Why is Everyone an Asshole at Christmas?

Mood: Idle 

Listening to: Scooby Do

I’ve been noticing lately that everyone has been especially nasty lately. That or I’m losing some inches of thickness in my skin, which is highly unlikely – I’m like a damn rhino, nothing gets to me. What is it about the holidays that encourages people to become super aggressive and rude? I’ve been complaining about people’s sense of entitlement and lack of public decency for the past 10 years, and it’s only getting worse. The sense of entitlement to do whatever a person wants and be rude and aggressive to anyone looking at the person has become unreal.  I know everyone doesn’t celebrate the holidays and people do occasionally have bad days. I’ve found that about myself. I have bad days and just don’t feel like putting up with anyone’s crap. But this seems to me to be a wide spread problem.  The other day, a person on the highway decided to have a conniption fit over something that totally wasn’t worth it. There was space in the lane to my left (not the far left) and I needed to get over to avoid merging onto a highway that didn’t go where I wanted to go. A car was 3 – 4 car lengths back in that lane, driving the same speed as me. I put my turn signal on and pulled in, only to see this car speeding up and missing my bumper by about 5 inches. She lays on the horn, is flashing her lights, the whole bit. She pulls into the other lane and drives 2 inches behind a semi just to drive next to me and scream at me. Eh, what? My apologies if I didn’t know you were going to be an asshole and speed ahead after I’d put my turn signal on and started pulling into that lane. But seriously? Was it worth it to have a tantrum? Anyhow, perhaps the reason that people seem rude is that SO MANY people out. You say that there is a recession going on and people aren’t shopping? You obviously haven’t been to the Walmart, Target, or grocery store by my house

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At the risk of sounding preachy, can we all just stop acting like spoiled toddlers, at least for the holidays? Yep, there are lots of people on the roads and in the stores. A little bit of patience would benefit us all.  I’m tired of running into so many nasty attitudes and wishing I was a hermit.

Becky

Saying Goodbye to a Great

Mood: On

Listening to: South Park

 

Ladies and gentlemen, Leslie Nielsen has left the building. Unfortunately, we have to say goodbye to one of the comedic greats of our time.  I say we all have an epic Airplane and Naked Gun marathon. Even if that’s not to your taste, go watch something funny and have a laugh in his honor. The man mastered his craft and made us all laugh at that ridiculous sophomoric humor that I love so well. Thank you for all of the joy that you brought.

Divorce as a Spectator Sport

Mood: Calm

Listening to: Living on a Prayer – Bon Jovi

The mayor of the town that I live in is getting a divorce. Not only that, he is being arraigned on 9, count them 9, different counts of domestic violence against his wife.  I’ve been watching this story since it broke in February on the local news. Now I really like local news. I get some info on the community and what’s going on in local politics. But this nonsense makes me feel like I’m watching People Magazine on t.v. Not only is there way too much serious reporting of every single detail, you can almost see the reporters salivating over getting new details and what’s going to happen next. Is positively an ancient Romans at the coliseum cheering for bloodshed feel. Seriously. Stalking around outside the courthouse because the husband’s attorney is cross examining the wife today is kind of silly. That’s what they do in court hearings. I do think there should be coverage of this type of thing in elected officials. I don’t really support a wife beater in office (if he actually is one, they both accuse each other of abuse).  I just don’t think they should go over the facts weekly and turn them into a grand circus drama. They have 2 kids and their lives are falling apart. Give them some privacy ya vultures! Coming from a divorced, yet decidedly un-famous family, I cannot imagine all of our drama unfolding with a camera showing everyone our worst moments and watching them get a hard on over the prospect of  how much more there would be and how much further we could have sunk. It’s just so seedy. Divorces like this are messy business. Families and lives fall apart. Do we really need to give anyone a platform to act like an absolute asshole to their spouse on tv and give their kids more things to hate them for later on? Do we really need to shake our heads in condescension and congratulate ourselves that we’d never do something like that? I get irritated with the tabloids over this stuff too. But this is a news network. Their lives are dissolving into chaos, get out of their faces and give them some privacy to work through what’s going on.  

Becky

The One in Which We discuss Moderation and My Lack of it.

Mood: Rather Lost. I missed an entire week somewhere.

Listening to: Overload  done by Zappacosta (Dirty Dancing Version)

So…this thing called moderation. In theory, I am the biggest fan. I think moderation is a healthy approach to just about everything. But, and you knew there would be one didn’t you; there always is. But I find it incredibly hard to put this theory into practice. The area of my brain that says, “Ok, B, this is probably enough. Seriously. Stop. Right now you crazy heifer,” is either chronically late or conspicuously absent. As an example, it’s Saturday night.  I’m enjoying some Spanish Rioja with my husband and we have the ipod cranked up as far as two sleeping children allow. I get the munchies and wander on over to the fridge for a snack (yep, this is exactly what you think it is…..unless you think I smoke pot, which would just be ridiculous. I have enough issues already. Hormones, PMS, cough cough ahem.) I notice a thoroughly rotten cucumber has escaped my somewhat diligent attention as to the state of the fridge and has leaked some disgusting green goo all over a drawer. Now, a normal person would probably wince and grab a rag (or even not) and just clean THAT DRAWER. It struck me as an awesome idea to just go ahead and clean out the whole fridge, because, well, honestly it needed it. Badly.  No kidding. It only took 15 minutes, but seriously, who does that?  The whole fridge on a Saturday night. 

Exhibit 2. Hubs and I have friends who (whom?) we love dearly. The husband is a vegetarian which is totally cool with me – we have lots of veg friends  - and the wife is a chicken lover. They live a half hour away in NYC and come to stay for the weekend so we can all indulge in way too much wine, home cooked food, and usually plenty of conversations and laughing.  I have yet to determine why, but every time they come over, I pull out all of the stops and cook up a storm. Let’s stick in a caveat. I love, love, love cooking, I truly do.  I also love nurturing people I care about. But really. 2 days worth of at least 3 appetizers before dinner, dinner, dessert, wine, breakfast,  and other random eats. I’m not talking take-out either – I’m one of those ridiculous people who makes their own hummus. I like making it, but still. Every time they come, they beg me not to make so much food, but every time I end up doing it anyhow, because, well, I feel like that is how you take care of people. No matter how often I can logically agree with these friends that the company is more important than the cooking, that psycho mother hen tendency comes out anyhow.   

Exhibit #3 in the tom-foolery  – I have and regularly write in 6 blogs. 6.  Because throwing every topic I can think of into 1 blog just doesn’t make sense – we have to let the organizing demon take over. We’ll get to him in another blog.  I wouldn’t say he’s due to OCD because laziness saves me from being truly OCD.

I think I’ll go self-medicate with wine. Yeah, moderation doesn’t work with wine either, so it should be an interesting night.

 
Becky

Mummy in the Carpool Lane

Listening to: The genius that was/is Freddy Murcury singing Bohemian Rhapsody

Mood: Shifty

Let’s file this one under the same type of WTF as having a homeless person living in your closet. My husband told me last night about a woman who had been driving around for a while with a mummy in her car. Of a homeless woman that she was letting sleep in said car. Seriously. Here’s the link for the story if you want to read it:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39796763/ns/us_news-life/

Just stop and think about this for a moment……….Ok, yeah, so it doesn’t make any more sense than it did before, does it. Let me tell you, the confusion only grows as time goes on. Apparently the living woman was afraid of getting into some type of trouble, so she simply left the body in the car.The only thing that I could get out of my mouth when my husband told me this is “How in the world would that seem like a good idea??” That and to note that it wouldn’t really matter how many boxes of baking soda you drove around with, there is absolutely no way you could get rid of the smell, nonetheless make it tolerable. Seriously, a dead body. Baking soda is just not going to cut it. There goes the resale value of the car. Oh, don’t mind the smell; she just drove around for a while with a dead body. But look at that beautiful paint job! Another thought – who lets a homeless person sleep in their car? I applaud the thought, but who does that? Homeless people aren’t always clean due to lack of facilities, that in and of itself had to be a bit of a bad smell. 

Some people just really make me wonder. We don’t live in a fascist state. The police really are there to help you in certain situations. I think this would qualify. As long as you didn’t dispatch with the poor homeless person yourself, you have nothing to fear. There are laws here about how to dispose of human remains, and I’m pretty sure mummification by neglect is out of the question.

Becky

Tomatillo Chicken Soup

I've decided to start including recipes in the blog that I have made and am fond of. I try a LOT of recipes of every shape and size that you can think of. When I am looking for something to make, I always like finding stuff that has been tried and recommended, because I've tried quite a few recipes that ended in a WTF? This is so not good. Marrying into a South Indian family, I have a SERIOUS yen for spicy food. The beautiful thing about cooking is that you can customize food to how you want it to taste. You like less spicy foods? Cut out the chiles, jalapeno, or cayenne. Please note, this does not work with baking, as I have found out on numerous occasions. :-)  I'm also a big fan of slow cooking as it is easy and does amazing things to chicken.  Tomatillos are like small green sour tomatoes. I found them at my supermarket, but you can substitute green tomatoes if you can't find them. Enjoy!

Tomatillo Chicken Soup

6 medium tomatillos, husks removed and rinsed

1 ½ lb skinless bone-in chicken thighs (or chicken breasts, if you lean that way)

1 (32 oz) box chicken broth (low fat/sodium is preferable for your health)

1 medium sweet red bell pepper, chopped

½ C chopped red onion

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 (4 oz) can diced green chilis (find in the Latin section of your store, or wherever they have salsa)

2 Tbsp snipped fresh cilantro, or to taste - I happen  to add more because I like it

1 fresh jalapeno pepper, seeded and minced (optional)

1 Tbsp ground cumin

1 Tbsp lime juice

2 tsp chili powder, or to taste

2 cloves garlic, minced

                                                                                                                                                        

1.       Chop 3 tomatillos. Place 3 remaining tomatillos in a food processor or blender. Cover and blend until smooth. In a 3 ½ - 4 qt slow cooker, combine pureed tomatillos, chopped tomatillos, chicken, broth, sweet pepper, onion, celery, chiles, cilantro, jalapeno, cumin, lime juice, chili powder, and garlic and 1 tsp each salt and pepper. 

2.    Cover. Cook on low 6 – 8 hours or on high for 3 – 3 ½ hours. Shred chicken with 2 forks - it should fall off the bone at this point. If desired, top with sour  cream and add additional chopped red pepper, cilantro, and corn chips.