OLYMPICS FEVER! - Answers [May Contain Spoilers, Believe It Or Not]

Here's a refresher:

OH WAIT HOW DID THAT GET IN THERE? Here's the REAL refresher:

And here are the answers (which may contain spoilers, if you live under a rock or are watching the Olympics only in primetime like some kind of Luddite or something):

#1 = Mary Lou Retton. (1st woman on a Wheaties box!)
#2 = Greg Louganis. (Still and always my favorite.)
#3&4 = (L-R) Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh. (Just lost their first SET ever in Olympic play, still undefeated in matches.)
#5 = Michael Phelps. (Went went on to set a record for number of individual Olympic medals since I posted the original, plus JUST TODAY became the first man to win the same event - 200m IM - in three consecutive Olympics.)
#6 = Janet Evans. (I wanted to be her, until I realized that the 1500m is a VERY LONG SWIM.)
#7 = Ian "The Thorpedo" Thorpe. (From Australia. Adorable nickname. I am a sucker for puns.)
#8 = Mia Hamm Garciaparra. (Women's soccer FTW! Plus, she married Nomar, God bless her.)
#9 = Mark Spitz. (Who probably wishes he was Michael Phelps right now.)
#10 = Nadia Comăneci. (She of the first perfect 10 in the Olympics, in Montréal, and also adorable pigtails.)

OLYMPICS FEVER!

Yup, I have it - even though I haven't actually be able to WATCH any of it, since I spent opening weekend in class and almost getting disappeared from the face of the Earth due to some sort of derecho-type weather situation with hailstones the size of nickels and horizontal rain and lightning-struck trees. (These things may or may not be related - I honestly can't tell.)

ANYWAY.

Let's play my favoritest game in the world: What in the world is going on in rockle's mind? In this case, I have made a collage of my top ten favorite summer Olympic athletes ever as of about 20 minutes ago. Can you guess who they are, what sport they competed in, and how many Olympic medals (of any color) they won? Hints below the picture.

HINTS:
#1 = 1984.
#2 = 1976, 1984, 1988.
#3&4 = 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.
#5 = 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012.
#6 = 1988, 1992.
#7 = 2004.
#8 = 1996, 2000, 2004.
#9 = 1968, 1972.
#10 = 1976, 1980. (Plus: 10.)

I Scream! You Scream! We All Scream For Ice Cream (That I Made Weeks Ago And Which Now Is Gone)!

While we're waiting for my kid to turn into a goddamned grownup even though I am not ready for such a ridiculous thing to happen because COME ON SHE IS ONLY A BABY WAIT WHERE DID MY BABY GO WHO IS THIS EXTREMELY TALL TALKATIVE BOSSY PERSON SLEEPING IN HER BED WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY BAAAAAAAAABY YOU FIEND, let's talk about ice cream.

A while back, I got this incredibly inspired idea that I have approximately 80 bajillion dollars worth of Kitchen-Aid appliances and accessories in my kitchen that I haven't used in maybe a hundred years, so let's bust everything out and do something with them. I guess you could say I went on a Wheaton-esque "get excited and make things" kick for about twenty minutes.

I decided to make ice cream because it was very hot at the time. The heat has broken some in the meantime, but at that particular point it was too damned hot to even write about it. Hell, it was almost too hot to EAT it. But we took all our ingredients and spread them out on the stove so I could take a picture of them, and then we got to work.

We could not reach a consensus on what kind of ice cream to make. I've made ice cream before, in those practically prehistoric Days Before Children, but this was my first attempt with a very militant chocoholic in the house. Which could have been dicey, because I don't like chocolate ice cream (I know, it's un-American, WHATEVER, I'm already a socialist so hush). The compromise recipe was for cherry chocolate chip, which we made using 2 cups heavy cream, 2 cups half-and-half, 3/4 cup sugar (divided -- most of it in the ice cream, 2-3 tablespoons for the cherries), 1 tablespoon of my 15-year old Mexican vanilla (not I am not joking, my vanilla is THAT OLD), 2 dashes kosher salt, 3/4 cup fresh sweet cherries, and 1/3 cup mini semisweet chips.

At this point I will tell you what we did wrong. One, we should have used all cream -- either all heavy cream, or a combination of heavy and light cream. The final texture using the half-and-half was a bit too grainy. We might have been okay if we did a custard-style ice cream, but I didn't want to do that much work, and my eggs are always a bit dodgy. Also, we did not cut up the cherries into small enough pieces, nor did we let them "marinate" long enough. Probably we should have prepared the cherries the day before, let them soak up all the sugar, and then mashed the snot out of them.

We left our ice cream bowl in the freezer for 24 hours. We might want to let it go longer than that next time, but it was mostly okay. Our ingredients were not cold enough when we put them in the bowl; if you follow this recipe, I recommend putting everything in the freezer for at least an hour before adding it to the ice cream bowl. Let the mixer do the work for about half an hour or so (according to directions), and add the cherries and the chocolate chips for the last 10-15 minutes.

Also: you will need to freeze your ice cream before you can eat it. We let ours sit overnight before we ate it. So, basically, we started the process on Sunday (bowl in freezer), made the ice cream on Monday, poured it into covered containers and let it "ripen," and then finally ate it on Tuesday. Was it worth the wait?

Mostly. Like I said, our ice cream had an "off" texture, and because the cherries were not cut small enough some of them were basically solid chunks of frozen fruit when we finally ate it, plus since we didn't let them "marinate" long enough we got random bites of cherry that were more tart than others, but overall, the flavor was quite good. I really liked it. I'd definitely make it again, making a few small tweaks to the recipe and process. Although it was not all chocolate, the chocolate chips satisfied the animal urges of the not-so-little one.

Who's Zooming Who?

I love this picture because it looks like my kid is photobombing herself.

I can't even remember what I was supposed to be taking a picture of. My sister's family in the background, maybe? I can't really get Shae to pose for me right now, but if she see's that I'm zooming in on someone else, forget it.

Shae taught Makayla the "knock me over" trick. Makayla LOVES to knock people over now. Mostly Shae, though, because Shae is her very favorite. The only name I hear her say more than "Shae-Shae" is "Pop-Pop." Not that I blame her, really -- Shae and Pop-Pop are both pretty awesome.

I wanted her to lay in that patch of sun there. I really did. You can see how well that worked out for me. (Well, pretty well, aesthetically speaking, but as a parent, I was pretty much all "HELL NAW!")

Although, by this point in the day, she had been running around for several hours PLUS swimming, so I guess I should just be happy she isn't actively crying and drooling all over herself.

Slippery When Wet

This post is almost as much a love letter to my iPhone as it is to my daughter.

Last year, when she had her swimming lessons on Saturday mornings, I'd be out there every week with my giant camera, trying to capture all her "big moments."

This time around, her classes are on Thursday night, at 7:00, and I'm pretty much all, "Just don't drown yourself or anybody else."

It seems to be working out fine, because ... well, she's pretty much completely off floats, and she hasn't drowned herself or anybody else in at least a week.

I've noticed one huge advantage to the late-night lessons, too, which is that there are only like four kids in her class, so I can tell that she's actually working and paying attention in class.

And now I can just kick off my Crocs and roll up my pants and wade in with her, taking pictures with my cell phone, which is so small and light that it fits in my pocket, and I don't need to lug around that giant heavy bag to get grainy bad-light photos of her acting like a dork with complete abandon in her natural element.

Although those pictures I take with the big camera sure are pretty, sometimes.

Aix Sponsa

According to Wikipedia, "[t]he wood duck or Carolina duck (Aix sponsa) is a species of duck found in North America. It is one of the most colourful of North American waterfowl."

This kind of duck is one of my favorites, because it reminds me an awful lot of my daughter. It is stunningly beautiful, with distinctive plumage and pretty eyes, just like Shae.

Since they're ducks, they're excellent swimmers, and I noticed today that they tend to be partial to bread and stale ice cream comes -- not unlike Shae on both counts.

They also have great big ol' sass-mouths. So, you know, my kid is apparently not just part mermaid and part goldfish, but also part wood duck, too.

Thoughts About My TiVo

1. I wish every TV show had Joshua Jackson in it.

2. It looks like Kirk Acevedo is in every TV show.

3. Stephen Root makes an excellent crazy person.

4. The best insane genius anywhere every is John Noble.

5. Seriously, why doesn't every TV show have Joshua Jackson in it?

It's Not You, It's Me

It's been a really bad day and I don't really want to talk about it just yet, so as a token of my appreciation for your patience I offer the following additional pictures of my kid with balloons.

And thank you for your support.

Five Things I Am Curious About

1. We have all of the Shrek movies, all three of the original Star Wars triology movies, the first four Harry Potter movies, and all of the Toy Story movies -- why does my kid always want to start with the sequels, and never the first movie in any of the series?

2. Why is it colder inside my house than it is outside?

3. If onion rings are so delicious -- likewise for the Bloomin' Onion and other equivalent appetizer things -- and if green bean casserole is so damned tasty, why is it that French's french fried onions straight out of the bag are so vile?

4. Is there any smell in the universe more powerful that the peculiar aroma of microwave popcorn?

5. How am I going to resist eating the crispy skin off this rotisserie chicken until dinnertime?

Heavy Machinery

CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Okay, yes, technically this is a foundation. Whatever. Shut up. The reason why this foundation even exists right now is because of CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR! (I love the little sign that says "OUTSIDE," and I wonder what would happen if, say, some wiseass blogger who was possibly illegally trespassing at a construction site might have removed that sign and put it, say, inside the foundation. What would happen? Not that I, personally, know anybody who might do such a thing.)

There was a bulldozer at this particular construction site -- the new spec home being built on the lot next to the home of the Hello Kitty party girl -- but Shae didn't want to pose for pictures in front of that. She was much more interested in the backhoe.

Not that I blame her. You can't climb into the giant shovel part of a bulldozer because a bulldozer doesn't have a giant shovel part. Duh. (At least I think that is the difference. I thought the bulldozer was actually a backhoe, and that the backhoe was a front-end loader. You know, because the giant shovel part LOADS from the FRONT END?)

Now I am wondering what it is that I asked my husband to buy me when he took me out for dinner for my 21st birthday and we went to Red Robin and I drank an entire birdbath margarita all by myself and got so drunk that I had to lie down in the booth for a little while just to make the room stop spinning and then on the way home we passed some heavy machinery and I basically begged and cried until he promised to buy me a backhoe but what if I really secretly wanted a bulldozer all this time and maybe it means we NEVER EVEN REALLY GOT MARRIED oh my God MIND BLOWN.

Anyway: CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT! RAWR!

Hello Kitty Party!

I admit, I don't know always know the first damn thing about raising a little girl -- I mean, COME ON, have you met me? I am much more capable of having conversations about baseball statistics than I am about Barbie dolls, and I couldn't begin to tell you what the heck a "Lalaloopsy" is supposed to be even if you held a gun to my head, but I could probably tell you who the last ten Super Bowl MVP's were* -- but let me tell you a little not-so-secret: I love Hello Kitty. Because believe it or not, I am human, and I have absolutely no defense against the awesome super powers of the Sanrio Corporation.

We went to a friend's birthday party over the weekend, and we knew going in that it was a Hello Kitty party, and I wore some pink, at least. Okay, technically it was a pink-and-blue turtleneck, but there was definitely some pink going on. And, yes, I stood in front of the cake and took about a dozen pictures, because LOOK AT THAT THING. It's adorable. No, it didn't have a light-up Hello Kitty figurine, but still. (It was also -- wait for it -- delicious.)

The birthday girl has an entire Hello Kitty ROOM. I am jealous. So is Shae, I think, although she didn't really say anything. I could sort of see in her expressions that she wonders why some people get to have Hello Kitty rooms while she has a room that features a non-zero number of monkeys, several stuffed dinosaurs, and a giant plush polar bear that we use as a sort of beanbag chair even though it has sprung a leak and all the stuffing and little beady things are coming out, but she is polite enough to not mention it. (She does have both fairy princess AND cupcake sheets, though, so maybe she figures it all comes out in the wash.)

WANT. Shut up. I totally want that handbag. That handbag is the bee's knees and the cat's pajamas and all other sorts of idioms. It rocks, and I won't lie. In this regard, I am jealous of a three-year-old. But I am holding out hope that Santa will bring me the Swarovski version.

* Not that you asked, but since 2000, in order**: Kurt Warner; Ray Lewis; Tom Brady; Dexter Jackson; Tom Brady again; Deion Branch; Hines Ward and NOT Jerome Bettis; Peyton Manning; Eli Manning; Santonio Holmes and STILL NOT Jerome Bettis although he was retired at that point but that is no excuse to not go back and give it to him retroactively because COME ON; Drew Brees; and Aaron Rodgers. Also, that is TWELVE Super Bowl MVP's, so NEENER NEENER.


** Know who never won a Super Bowl MVP award***, even though the whole world just WILL.NOT.SHUT.UP. about him? Brett Favre.


*** But who really deserved one? Jerome Bettis. We miss you, Bus!

Super Hero Girl

We've been watching A LOT of "The Power Puff Girls" in our house, so it was only a matter of time before we started wearing our blankie like a cape.

Okay, sometimes we look a little cult-y, but then again, this is a kid who calls my niece her "sister-cousin" and my nephew her "brother-cousin," so.

Still, it's a great thing to watch her tap into her inner super powers and go careering around the house, pretending to fly.

And she understands that with great power comes great responsibility, so there's that, too.

And honestly, she's already MY hero half the time, so she might as well be someone else's, too, even if that someone else is just herself.

Crap on a Cracker

I have SO MANY COOKBOOKS, you guys. SO MANY. Even though I only cook like five things and they almost all involve cream of mushroom soup. Seriously, I must have hundreds of cookbooks, enough to open a store that sold nothing but cookbooks and I'd still be able to be open for years, because honestly: it's like they've found all the nice warm spots in my house to hide away and breed, like escaped hamsters.

The reason I discovered this is that I was looking for something new and exciting to make for our annual department Turkey Day Potluck, which is coming up in a few weeks. For the last couple of years I have made my famous (infamous?) pumpkin dip, which is perfectly delicious and totally fine and whatever, but I've been trying to branch out a little bit, and I thought it might be fun to try something else for a change.

I'm not entirely sure what I thought I was thinking of -- maybe a homemade cranberry sauce? Or some kind of bread pudding? Perhaps a vegetable side dish in the crock pot, green bean or broccoli casserole maybe? Something to reactivate my lately-dormant Martha Stewart complex. The kind of stuff that I should definitely have been able to find in one of those cookbooks I have lying around.

My initial line of investigation went something like this: Thanksgiving is a holiday that is all about memory and tradition, right? And tradition means old-fashioned, vintage-y recipes that have been passed down through generations of home cooks, doesn't it? So if I'm looking for something like that, something that somebody else's grandmother might have made, where do I look? I look in one of these ancient and elderly cookbooks that I "inherited" from my aunts or my mother-in-law, don't I?

That's where I started, hoping to find something classic and comforting and totally holiday-appropriate and possibly even impressive, because vintage home cooking is the new haute cuisine. Right? So the other night, at dinner, I paged through an cookbook that used to be my mother-in-law's, perhaps even her mother's. I couldn't find a copyright date in this particular edition, but judging from the design of the kitchens and the clothes the people are wearing in the pictures, I would guess that this one is from somewhere between 1965 and 1975.

Should have been ripe for finding charming little old dishes like grandma used to make, right? Instead what I found were some of the most horribly, face-meltingly, stupefyingly bad "recipes" that I ever did see in my whole entire life. I am not talking about stuff that uses weird ingredients like rutabaga and sauerbraten and something called "No. 2 cans" of tomato soup, although there was plenty of that.

There was also a lot of ... whatever the hell that thing is, up there. In the cookbook, that monstrosity, that absolute affront to all that is good and holy in this world, that hot mess is called "Perfection Salad," and it is made with unflavored gelatin, sugar, salt, water, vinegar, lemon juice, shredded cabbage, celery, green pepper, and pimiento.

Or, in other words: SHREDDED VEGETABLES IN JELLO GARNISHED WITH OLIVES AND THINGS THAT LOOK LIKE OILED BABY FINGERS WHAT THE CRAP IS THAT I JUST CAN'T EVEN.

Now, look, I know that this was a different time in our history. I've watched a few episodes of "Mad Men." But come on now. Did anybody actually cook like this? Did anybody actually eat this stuff? Really? If this is what my grandparents' generation fed to my parents' generation in the 1960s, then it's no wonder that everybody did drugs in the 1970s. Who would look at that picture and say, "You know what? This gelatinous ring of disgustitude really IS just right for a buffet! Let have a dinner party and invite all my friends just so I can serve this!"

Probably the same person who would serve THIS mess. "Tasty Tenderloin-Noodle Casserole." Those meat-like chunks in the picture are supposed to be slices of pork tenderloin that have been browned in "hot fat." To me, they look like some kind of meatball, or potted meat product, or possibly wads of tree trunk -- or worse. The chunks are combined with "noodles" (I guess any old kind?), chopped green peppers and pimiento, and a "blue-cheese sauce" that is seriously the grossest thing that I have ever heard of. And I LOVE blue cheeses.

Here are some common things in this cookbook that I just don't understand: Pimiento. Monosodium glutamate. Unflavored gelatin. "Shredded process cheese" of unspecified flavor profile. "Luncheon meat," which I think means Spam or something? Recipes for "Mexican" and "Italian" food where the only spices called for are salt, pepper, and parsley.

These are two sample real recipes for "Appetizer Juices": (1) 2 parts chilled tomato juice and 1 part sauerkraut juice, stirred, served over crushed ice in cocktail glasses, and (2) heated vegetable-juice cocktail with 1 teaspoon butter stirred in. BUTTERED V8. Save me.

This is called "Rainbow Snowball Cake" and it's made from whipped vanilla ice cream, three kinds of sherbet rolled into balls and frozen on a "cooky" sheet, and apparently eleventeen different kinds of artificial colorings. I am getting hives just looking at it. That dessert is, like, 25% red dye #40.

Scary-sounding foods: Dried-beef Log. Prune Spice Cake. Baked Prune Whip. Glorified Rice, which is a dessert. Cottage Pudding. Baked-bean Sandwiches. Toasted Cheese Loaf. Liver Loaf. Chicken-fried Heart. Also, this cookbook contains a section on setting the table, including how to create "lovely and delightful centerpieces," one of which is basically -- no, it is exactly -- made by putting daisies in a saucepan.

Three things about this here thing, and then I need to go throw up and then take a nap: (1) My grandmother's nails totally looked like that, same shape and color and everything, until about 1997, and (2) that white thing is a so-called "pudding" made from unflavored gelatin, coconut flakes, and whipped cream, which is pretty much everything that is wrong with America, right there, and (3) WHY ARE THEY POURING BLOOD OVER THIS POOR THING? MAKE IT STOP.

Still want to see more, for whatever reason? You can check out The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and then maybe you should go seek professional help.

Acrostic Free Verse

Makayla.

My niece is so
Adorable and her
Knees are delicious
And she makes me want to
Yodel or something goofy
Like that because she? Is
Absolutely delectable, like a little cheese ball.

Makayla.

Surprise Cake Face

You guys, these pictures are SO DAMN OLD (taken on 10/1) that I had forgotten I even had them.

October 1st was Shae's half-birthday. Yeah, I know we're grasping at straws, but it's been a while since we had a birthday - the last one was G's birthday, way back on August 28th. So we let Shae pick out a cupcake so we could have a little "party." There were all kinds of cupcakes decorated with footballs and baseballs and Phillies logos - remember, this was way back at the beginning of the playoffs, when we still had high-cherry-pie-in-the-sky-hopes - and even a couple that looked like the Phillie Phanatic.

But she picked out this one, a Halloween-decorated number, with purple icing and a ghost-shaped Peep and a little decorative pick that said "Boo" on it, which she didn't even noticed because OMG YOU GUYS PURPLE ICING AND A GIANT PIECE OF CANDY WHOOOOOOO! The "Boo" pick was my favorite part, because we still call her Boo at home (after Boo from Monsters Inc. and also Boo-Boo Kitty from Laverne & Shirley. I AM OLD SHUT UP GET OFF MY LAWN.)

Yes, she is kissing the Peep that she is about to stuff into her mouth. This kid has a very bizarre romantic relationship with her food. Whatever. My sister once wanted to marry a Brussels sprout or a broccoli, I can't remember which, so it's not like messed-up relationships with food are unheard of in my family. (Now that I think about it, my sister was around this age at the time that she fell in love with a vegetable, so maybe it's just preschoolers, and not something hereditary.)

Anyway: Happy Friday! And Happy Surprise Cake Face Day!

PS - Purple cupcake frosting? DOES NOT COME OUT OF ANYTHING.

Swinging for the Fences

One of the most unintentionally hilarious things that I have ever seen in my entire life happened over the weekend, when my kid was trying to teach herself how to work a "big kid swing."

I know I am a bad parent for being unable to control the laughter, but jumping Jeebus on a pogo stick, watching her try to work out the physics of the thing with her little body was just ... oh my God.

She sat there for like half an hour, saying over and over again, "Head back, head front, legs back, legs front," trying to move herself in time with her new mantra and getting nowhere.

I know, I know, it's not actually funny, but oh my lands, to watch her try to figure this out, practically throwing all 45 pounds of herself up and down in the swing, but not actually moving anywhere.

Guess you just had to be there. I'm glad that I was.