In which I dream about calling the maintenance man, or Julie Gets a Microwave

Sitting at a friend's house eating pancakes and sausage for dinner recently, I announced that I thought Julie had gotten a microwave for Christmas, but I wasn't sure and maybe I just dreamed that. I'm not 100% sure what prompted me to make this announcement; Julie wasn't even present at dinner. Perhaps it was the wish that I had taken the time to microwave the syrup before I poured it over my pancakes, or maybe it was a random brain synapse firing. I guess it doesn't really matter.

What matters is that I have boring dreams. I have dreams about regular, everyday things. For example, about 5 years ago when I shared an apartment with 2 girlfriends, I was supposed to call the front office to get someone to come out and look at the fan in our laundry room which wasn't working. A couple days pass and one of my roommates, A, asked me if I had called, to which I replied that I hadn't called because our other roomate, D, had called. A few more days pass and no one comes to look at our fan. Why? Because D hadn't called; I had just dreamed that she did. WTF? Get an imagination, you freak.

I've been reading Cake Wrecks for a couple of months now, and I've started having dreams about decorating cakes and I now believe I have the skills to appear on an episode of Ace of Cakes. How hard could it be to sculpt the Backyardigans out of fondant? Never having baked or decorated a cake in my life without the aid of my pals Duncan Hines or Betty Crocker, I bragged to my sister Lauren about my imaginary new-found skill with a pastry bag. She, in turn, told my sister Anne, who is getting married this May, about my new calling in life.

Anne and her fiance have very set ideas about how they want their wedding to go down, and are both working at least 2 jobs to finance it. I'm extremely proud of her for being so responsible, even if her job as a manager at a children's clothing store did prompt her to send me the following email:

To: badmuthafudrucker@gmail.com

From: mailto:babysister@ican

Re: Retail rules

Rule Number 1:
I AM NOT A BABYSITTER --
in fact you probably don'twant to just let your kids run around wild in hopes that I'll watch them. I'd probably let them put a dirty penny in their mouth and watch as you are mortified because you weren't watching them and they decided to suck on a penny - why not? It's shiny, they have nothing better to do. I know those evil glances you're giving as you yell at your child and force them to spit out their shiny metal snack are meant for me, but unfortunatly for you, you cannot place the blame on me in front of the 3 other sets of parents who are looking at you as though you were reading Britany Spears' memoirs of motherhood (hopefully she doesn't really write memoirs of her experience as a mother, it may cause further and irreversible damange to her boys as they grow old enough and some stranger teaches them how to read).

Besides, if you leave your kids to me, how am I supposed to pull all the sizes you want to try on in all the colors and outfits you came in here for in the first place?

Oh and if you ask me to put in a movie for them to watch I will probably be more interested
in that (no matter how many times I've seen Ella Enchanted in the past week) than catering to your every need.

well i hope you enjoy this and it makes you pee your pants a little bit.

-------------------------------------------------

Ah, the pleasures of working in retail.

Anyway, a recent phone call between myself and Anne goes down like this:

Me: Hey Anne!

Her: Hey. Lauren said you wanted to make my wedding cake?

Me: Well, what I said was that I have mad dream skills at decorating cakes.
Her: So you'll make my wedding cake? We just want something simple. All white. With roses.

Me: What if it comes out looking like vomit on a plate? But it still tastes good? Will you hate me forever?

Her: Probably. We want red velvet. I'll send you a picture. [click] dial tone

Me: Wait...

So she wants this:

[image credit: http://www.uniquecake.co.uk/]

But I'm afraid she'll get this:

[image credit: http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com]

Looks delicious. Anyone have a good Red Velvet cake recipe?

6 saltines in 60 seconds, you say?

I've mentioned before that I am fascinated by competitive eating. Last night I was over at Julie's for Friends' Christmas, which was a ton of fun and I scored some awesome gifts. Like this scarf (thanks, Kristin!):

But this post is not about how awesome my new scarf is, or how delicious the crab legs, shrimp, and oysters were, or even how delicious my Sailor Sarahs are. This post is about slamming saltines.


C challenged K to eat 6 saltines in 60 seconds. Sounds easy, right? I mean, I regularly hoover a whole sleeve in what feels like no time at all. The rules are simple: 6 saltines, chewed and swallowed, with nothing to drink, in 1 minute.



K stepped up to the plate. Around cracker 4, though, it became evident that she wasn't going to make it.

It was sad, my friends. I offered to coach K in the fine art of competitive eating, so that next year she can redeem her good name.

I'm not-so-secretly wondering if I am up to the challenge. I'll get back to you on that one...

And the winner is...

...LBluca77!

Yay for you! Email me at badmuthafudrucker [at] gmail [dot] com to let me know what size t-shirt you'd like and where you'd like me to send it. BTW, if you haven't read LBluca77's blog, you are missing out. I've never laughed so hard about someone's food addiction.

Thanks again to Marie, BrazenBareToe, and BohoPoetGirl for pimping the contest; I've got something special for you lovely ladies if you'll send me an email to let me know where to send it.

In other news...

• BlogSecret repercussions continue to be felt here at Bad Mutha Fudrucker Central. For the back story, read here and here. S0, Potential read Anonymous' letter and left a comment saying "there is undeniable potential." Anonymous is taking Potential out to dinner when he gets back into town in two weeks, so hopefully he'll give us an update after their dinner.
  
• It's official--I am way out of shape. I played Wii Fit at my dad's on Thanksgiving, and after 15 minutes of Wii hula-hooping, my abs were killing me and my legs felt like jelly. The next day I felt like I got pummelled by Hans and Franz.
  
• I suck at Scrabble. Or Steve is really good. I'm not sure which one. He definitely knows his way around the rules, though. Current standings: Steve-3, Me-1. It is a sad day.
  
• Marie's pumpkin bread is idiot-proof. I am a terrible baker; I use 1 measuring cup for both my wet and dry ingredients, I do not allow my eggs to come to room temperature before adding them, I don't own a mixer and have to mix everything by hand, the list goes on. Despite these handicaps, I managed to turn out 2 loaves of pumpkin bread and 24 mini muffins. Win!
  
• I've seen Twilight. Twice. One of my girlfriends had a dream in which Edward had beautiful, glowing testicles. Another friend dreamt that he wrote her research paper. I haven't had my Edward dream yet.

Peace out, Ninjas

I'm leaving work early today and I won't be back until Monday. Which means I'll be doing a lot of this:

and a lot of this:


while the dogs do a lot of this:


and this:

and this:

but not a lot of blogging.

Monday the winner of the Pay it Forward contest will be announced! There is still time to enter!

For Daniellie

Sorry this is about a week and a half late, but you know how it is...

Sunscreen is cool

Fridays during the summer the city of Wilmington hosts a "Downtown Sundown" concert series, with live bands and expensive domestic beers. A lot of the bands are cover bands, which is awesome for me because I have unsophisticated tastes in music. A couple of Fridays ago "The Frontier," a Journey cover band, played. Like most drunken 20-somethings, I was way into it. Unlike most drunken 20-somethings, I found myself dancing with a creepy old lady. Melanoma Face is a walking skin cancer PSA if ever I've seen one.

All I wanted to do was enjoy Kenny's delicious guitar riffs.

Dreams are boring

I know, I know. Nobody likes hearing other people's dreams, unless it's a sex dream, and then you only want to hear about it if you were involved. But anyway, I had a dream last night that I was a contestant on "American Gladiators." I love that show, and even though I know I would eventually be defeated by the hand-bike and the Travelator (the uphill treadmill), I would have a moment of kick ass glory on the cargo-rope climb and the teeter-totter walk. I digress.

In my dream, I beat the Eliminator and was way excited. I even had to wrestle the male Gladiators (thank goodness, not Wolf) and I still won. I woke up pretty pumped. But then I was disappointed, because I had also dreamed I went grocery shopping and got bananas for my cereal, which did not happen in real life.

Also, yesterday was Ernie's birthday. He is now 3. He used to look like this:


Now he looks like this:

Feliz Cinco de Mayo

I hope the boys are planning on recycling their empties.

Congratulations, Mr. & Mrs. Goodbody!

Scuba surprised us all by getting married this weekend to Amanda (pictured here with their son, Austin). It was a beautiful ceremony at a family friend's waterfront home in Hampstead.

Pictured below is the bird crap that narrowly missed my lap. Some consider it lucky to be pooped on by a bird (especially in the eye), but I consider myself lucky to make it through the day feces-free.