Love letter to Safeway Inc.

Dear Friends at Safeway Inc.,

I just wanted to take some time out of my day to send a letter of commendation to you and your masterful bakers for a truly amazing product! Let me tell you about our Father’s Day surprise…
On Sunday, my husband and I and our two daughters were in our garage gathering up camping equipment and making a list of food needed for our fishing trip next weekend. We were rummaging through boxes to find our gear when my oldest daughter pulled forth from the bowels of the garage a bag of Safeway Enriched Hot Dog Buns.
“Someone already bought the buns!” she stated.
“Did you buy those?” I asked my husband.
“I didn’t buy ‘em.” He replied
“We’ll, where did they come from?”
We stood, wondering. The silence was broken when my daughter exclaimed, “These are from last summer!!! I remember when we bought them!”
Dumbfounded, I grabbed the bag and pulled out a bun. What should have been rock hard, fuzzed with green and stinking was still soft and fresh!!! Those buns were as well preserved as Sophia Loren! You should have seen the amazement on everyone’s faces! To think! After one year of sitting at the bottom of a box in our damp garage, those buns were still moist and unsullied! My husband, a former baker and pastry chef, was humbled. His own artisan bread was hard and funky after only a couple days. One just has to wonder about what those magical and mysterious “other wholesome ingredients” must be…

What an unexpected discovery! One less thing to buy at the store, and now, dinner was decided! After cheering and high fives all around we had a big family hug and raced upstairs to find some hotdogs. The bakers you employ are to be praised. May they continue to work their magic in bakeries across America, and beyond! ! “Ingredients for life”, indeed!
Thank you, Safeway Bakers, for making our Father’s Day extra special.

Yours Truly,

Diedre Oppings

Really? Hmmmm.... I'll have to go back and check but I would have thought I'd get an "R". Maybe I'm not so potty mouthed as I thought. Fuck...

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

...Fuck you, you fucking fucker!

There we go!

oooooooo! Bad bastard cats!

Bad, BAD wayward shit cats ! These two



are about to have their heads handed to them. Look at them! They know what they did...
I was cleaning up LO’s room and discovered that someone had decided to turn her basket of play silks into a litter box. Nasty little poos and sprinklin’s of pee all over LO’s beloved silkies. FANTASTIC, guys!

So I throw them into a basin and drown them(No, not the cats, the silks) in anti-cat pee juice and of course the colors start to bleed immediately even though I’ve washed them a million times. I quickly separate them out from each other. But not before they stained the washing machine though!!!
What by the jeezus is IN those silks?!?!?! LO and I finished washing each separate one in the basin outside- OH YEAH!!!! IT’S 52 degrees and SUNNY out TODAY!!!!! SPRING DONE SPRUNG!!!!- and hung them on the line to dry. Some are fine and some are now fuckin’ tie-dyed.

*sigh*

Well it’s my own damn fault. My least favorite chore? CAT CRAPPER. I thought, ”Oh, they’ll be fine until I can get a new box of litter in the morning. It's not so bad in there.” Uh-duh. Poor innocent silkies. Besides sticks and rocks, play silks are the BEST child’s toy. Versatile, portable, totally open ended, comforting... play silks. Which leads to my reparation for my cat box irresponsibility. I shall share the love and pass on a great web site-in case anyone cares- that sells raw white silkies on the SUPER CHEAP! DHARMA TRADING. I think you can get a silk for like $3 bucks. Just like Sarah’s silks. And it’s so fun to dye them with the kiddos.

May I also recommend NATURE’S MIRACLE ORANGE-OXY POWER JUST FOR CAT’S STAIN & STANK REMOVER. ;)
Cuz now our silks are fresh as a day in May....

Our Astoundingly Adventurous Amorous African Clawed Run Away Attack Frog: PART 1

At the end of last summer I started a “life cycle” study of the frog with LO. We purchased a Grow-a-Frog kit from Classic Toys, filled out the postcard and sent for our mail order tadpole. Simple enough! Our lil guy arrived after a week or two and we set him up in his new digs. A sweet pad with tropical decor: blue sand, a white shell, tiny green DECOplant and food. LO named him Goo. We watched him grow day by day, swimming about “breathing in” his special tadpole food, his lil front nubs beginning to resemble future legs-such a cute bitty bugger!

Then he goes tits up.

Swell.

My Little One’s first taste of death. We buried him under a spruce by the house. LO colored his tombstone rock and placed it above his grave. I endured the QUESTION”Mama, why did Goo die?” asked ad nauseum. Then like an optimistic shmuck I order in his “free replacement”. I wring my hands as a week goes by and weather is dipping well below freezing. Last time, the schluffers at the Post Office blew off notifying us that we needed to pick up our live animal from their toasty warm building. The mail carrier is going to deliver the tadpole to his death in an arctic tomb -LO will discover a tadpolsickle in the mailbox. Sure enough I retrieve a cold but as yet undead tadpole and whisk it home to begin the acclimatization process. “What should we name him, LO? " LO searched her immediate surroundings for inspiration and I saw her eyes land on her basket of rocks.

I thought,”Here comes the height of creativity, the oeuvre-”

“Rock Rock!” she said, beaming and much to DEA’s chagrin.

OK!

Rock Rock was cool morphin' tadpole! He was larger and heartier and feistier than Goo. His front legs were already developing and soon after his tail began to shrink as his body absorbed it. In one night his small fishlike head totally morphed into a frog’s with big whiskers on the side! It was SO exciting! We took pictures of the big changes and followed the froglet instructions to a T. He was growing fast and I decided it was time for Rock Rock to be movin’ on up and ordered him the DEEEEE-lux apartment from Grow-a-Frog. The TubeTown condo arrives and what’s THIS stuffed inside the tank?!?! A big…naked...frog(?) with pink eyes peepin at us through a bag of freezing water!

“I didn’t order this!”

LO says,"where’s his color?".

“He’s an Albino!", sez Huz.

"I didn’t order this-why’d they send it?” Do ya smell the foreshadowing yet?

We set up the deluxe crib for the naked-it was almost obscene!- white frog, "Scoot". DEA got to name this one. Rock Rock remained in the original tank. He would need to finish baking and grow some before Scoot would recognize him as Not Food.

More picture taking. More oooing and ahhhing at Rock Rock’s changes.

It was a miraculous little lesson in the intricacies of life.

Some other time: PART 2 of Our AAAACRAA Frog

CHOCOLATE BUNNIES=HOLLOW

Our family celebrates and rejoices in SPRING. EeeeeeeeeeEASTER......Meh.

“Holidays” have become so tired anymore. Especially when you don’t adhere to any particular religious doctrine. Easter-another capitalistic bull-shit holiday. Easter-the epitome of obnoxious. The time of year when i could just PUKE pastels. I’ve decided that for next year I’m gonna get all Martha Stewarty and make my own damn chocolate bunnies.

Shopping for Easter basket paraphernalia and the obligatory chocolate bunny at our local Big-Box Mart proved to be a surreal experience. I passed, unenthused, through aisle upon aisle of chintzy stuffed chicks and lambs, fussy foo-foo dresses, pastel schmunskies, and then on to the Isle of Chocolate Bunny Rabbit Sarcophagi . By the time I was halfway down the aisle I was wholly freaked. Repugnant rabbits! The eyes, oh those Blue and yellow EYES! Who’s the miscreant who decided on sticking candy eyes on the bunnies?!? Manic and Marty Feldmannesque! Those ocular orbits were on the verge of exploding forth from their cranial confection. They goggle all around in different directions like a chameleon’s! Those Psychedelic eyes… staring off at some other realm of existence. Those poor bastards must have eaten the brown acid… Chagrinned, I grabbed two of the least demented bunnies of the lot. "Parsnip Pete" to be exact. A kid’s gotta have a chocolate bunny in their Spring Basket, right?

Upon receipt of her basket, my youngest one picked up and considered her Parsnip Pete for a moment… and promptly plucked off its eyes and ate them. “See! Now they’re friendly." She then asked her sister if she could “ have yoursez eyes?”

Nope. Next year no more carny prizes. Just meaningful things. Homemade bunnies. My husband is a former/eternal pastry chef for Christsakes. Milk chocolate for the 4 year old. White chocolate for the 13 year old. And one for my hubby made with a Mayan flare! Ancho and cayenne! Chipotle!
They will be ROCKIN’.

GONNA HAVE A THREESOME TONIGHT!!!!

Just my hubby and old boyfriends, Ben and Jerry.

Stepped on the scale this morn. With a wet head, too! And (after 3.75 years) I have officially dropped the 40 pounds of baby weight! Not including weight lost in the first week after her birth: baby was a 10# butterball. Then there was the gargantuan placenta and an unnerving amount of fluid(all of it in my toes), 23#.

Slow and steady wins the race, man. The secret of weight loss, godammit once and for all, is eat less(6 small meals a day to rev up metabolism) and move more. Water, drink it. Get the heart rate up for a mere 30 min. everyday. Throw in some weight training 3x a week for added metabolism boost. Period. End of lesson.

Come hither, BOYS!!!!