Browsing Archives for November 2010

I just finished Bill Bryson’s latest book, At Home and as soon as I stop itching all over my body, I am sure I will consider it a fine book and one that would make an excellent Christmas/Hanukah/whatever/gift.

In his latest effort, Bryson takes a walk through his home while simultaneously taking a walk through history and discovers that the two things have more in common than one might assume.  It turns out that houses have not always had kitchens, dining rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms, electricity, furniture, nor even that most basic of human needs – an absence of fecal matter and live rodents living together in the floor.

Prepare to be grossed out should you decide to read this book.  Prepare to be sickened by the living conditions of your ancestors over and over again.  Prepare to grow paranoid about lice and vermin and bed bugs and dust mites.  Prepare to be amazed that humans have managed to survive at all – what with disease, poor hygiene, years of famine and crops that failed regularly about every fourth year, death at childbirth, death in infancy and death from getting chewed to death by a rat during toddler-hood, it is miraculous that the human race survived at all.  We’ve come a long way from the low slung hall filled with rodent infested straw, creating a tinderbox just waiting for a stray spark to go up in flames to the three bedroom, one and a half bath with a two car garage where the only vermin in the home is a litter box trained cat named Fluffy.

‘Tis a very enjoyable read – plus learning.  Just take a few breaks now and then for a nice loofah scrub all over your entire body.  Because one can only read so much about humankind’s past life among the pestilence before one starts to feel a bit itchy all the hell over the place.

Hey everybody!  It’s me!  Pie Near Woman!

I’ve got something amazing to tell you!

I am challenging Bobby Flay to a Thanksgiving Throwdown so that I could finally get my sweet, self deprecating, yet so obviously superior awesomeness on prime time T.V. where I BELONG!

For my throwdown dish, I will be making lime jello with pastel mini-marshmallows because sugar, water and food coloring is what nourishes my soul!

Bobby is going to try to beat me with orange jello and fruit.

Good luck with that Bobby!

I guess he doesn’t know that the only fruit we do in Oklahoma…

is butter.

Doesn’t this green jello so beautifully bring out the highlights in my red hair?

In Oklahoma we mix our marshmallows the cowboy way!

You take an old lady… I’ve got my Ga-Ga here….

Flip her over and use her to stir!

I  keep her under for as long as I can to improve the texture and further oxygenate my Jello!

I just love my Ga-Ga’s hands.

When I was a little girl, I used to sit on my Ga-Ga’s lap and ask her to give me the rings off of her fingers.

Not because I was a greedy materialist who just couldn’t get enough bling, but because uh… because I…

Well…

I guess I really did just want those rings…

Speaking of never ending uncontrollable urges to display my wholly contrived awesomeness to the world…

Bobby and I are ready to be judged for our Jellos!

And who better to judge us than another completely unqualified celebrity chef!

Welcome Trisha Yearwood everyone!

Because she knows what ginger tastes like!

Trisha quickly grabbed two fistfuls of Jello (because that’s how we do it in Oklahoma) and asked me where the hell the potatoes were.

“Where’s the damn potatoes!?!” she screeched.

‘I’m a God damned Oklahoman and I can’t go for more than three hours without a hefty platter sized serving of POTATOES!”

I told her that I had put plenty of potatoes in my Jello.

Because isn’t that what marshmallows are made of?

After that – she just started sucking it down.

What a pro!

She sure knows how to judge a cooking contest!

And then she grabbed me by my ass and threw me across the table saying, “Ree!  Show that damned city boy Bobby exactly where he can stick his fruity no-potato Jello!!”

Wanting to please the judge, I scooped up a handful of my marshmallow Jello de-light and slapped it into Bobby’s non-stop yammering yap.

“Your on my turf  NOW Bobby!”

“Quid Pro Quo!”

But Bobby fought back!

He tried to yam up my never stop stutter trap with a blob of fruit saying something like, “If you would just shut the hell up and let me do the talking, this episode might rise above midwestern mediocrity into something resembling a heart warming Thanksgiving special!”

“Oh Yeah Bobby?”  I retorted, “I think you killed it already with your stupid Thanksgiving trivia quiz and your pointless turkey chalkboard chat!”

But Bobby screamed back at me saying, “Not only is your voice as irritating as a broken wheel in a gerbil cage, but everything you say has all the intelligence of freeze dried baby drool.”

“But Bobby!” I gasped, “I used to breastfeed my babies during your show!”

“See what I mean!” he said.

Bobby fought for control and forced me to admit that I can’t get pancetta in my Pawhuska grocery store!

I was just about to falter when suddenly my crowd of pre-programmed PW Zombies started chanting, “REE, REE, REE, REE, REE, REE!”

The crowd’s robotic enthusiasm renewed my strength and I grasped Bobby around the neck with my thighs yelling back at the undead audience, “BOBBY, BOBBY, BOBBY, BOBBY, BOBBY!”

It may have been the most awkward moment in all of television history!

And then Trisha the judge said her mouth was on fire…

but in a good way.

And after a litany of more judging banality to attempt to prove that she has more food smarts than some guy who only runs a Tulsa restaurant every day of his freaking life, she finally pronounced a wiener!

And the wiener is…

Me!

ME!

I AM THE WIENER!

Sorry Bobby!  But Thanksgiving in Oklahoma is all about the potatoes!

And us Okies always pick other Okies!

Because Thanksgiving should taste like that horrible crap your grandma used to make!

Love ya more’n my luggage,

Pie Near Woman

I called the chief of police last night to give him a count for how many people had told me they were coming out for the Westboro Baptist Church counter protest in front of our local high-school.  I had only heard from three people and was a bit discouraged, but the chief told me that he had received at least fifty phone calls over the weekend and he thought that there would be quite a few people there.

He was right.

I’d say about thirty people showed up to counter protest which is pretty good for a small town Monday morning right after a holiday weekend.

Someone brought flags and passed them out for people to hold.  There were also a few signs, but mostly we had bodies and a feeling of solidarity and that is really all we needed.

Well…

Coffee and donuts would have also been kind of nice.

I opted not to take many photos of the Phelps family because I am kind of sick of reading their signs, but you can see that the two groups were separated by at least thirty feet.  The Phelps protesters sang a few of their weird parody songs, but it was so windy, you couldn’t really hear them.  Our group just stood and quietly chatted amongst ourselves.  I was standing beside a man who had driven all the way from Kansas City and he said that he had attended a few WBC counter protests that were much rowdier with both sides yelling at each other.

Across the street from the high-school a few women sat in their driveway and held a second counter protest.

And I got to meet Nikki!  She regularly comments on this blog as ‘dirty Kansas mama’ which is a reference to her home-building/livestock tending/ gardening/country life and not to uh… something a bit more titilating!

Nikki easily had the best sign at the protest.

Plus it was reversible!

Her husband had another great idea for an anti-Phelps protest sign…

‘Inside every Phelps is a cry for help.’

Get it?

Phelps – Help.

I thought that was brilliant!

My sign was kind of lame.  It said, ‘The flying spaghetti monster loves gay people… and I do too.’

I know, I know…

I better not give up my day job.

But I do feel good about my small town’s effort to speak up against the WBC.

It’s not a bad way to start a Monday morning!