Chicken Hickeys

On Thursday, I did the Thing You Should Never Do: I went to the grocery store hungry.

As a direct result of this mistake, I bought not one, but two rotisserie chickens for my dinner. Two. Whole. Chickens. Buh-GAWK!?! (insert bug-eyed chicken here)

I can barely eat a quarter of a chicken in one meal, much less two whole ones!! (In my defense, I was competing in Iron Chef and was planning on making a chicken soup...but still...that's a lot of chicken.)

I was texting a friend to tell him about it, bemoaning my mental insistence that two chickens in the hand is better than one in the proverbial bush, and I typed, "I bought two chickens for my dinner tonight."

At least, that's what I thought I was typing. Auto-correct jumped in, and for some reason inserted "hickeys" where "chicken" should have been.

Awkward.

So it read: "I got two hickeys for my dinner tonight."

Oops.

But because I'm resourceful, I managed to not dwell on the possible embarrassment; instead, I made a joke about how I was going to have chicken hickeys, and it's kind of become a thing. Kind of like "just fine" when someone asks you, "How do you feel about that?" (It's an inside family joke...sorry for those of you who aren't familiar.) So instead of "Beef: it's what's for dinner" it's now, "Are you having chicken hickeys?"

So: Here is the recipe for chicken hickeys:

3 oz Tribe hummus (classic) or make-your-own
1 handful Stacy's multi-grain pita chips
1 handful of spinach
1/2 yellow or orange bell pepper
1/3 cucumber, sliced/diced in quarters
3 oz chicken bits

Prep time: 2 minutes
Bake time: 0 minutes

Take a pita chip and thinly coat it with hummus. Put 2 or 3 leaves of spinach on the hummus to make sure the spinach sticks. Put chicken bits on the spinach. Put a quarter of the cucumber on top of the spinach. Put a thin slice of bell pepper on top of that. Then pop the whole thing in your mouth. It's a beautifully addicting flavor burst.

I have a feeling if they made pita chips in the same shape as those Tostitos Scoopers that these would become a regular thing at cocktail parties. In fact, I have a dream that one day, Chicken Hickeys will make it in print somewhere as a bona fide menu item. They're that good.

Holly Days

 First there was drama.

Then there was Thanksgiving: (J&J&J&D)
Which, by the way, would not have been complete without the Olympia contingent - we had a very tasty turkey, courtesy of J&J, and yummy pie and beets and pickles, thanks to J&D. Wow. Yummy! It was fun - we got so wrapped up in playing Pandemic that we forgot to make mashed potatoes. And gravy. And a lot of other things. It was a great time.

Then there were the obligatory holiday parties to go to. I only took "pre" pictures of one of them though:

Then I flew to LA to meet the board and eat dinner at Morton's. For reasons which I won't get into, I had to use my free night at the Omni the night prior to the board dinner. I had never stayed at the Omni in LA before, though I had stayed several times at the Omni in San Francisco and it is a gem.

Not only did I get a free night, but I got upgraded to a suite. ^.^ Lucky girl, yes! There were TWO bathrooms, etc. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures but will just share the ones that emphasize the awesomeness that was my suite. Too bad I was there for all of ten hours. :(

This is the view from my window. LA at Christmas -- no snow, but they do like their tinsel and twinkle lights.

The next day was the board meeting at Morton's. It was work stuff so I will mostly leave it at work except to say that we played Pink Elephant (which is basically a bunch of boxes that all look alike and you pick one and use the same rules as for White Elephant only they all look the same...but at the end there were gift cards inside, each for a varying amount. I was pleased that I got one of two $50 denominations. I considered it a "win." What was not a win was that night, when I stayed at the Jonathan Club. I walked in my room and immediately thought of the accommodations at Alcatraz. (The JC really is not like Alcatraz, but in comparison to the Omni, it really did seem like it. The bed had a headboard and creaked horridly, the walls weren't very soundproof, the tile in the bathroom looked it was from the 1950s, and I woke up hurting all over the next morning from the quality of the bed. Next time, I'm staying somewhere else. I don't care if it is only two blocks from work. However! They did have a really cool electric train setup, as well as a ginormous Christmas tree.

Then I flew to Austin. I convinced my sister to let me do her makeup. :) Her husband of course says she looks much better without it. And she of course is gorgeous. But I was very proud of myself, because I did a very good job blending.

She worked in the kitchen all day on Christmas Eve to make a very special dinner: roast goose. It was the first time I had ever had the pleasure of tasting goose. She made tiramisu as well, and I helped by making rolls and mashed potatoes. It was, as I would say, delicious.

Here we are, opening presents. :) Look at cute little IGPM's face...he loved his Bumblebee transofrmer I got him so much. And K loved the Pollypocket I got her, too. And...I did not get Wolf Hall for M.

I have already chronicled some of our verbal escapades on Facebook. (more's the pity.) But I'll re-chronicle here:

Christmas morning breakfast conversation:
Me: (eats French toast, thinking about stocking stuffings)
K: (out of of the blue) Not very many people in TX voted for Obama. But lots of people in IL voted for Obama.
IGPM: HUNDREDS of people in CA voted for Obama.
K: Not HUNDREDS. Only 55. A half dollar plus a nickel.
Me: tries really hard not to laugh

(At least she knows how many electoral votes CA has!)

Christmas afternoon:
IGPM: let's have a marshmallow gun war so I can hit you in the bum.
Me: well, that doesn't sound like a very good incentive, does it? I don't want to be hit in the bum.
W (I's mom): if you hit her in the bum, she might hit you back.
IGPM: (very nonchalantly): Ooooh. That would be exciting.

...later...

K: I don't want to eat these beans.
W: you've been eating these beans your whole life. Eat up! Besides, if you eat them your tummy will be happy because you will be giving it protein.
IGPM (under his breath): I seriously doubt it.
K: HEY, I! You quoted Mom!! That's mom's line!
W: (surprised) you're right. He did quote my line!

Highlights of the trip include a pre-stocking-opening snuggle with K & IGPM; marshmallow gun wars, the salted caramel shake at the "Elf" quote-along we went to at the Draft House, lots and lots of yummy food, and time with both K & IGPM. I spent lots of time in the kitchen with W and A, too. We had fun doing Advent and singing songs and hunting for treats, and I definitely got my trash kicked at MarioKart Wii, but I did improve a bit by the time my visit was over.

K took several movies of me. IGPM drew a Christmas tree with me. He thoughtfully looked at my tree and said, "Auntie, do people ever make fun of your drawings?"

"Yes, they do," I said. I could tell he was sincere, and that he was really just curious. Maybe I gave off an insecure vibe or something...I don't know. But ever since my little sister accused me of trying to make "everything ugly on purpose" I have had a bit of an issue with my drawing skills -- or lack thereof. Besides, this Christmas tree actually looked pretty good.

He put his little hand on my arm and looked at me in the eyes and said, sweetly, "I would never do that."

I hugged him and peeled him a clemmie. I have such a nice family. :) :)

MLK - SFO

For MLK, I treated myself to a trip to SF to meet my new niece. I saw her in her "witching hour" as her mama calls it -- that aching time for infants when they transition from daytime sleep to nighttime sleep (I kind of thought that there was no such thing as nighttime sleep after the weekend was over...but I did not mind at all, as NMK-foos is so cute.) Then I went to bed and, unlike her parents, was mostly undisturbed until the next morning. (I did offer to take a shift, as Any Reasonable Auntie would do, but my offer was declined.)

I got to hold her for the first time on Saturday morning. I ate most of T's home-made yogurt (a neighbor had made it for her...and normally I would have been sensitive to a mother of a newborn and let her have all of such a lovely treat, but as NMK is sensitive to dairy, I got the benefit of being first on the scene and so devoured it.)

Then I went to lunch with my friend D. He provided me with A Culinary Experience - I had never before had oyster, or lobster. Here is the "before" (what you can't see are the short ribs and the popcorn leg popper things that we also ate.) It doth look lovely, no? There was shrimp, and sashimi (tuna and salmon [I let him eat all the salmon; as, dear readers, you know how I feel about it]), and crab legs, and oysters, and half a lobster, and five sauces. L-R: oyster, creamy, cocktail, sweet and sour, soy.

An hour later (I eat slow; D eats fast; together, we eat too much--hence the "it hurts so bad but it tasted so good" grimace on his face), this is what remained (see middle).

And above, left: Here are our plates, to show we didn't just throw it all on the floor:

And here's another pic of NMK to round things out:

All in all, it was a very satisfactory visit. NMK seems to enjoy Fleetwood Mac a lot and seems equally comfortable in pink and in frogs. (This seems like a very important life skill that her Auntie M has yet to master. And no, I am not being facetious!)

I consider it a miracle that my arms didn't give out. I was worried that she might be so heavy that I wouldn't be able to hold her for long stretches. She is a little girl yet, though, so I was able to hold her and sing to her and smile at her and my arms held up like champions. Now all I have to do is keep my bicep strength up with her growth...

Backronyms and Dysphemisms

My brother's wife just had a beautiful baby. Their first. (I know she's beautiful because I was a Lucky Auntie and got to go visit her last weekend...)

They are both crazy in love with their baby. (As is fitting, right, correct, and expected.)

As you know, nicknames run rampant in our family. My brother decided to add the diminunitive "foos" to his baby's name. "Beautiful M-foos," he'd say, while raptly looking at her little Yoda face scrunch and squirm and "o" beautifully in her sleep. "Pretty M-foos," he'd say as he held her in his arms. "Mad M-foos," he'd say when he was changing her diaper and she was screaming.

I was helping put together the baby stroller when it occurred to me that maybe "foos" was an acronym. This occurred to me because J and I have a mutual friend who is always trying to come up with the very best acronym for a particular nonsense: fufb. "found under fried bread", for example.

"Foos...foos..." my brain niggled at it for a minute. What could it stand for?

Aha! I triumphantly looked at N and proclaimed: "First of our...spawn!"

It seemed he was taken aback a bit. His beautiful M-foos, reduced to...spawn?!?!??!?!

Then he told me about backronyms. I figured this in concept, of course, but didn't know there was an actual name for it. (Linguists, feel free to cringe here. I know I did.)

Backronym AND dysphemism, all in one: FTW!

Closer I Am To Fine

this is me
feeling like my heart's in a blender
watching the sun set on a midwinter day
attempting to fit life's pieces in a puzzle box.

I'll get there, one day. Closer to fine. I just have a lot of things to figure out between now and then. Every decision I make today impacts decisions down the line. Many little decisions add up to big decisions over a few years. I want this year's decisions be decisive. I want to act, not dither. I want to be bold and ask for what I want. I'm going to act to deserve what I ask for. And when I get it, I'm going to accept it and be grateful. And that will bring me...closer to fine.