Holidays

Big Bucks Barbie

Linda Vernon Growing Kids from Scratch, Holidays , , , , , , , , ,

 One year my daughter asked Santa for a “My Size Barbie.”  A “My Size Barbie” is a Barbie doll that has been fed huge amounts of hormones at the factory causing her to become the size of Daryl Hannah.

Picture of My Size Barbie in a Blue Dress   Daryl Hanna on Red Carpet

To ensure that “My Size Barbie” would be in stock, I went to the toy store early.   I approached the Barbie aisle and was about to ask where I might find The Big One, when I tripped over a humongous box containing “My Size Barbie” nearly breaking “My Size Arm.”

The adrenalin rush I experienced from the fall enabled me to heft the package containing The Incredible Babs onto my cart, but not being Arnold Schwartzenegger (or even Maria Shriver), I wasn’t strong enough to maneuver the box so that I could see the price tag.

I inched my Barbie-burdened cart to the checkout stand where it took four of us to hoist The Big Gal onto the scanner, and I mentally noted that perhaps some low-fat Barbie cuisine would make an apropos stocking stuffer.

Being an alert consumer, I had estimated the price at around $40, $50 or maybe even $60.

“Do you know how much this is?” I asked the clerk.

“I’ll let you know in a sec, hon,” she said as she fired up the jaws of life to help her run Buxom Barb over the scanner.

As I waited for the price to appear, I recalled a Christmas of long ago when I had received a Barbie Dream House.  My mother had lovingly assembled it all by herself.  It had taken her the better part of the Kennedy administration.

Barbie's first dream house
Assembles in four years

That had been my favorite Christmas and I owed it all to my mother and to my Barbie.  How ironic that this Christmas I would be giving my daughter The Mother of All Barbies.

“Excuse me ma’am? The “My Size Barbie’ is $128.  Did you still want it?”

One-hundred and twenty-eight dollars!  Suddenly everything began to move in slow motion.  I could feel myself turning white . . . then red . . . then green . . . like an aluminum Christmas tree on a rotating stand.

I looked at the clerk, then back at the 20 or so people waiting in line behind me.  They were all staring at me and sighing a lot.  Maybe they were thinking that I shouldn’t let my daughter down for a few lousy bucks and that I should forget the expense because, after all, it was Christmas.  Finally, a gentleman from the back of the line offer his advice:

“Move it lady!”

Then the clerk from the neighboring checkout stand shouted over, ” My niece has one of those and they can  wear the same clothes!” And then, just to bring it on home, she added, “I think she comes with an entire wardrobe!”

The clerk and I quickly tried to figure out how many outfits were included, but that information was on the opposite side of the box and somebody else was using the forklift.

In the end, I paid with a check so big it would have made “My Size Barbie” proud.  And as the crane lowered The Ultimate Barbie onto the roof of my car, I knew in my heart I had made the right decision.

"A little to the left!"
When Christmas morning came, my little girl would open her very special present, and the wonder and joy that is Christmas would be captured again for one brief, shining moment.

I say brief because the day after Christmas, I made “My Size Barbie” go out and get a job.

Foodie: To Be or Wanna Be

Linda Vernon Edible Tales, Holidays , , , , , , ,

Gosh I wish I was a Foodie!  If I’m going to carry around extra weight with me everywhere I go, I wish I could at least really enjoy the food I’m eating too much of.

At no time in the  history of the human race have so many wonderful food choices been so readily available.  Yet, do I bother to partake of the exciting noshing to be had from our modern-day food flotilla of stupendousness?

Not really.  I usually just slap some Country Crock on a bagel call it lunch.

My food choices are as marginal as they are margarine.

But why eat this boring choice when I could easily gather together every item it would take to make, say, Holiday Chutney —which I came across seconds ago by googling the Food Network website and picking “Holiday Chutney” at random.

So here’s Cathy from the Food Network under whose tutelage I could explore the excitement of cooking a Foodie-type dish such as “Holiday Chutney”.   After all, Cathy, who has a pretty good job, seems hell-bent on it.

"I'm going to figure out a way to eat this thing if it's the last thing I do."

First Cathy tells us to bake this teeny decorative pumpkin and then remove all the seeds from it — which is what Cathy says she likes  . . . no make that LOVES doing.

YeeeeeeeeeeeHAW!

Well, see that’s the difference between me and Cathy.  Cathy enjoys this type of activity which means she’s living her life to the fullest. Cathy is living in the “now”.

As you can see, Cathy is living in a more fun "now" than the "now" I'm living in.

And  I admire Cathy’s ability to derive so much joy from something like de-seeding a miniature decorative pumpkin. I really do.

As for myself . . . well I suppose if I were to suddenly develop an overwhelming craving for minature decorative pumpkins — due to a serious deficiency in Vitamin A  (probably as a result of eating nothing but  bagels and margarine)  AND if I was stranded at,  say, at the North Pole and the only thing  I could scrounge up was a  dusty miniature decorative pumpkin left over from Santa’s rockin’ Halloween party, I’m  sure I would put as much umph into de-seeding the darn thing as Cathy does, ok?

Holiday decor stuffed with chutney never looked so edible!

So my hat’s off to you, Cathy.  There’s a talent in making Halloween Decor look edible which is something you obviously have in spades!

I just wish I could have seen the look on your face when you picked it up and took a great big ol’ scrumptious bite out of it.

What’s that?  You didn’t eat any?  Well, probably because you’re not hungry, that’s all.

I’ll bet you anything Cathy will take it home with her tonight and maybe later on try feeding it to her little pet guinea pig, Charlie, or failing that, try feeding it to her little husband, also Charlie (just coincidentally).

Whoa Charlie! Save some room for Holiday Chutney!"

So maybe I’ll give this Foodie thing a try. I was going to have a bagel with margarine on it for supper, but now Cathy has me inspired.

I’m looking around this very minute trying to find something to stuff with chutney. And even though I don’t have any chutney, per se, I’m pretty sure I can figure out a substitute.

Well, let’s see . . . I could grab a ball off the Christmas tree, it’s hollow . . .  . . . I’ve got some cheddar cheese . . . maybe I could get the guinea pig involved somehow . . . if you need me I’ll be in the kitchen . . .

The Real(ish) Story of St. Patrick’s Day

Linda Vernon Baby Eating and Whatnot, Holidays , , ,

Of course everyone knows that St. Patrick is the patron saint of four-leaf clovers because he was partial to the color green.  But there are other little known facts about St. Patrick that the average person might not know.

For instance, back in the days when St. Patrick was alive, they had a lot of snakes slithering around Ireland.  It was really gross.  The whole place just gave you the heebie-jeebies.  As a matter of fact, that is why the Irish Jig was invented – to keep from stepping on them. But that’s another story I haven’t made up yet.

Irish Jig Dancers performing the "Get a load of the size of that one!" twirling leap
Anyway, St. Patrick, who happened to not like snakes very well, decided to take it upon himself to rid the entire continent of Ireland of them. He set about doing this by writing down some goals and sticking them up on the village mirror and by repeating them over and over whenever he had some spare time.

"Six slippery snakes slid slowly seawards . . . six slippery snakes slid slowly seawards . . . "

It must have worked because St. Patrick is credited, history-wise, with getting the entire population of Ireland totally onboard with Christianity, foods that are magically delicious, red hair, and snake ridding.

But it was the snake ridding that really got his name in print. The story goes somewhat but not very much like this:

You see, St. Patrick was nothing if not charming. He had it all, looks, a winning personality and a flashy carriage to cruise around in.  This is a guy who had powers of persuasion up the yin and/or yang.  In fact, when it came to getting his way, St. Patrick would have made Donald Trump look like a fat guy with funny hair — if he hadn’t already been one.

So St. Patrick, being a man of the cloth, (he had a huge and impressive cloth collection) decided that everyone hopping around all the time trying to side step snakes was depleting the citizenry of their usual vim.  (Vigor hadn’t been invented yet.)

It was obvious something needed to be done, post-haste.  And so he decided to “charm” the snakes out of Ireland.  He started by inviting them all over to his house, under the guise of celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and began charming the pants off them (in those days Irish snakes wore plaid pants with little matching berets).  He did this by slathering the blarney on pretty thick and following up with a plethora of pandering and topped off with a prodigious pitcher of empty promises.  Pat was pretty proud.

Then, when he realized he was running low on straws for the rum and cokes, he quickly herded his limbless revelers outside and managed to lure them over the White Cliffs of Dover where they toppled, snake-like, into the sea. Dead as doornails (albeit very large doornails).

And of course, we all know what happened next. St. Patrick painted the White Cliffs of Dover green to commemorate the occasion.

So next time you have a Happy St. Patrick’s Day, you’ll know why.

Until next time . . . I love you