nigel Fluffernutter, head of mammal programming development at the Beeb. “Raccoons are an excellent fit into the Time Lord mythology. The little nippers will just think the Daleks are angry garbage bins and attack the tossers mightily, pip pob and away with your bumbershoot.”

Back in the states, several television series have been rushed into production, including:

“How I Met Your Raccoon”

“Bionic Raccoon”

“My Name is Coon”

“Desperate Raccoons”

“RSI: Raccoon Scene Investigation”

“Two and a Half Raccoons”

“Curb Your Coons”

“Scott Baio is 45….And a Raccoon”

“Raccoon the Buffy Slayer”

“Dirty Sexy Raccoons”

“Dancing With the Raccoons”

“Raccoon’s Anatomy”

“Late Night With Coonan O’Brien”

Still despite the strong reaction to “Denny Coon,” some are skeptical that the public will take to all raccoons, all the time on their television and movie screens.

“I don’t like it. Nope. Not one bit,” said Secret Squirrel, age 42, who identified himself as an out of work performance artist. “Damn dirty raccoons, taking all our work. Bastards.”

Today’s blog was made possible by the proud sponsor of Raccoon Week, Stuck With a Comb
. Remember, you’re not really stuck until you’re stuck with a comb.

Raccoon Week Mania Continues!

Choo Choo!

While on vacation a few weeks ago, we celebrated Dan-El's second birthday.


It was a rockin' time. Even the bears came into celebrate.


We made a Thomas the Tank Engine cake in honor of the occasion. This was an idea that I cribbed from the PBS Sprout Web site. A day after I decided we'd make this, the husband jokingly said "Oh, I saw this Thomas cake on one of the Sprout shows Dan-El was watching. It had close to a dozen train cars. You should make it. Ha-ha." I know about that, and we are making it, I said. It was at this moment he again remembered that he married a crazy person.


The whole shebang took about 3 hours to make, and the combined efforts of myself, the husband, Ma Lane and Jak-El. At one point, as the cake started to look a bit goofy, I decided that if anyone asked, we'd say it had been purchased from the Short Bus Kids Bakery.


Note the level of detail. My programmer/engineer husband constructed one of the many windmills from the island of Sodor, where Thomas lives.


And, there's a duck pond! There were two other ducks, but I ate them they swam away.


Thomas has a melty eye because (a) we inadvertently put the cake under a spotlight in the kitchen or (b) it's a ZOMBIE Thomas the Tank Engine, in honor of the then upcoming Halloween.


Still, Danny was pretty impressed.


Happy Birthday, Dan-El!

My Secret Shame

Everyone has something they do that is so embarrassing or heinous, that they can only do it when no one else is around.

Me, I do it while driving.

Yes, I'm one of those people who play Christmas music annoyingly early.

I love it. Can't get enough of it. The squirrel eaten pumpkin hitting the trash means completely appropriate for me to start playing Christmas tunes in the car when there's no one else except little old me to listen to them. Except for maybe the kids and what do they care? Jak-El watches the Charlie Brown Christmas, Halloween and Thanksgiving specials yearround, so I doubt he'll complain.

So anyway, here for your viewing and listening pleasure is a trio of holiday duets.

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl, "Fairytale of New York"



Tom Jones and Cerys Matthews, "Baby Its Cold Outside"



Annie Lennox and Al Green, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart"



And here's a bonus duet, because you just can't have a holiday duet round-up without Bowie and Bing:

Wanted: Pumpkin Vandals

I went out to pick up my mail at 2:30 yesterday afternoon and our spider pumpkin was fine. But when I returned home from picking the kids up at school at 5:15 that evening, it looked like this.

I've narrowed down a list of suspects.

1. George Steinbrenner: Retaliation for my picture of the Red Sox pumpkin.

2. Doctor Octopus: Known hatred for all things spider-related.

3. Squirrels: Maybe the little bastards were hungry.

4. Avocados: I hate avocados. Perhaps the feeling is mutual.

5. The Daleks: Damn dirty Daleks. Yesterday's Tennant video made them angry.

6. The CIA: I knew I should have hidden that microchip someplace else.

7. Martha Stewart: Jealous of my mad pumpkin carving skills.

8. Bill O'Reilly: In a rage over my clear pro-Halloween agenda.

We're offering a reward for the capture of this felon, a clear danger to the jack o' lantern community--all the fun size Three Musketeers, moldy raisins and licorice you can eat.

Halloween: The Aftermath

Okay, the night was not as horrorish as the title of this post implies.

Jak-El got lots of loot, while Dan-El picked up a candy bar at the first house we visited and then refused to put it down and take another at the next few stops. He then started chewing on the wrapped piece of candy, and when it got good and gross, he tried to drop it in the candy basket at another house and swap it out for a fresh one. It's good to be 2.

Jak-El then walked up to a woman standing on the street waiting for her kids at another house and said "Do you have candy? Can I have some?" She laughed, reached into what I guess was her kid's bag and gave him a candy bar. My son, the street beggar. I'm so proud--even though I did stop him when he tried doing this to the next adult he saw on the street.

Staying on the sweets theme, some eye candy for the ladies. Happy Nov. 1!