"barring cupcake-related disasters, the day actually is going quite well."

I know. I know. I don't know how it's happened, people, but I've actually sat down for more than two minutes and decided to write for this blog again. Prepare for trembling earth.

So, it's autumn, obstensibly. The leaves are changing - or at least that's what many movies and New England tourist guide pamphlets lead me to believe - kids are going back to school, and the weather is turning cooler. Actually, the weather here in Texas was nice for like ten minutes this past weekend. But now we've been beset by another heat wave which will apparently push Hurricane Ike down south further to Brownsville. BOO.

Autumn is my favorite time of the year, and it all kicks off on the second week of September, i.e. today, i.e. the offspring's birthday. She turned five this year, guys. FIVE. Was it seriously five years ago today that I was holding a newborn m'elle in one arm and a turkey sandwich with spicy mustard and a coke in the other? (Look, they don't feed you during the whole "giving birth" thing, and it is pretty exhausting business. Once that kid popped out, all I wanted was caffeine and tryptophan and a whole lot of drugs.)

m'elle just started pre-school at her brand new school, so today we had a lunchtime party for her birthday! It was a good chance to meet all of her classmates, most of whom are usually not there when I drop her off or pick her up from school. But before I take you on a visual journey of the sprog's classroom, let's talk about something that's really important.

Cupcakes.

I kicked it old school this year with the birthday cupcakes and made ice cream cone cupcakes. These were huge in the 80s; in fact, I'm like 90% sure that my own mother made them for my fifth birthday party at school, which is also the day that little Trevor Jones cornered me outside the girls' bathroom and gave me my very first kiss. (Best. Birthday. Evs.) No boys better be kissing my kid outside the bathroom at school, but these cupcakes ARE pretty tasty, so they may inspire acts of love. Forewarned is forearmed, folks.

Magnolia Bakery's Chocolate Buttermilk Cupcakes:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 cup granulated sugar
1 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
4 large eggs, at room temperature
6 ounces unsweetened chocolate, melted
1 cup buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line two 12-cup muffin tins with cupcake papers. Set aside.

In a small bowl, sift together the flour and baking soda. Set aside.

In a large bowl, on the medium speed of an electric mixer, cream the butter until smooth. Add the sugars and beat until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the chocolate, mixing until well incorporated. Add the dry ingredients in three parts, alternating with the buttermilk and vanilla. With each addition, beat until the ingredients are incorporated, but do not overbeat. Using a rubber spatula, scrape down the batter in the bowl to make sure the ingredients are well blended and the batter is smooth. Carefully spoon the batter into the cupcake liners, filling them about three-quarters full. Bake for 20–25 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the center of the cupcake comes out clean.

Cool the cupcakes in the tins for 15 minutes. Remove from the tins and cool completely on a wire rack before icing.

Tasty, non? I topped them with Magnolia's vanilla buttercream icing, which proved nice and pearlescent, thus making the cupcakes look a bit like homemade ice cream. See?






Unfortunately, my baking skills do not extend to my transportation skills, and all the cupcakes fell down and were pretty much ruined. But thanks to store-bought icing (ugh), sprinkles and my ability to talk on the phone and type with one hand while refrosting cupcakes with the other, the day was saved! On to the party!



These kids? Are amazing. They sit next to m'elle in class and are total hams. Christian, the little boy, has Derek Zoolander as his personal life coach, I think.

m'elle, on the other hand, is not that amused by their childish antics, since she is now five. She does, however, sport amazing pizza-face that sort of makes her look like her very favorite movie character of 2008, The Joker (apple didn't fall far from the tree, what can I say?):



This is Titi, alongside Christian. His job today was to be the Caboose. That means he goes to the end of the line and makes sure everyone walks quickly. (There are also other jobs; m'elle's job today for instance was to be the Helper, which means she gets to help the teacher pass out worksheets and pencils. Exciting stuff!) I am like 88% in love with Titi and want him to be my bestie:



And here's m'elle's whole little class (plus her awesome teacher, Miss Nicole)! Aren't they adorable in their uniforms?



Oh, and speaking of the entire class, DIG THE NAME BOARD:



Can you spot the most amazing thing you've ever seen? There, at the bottom left? That's right! THERE IS A CHILD NAMED KANYE IN MY KID'S CLASS. I wonder if I can convince him to do an entire concert about aliens and robots who only come alive to the strains of "Gold Digger."

But possibly the coolest thing to happen for m'elle's birthday was the card that mere made. Posh Pants has blogged about it on poshdeluxe.com, so you can check it out there. BACON!! On a birthday card!! (In case you don't know, m'elle loves bacon. In fact, at breakfast, I usually have to take it away from her and tell her she can only have it if she finishes the rest of her meal. Like some parents might say about dessert. That kid should be super-grateful she goes to a Christian school, cause pretty much all other major religions are just not going to work with her lifestyle.)

I know I've gone on (and on) about the kidlet today, which I normally do not do on this blog, but one's fifth birthday is a pretty big day. Never fear, though, I've got six weeks' worth of discussion on politics, tv and dirty indie boys saved up in my head, so it's back to business as usual. Hopefully not six weeks from now.

I enjoy pomp AND circumstance.

Hey, my grandpa's in town!

This is pretty awesome, since I don't get to see him too often. He lives in Mississippi where the rest of my family resides, plus he's, like, a month shy of 90, so it's not like he can just zip over any old time. Hi, PaTom! Give me like twenty minutes and I'll be saying hi to you in person!

He flew in today cause tomorrow's my little cousin Thomas's birthday. Here is a photo of my cousin Thomas:



No, okay, that's actually a picture of Napoleon Dynamite. But when that movie came out, everyone in my family had a good laugh, cause that's basically exactly how Thomas looks/sounds. We like to watch the movie when we all get together and then make fun of him. Um, in a loving way.

I actually know three people who are graduating high school tomorrow - my cousin Thomas, my family's friend Andreea and my brother's girlfriend, Staci. Yeah, my brother's dating someone in high school. And yes, she out-matures him.

I kind of love high school graduations, despite the hours-long ceremonies and the fact that I almost always run into people I don't like, if they're anywhere near Houston. Kind of like a wedding, there's just this overwhelming feeling of promise and hope, people standing poised to reach out and make their future their own. Or at least that's what we tell them, and then quietly chuckle to ourselves when they graduate and realize that college is just more of the same thing. Ha ha, grads, joke's on you!

My own high school graduation was AMAZING. I mean, I already knew it would be, because it meant that I got to say goodbye to all the people I knew in high school. And since I didn't like most of the people I knew in high school, this seemed like a grand prospect. But it actually turned out to be amazing in other ways; the transformer blew on the football field (where we had our graduation cause apparently our class was broke) so we did half of the ceremony in the dark over a megaphone. Someone smuggled in beach balls and silly string (and considering they did actually frisk us to make sure we weren't concealing weaponry under our robes, I have to marvel at where they might have stored this stuff) and the whole ceremony turned into a giant beach party. My mom told me once that while she expected to cry buckets, she couldn't do anything but laugh at my graduation ceremony, as groups of kids tried to spell out "Terry '98" in shaving cream on the football field. (I didn't tell my mom but they tried to spell out several naughty words as well, only they ran out of shaving cream.) And as I stood there laughing at it all with my little circle of friends, something really strange happened - all those people I couldn't stand came over and were friendly to me. I mean, for the past 6 years, they did nothing but torment me, and now all of a sudden, they wanted to be my BFF? I realized that they, like me, were just a little unsure of their place in the great big world that was about to greet them, and they wanted to latch on to someone familiar.

I smiled very nicely and then walked away. I'm sentimental, not stupid.

But it's a great feeling to graduate high school, to feel like finally your life is your own to mold and shape how you will. I think that quiet hope we have then is gift we give to ourselves, and I can trace the best moments of my life to when that feeling comes over me once again. When I can step back and look at my friends or my family or my job and think, "yep, this is the life I've made myself, and just look at where I can take it."

So congrats, Thomas and Andreea and Staci! I hope you all fulfill the promises you make to yourself this weekend! And if your promises lead you to a job which earns you a lot of money and/or free stuff, I expect that you will keep me in mind.

the chance to be a kid again

So it seems like every six months, something majorly weird happens in my shitty apartment (from which I keep meaning to move out, but I have not yet found a nice place in Houston that I can afford which will not have me fearing being shot after sundown. If anyone knows of anything, I'm all ears.). One year the water-heater broke and I had to take cold showers for a week, which makes it sound like maybe I was trying to subdue my powerful sexual attraction to someone. It really wasn't all that sexy. Then one August my a/c broke, which was a nightmare, because I am notorious for my complete intolerance of the heat and like to keep my apartment at a cool 66 degrees. (Global warming isn't all assholes in Hummers, guys. Mostly it's spoiled princesses like yours truly. I make up for it by never turning the heat on.) And then there was the five-month span when my garbage disposal didn't work, and my repeated entreaties to the maintenance people went unanswered. That really hindered my primary method of relaxation: baking.

But now, it's like all of that has teamed up into one super problem. The power to my apartment is . . . half-assed? The lights flicker and fade; the computer reboots itself every five minutes, and none of my major appliances - or anything that takes more than 40 watts of power, it seems - will work. Air conditioning, washer/dryer, water heater, stove . . . nada. Which is inconvenient, at best, and really effing miserable, at worst.

I'm lucky enough that my parents live close to where I work, so I can stay in my old bedroom instead of couch-surfing at my friends' places. (In actuality, the surfing would be minimal. I'd show up on Matt and Mere's doorstep with my cherry pie pjs and the X-Files dvds and demand to sleep on their couch. I would perhaps make them cupcakes as compensation. Being my friend is a constant trial, I assure you.) And while the idea of spending what has now become the fifth night in a row at my parents' house might seem lame, I'm actually really enjoying the break from responsibility. Every morning, I wake up and wander out to the kitchen that I didn't have to clean, flip through the paper I didn't have to subscribe to, shuffle off to shower in the bathroom with the fancy, fluffy towels that I can't afford . . . are you sensing a pattern? And then, when I get home from checking on my kitties and spending as much time as I can stand petting them (it's okay; at about 78 degrees, the apartment's not too hot for the kitties. It's just too hot for me.), I get dinner that I didn't have to cook or buy. Why did I ever move out? Being a kid again is great!

To be honest, I'm already chomping at the bit to be back in my own place (going on day four of urgent phone calls to apt mgmt - nothing has yet been accomplished), as I'm at heart a bit of a loner and I don't like sharing my personal space. But still, a sense of peace has slipped over me the last few days, a calmness which comes from not having to take care of everything in my life, of knowing that, when I need to lean, I've got people to lean on. That's pretty special.

It could be the increased melatonin from the blistering sunburn talking, though.

So while I hope and pray (and plan to go to my apt on my lunch hour tomorrow and kick ass personally if I have to) that they'll have the wiring sorted by tomorrow, I've enjoyed these few stolen days of carefree living. It turned out to be just what I needed to recharge after the hectic month I've had.

Which leads me to today's question: what's the one adult responsibility that you have that you hate? What one thing would you love to give over to someone else and wipe your hands of completely? If I had to pick just one, I'd say vacuuming. I have to do it every day because I'm allergic to my cats, and if I could just have someone take over that one chore, I'd be so much happier. You?

"cat stevens was a total asshole to me. I mean, before he found Allah."

Hey there, blogosphere. Did everyone turn in their taxes by the deadline? Are you getting money back? If so, come sit by me, because I could use it.

Today I'd like to write about two people who seem to give me quite a lot of money, as well as my short stature and smartass nature. That's right, my parents, or Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags, as they are more formally known. Today's my parents 31st wedding anniversary! (Note to self: send email to father reminding him that today is his anniversary.) Isn't that crazy? It's even more astounding if you actually know my parents or have witnessed one of their many days-long arguments over such important matters as the volume of the television set or which way to park the cars in the driveway.

Like many married couples today, my parents met in college, and even though my parents are obviously old and decrepit now, it turns out that when they were in school, they were kind of awesome. They both attended the University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, and first met when my mom was enrolled in a martial arts class that my dad was teaching. That's right, my mom was totally hot for teacher. And, apparently, roundhouse kicks. Hey, sensei! They didn't get together or anything at that time, because obviously that would be super unprofessional of my dad as a sensei, and Splinter, aka, the Greatest Sensei To Ever Live, would not have let him be a Ninja Turtle. But several months later, my mom was given a job as an assistant to the Dean of Students for her work study program. Her assignment? Keep my dad out of trouble.

You may not know it to look at him - and his gun safe - now, but my dad was totally a teenage rebel. He listened to a lot of bootlegs and wore his hair long and made use of Ole Miss's marijuana research project in his spare time. (Well, he denies that, but I totally know what's up.) And he had an awesome job as Entertainment Coordinator for Ole Miss, which means that he got to book all the concerts and stand-up shows for the school. Fortunately for me, and the five people who are glad I was born, my dad's sort of not the most tactful person ever, and he was pissing off a lot of the artists by laughing at their unreasonable demands, so my mom was roped in to be the soothing voice of reason. Also, someone had to keep my dad from implementing his idea of turning the entire campus into a giant hash farm.

So they worked together for a few months, booking such Time Life's "Sounds of the Seventies" acts as Cat Stevens, Joan Baez, Chevy Chase and John Belushi, and I guess a lot of late nights - and my dad's totally fly early 70s feathered hairstyle - led to them holding hands and kissing on the cheek (cause I refuse to believe my parents have ever seen each other without clothes on or touched each other in a carnal fashion. Ew. Obviously, my dad accidentally tripped and fell on my mom and made a baby. Twice.). And they were a pretty happy couple until they had to ruin it all by running off to get married in a Holy Roller church. Begin as you mean to go on, Parents. I mean, did you think that a marriage ceremony spoken in tongues would really be a good idea?

But, however much they fight or have oral sex in the living room (i.e. "Fuck you!" "No, fuck you!"), I think we can all agree that, by being married for so long, my mommy and daddy have brought something pretty darn special into this world: a 28-year-old fully-grown daughter with an overwhelming fear of commitment due to witnessing all of their marital discord. So thanks, Mr and Mrs Moneybags, and may you manage to just barely avoid divorce for another thirty-one years!

The Boy Who Could Fly

It's not often that I reminisce about my childhood. I didn't have a particularly unhappy childhood, by any means; I just didn't like myself overly much, and what's the point of looking back on a time in which you felt you were not totally awesome? There is none. No point. That said, today someone mentioned offhand the movie The Boy Who Could Fly and I was instantly taken back to a much more innocent, yet frizzier-haired time.

The year was 1989. (I think. It could have been 1990. I really can't say. The late-80s, early-90s were, for me, a lost time comprised mostly of badly permed hair, tragic sartorial choices and changing my baby brother's diaper. I've successfully repressed most of it.) The scene: my living room. The cast of characters: myself and my childhood friend Natalie. I remember that my mother was outside in the backyard gardening and my dad had taken my baby brother for some male/drooling turtle bonding. Natalie and I, having grown tired of my toys, looked for other entertainment. First we worked on our Star Search dance routine, which we were sure would not only get us on the show but also ensure our victory over the reigning champions, and which consisted mostly of finger snaps, some tumbling moves and one very ill-timed high kick. To this day, it is probably the best choreography I have ever come up with. Our dance perfected (well, for that day. We obviously could not go full-tilt without the requisite feather boas or sequined headbands.), we decided to relax and watch a movie. I skimmed the shelves of VHS tapes until I came across one with a hand-written label: The Boy Who Could Fly.

Sounds great, doesn't it? A boy! AND HE FLIES. This promised to be warm-hearted family fare, perfectly appropriate for two children in the blush of innocence. I popped the tape into the VCR and Natalie and I settled down on the floor. What appeared on the screen, however, was a little more than we'd bargained for.

The movie opens with a shot of a red Corvette pulling up to a house. A woman steps out of the car wearing killer red stilettos . . . and nothing else. As I can recall, she then goes up to the door and knocks seductively (I assume it was seductively. I was nine, so I didn't really know. She could have been doing Shave-and-A-Haircut, for all my grasp of subtlety.). A muscular, yet disturbingly hairy, man opens the door in much the same attire as the woman. Um, he didn't have on heels, though. What proceeded to follow was enough to ensure that neither Natalie nor I ever needed The Talk from our parents. We got a few years' worth of sex education in one short afternoon.

Natalie turned to me shortly after the first blow-job, but before the neighbor-accidentally-walks-in-and-then-joins-in scene, and said, wide-eyed, "Erin, I don't think this is The Boy Who Could Fly." But I, with all the naivete and perseverence of youth, answered, "oh, no, see, I think they taped The Boy Who Could Fly over this movie. It'll probably start any second."

Thirty minutes later, The Boy Who Could Fly still had not magically appeared, and just as we were about to accept that there would be no flying in this movie we were watching, my mother came in from outside. You know how, sometimes, you're really angry with someone for snooping in your drawers, and the anger is one-half "how could you do this?" righteous indignation, and one-half extreme embarassment that they might have seen your threadbare underwear, or your baggie of pot, or your trapper-keeper that was covered with a picture of Kirk Cameron and had "Mrs. Doogie Howser" scrawled on the top (whatever, fifteen is still a perfectly fine age to nurse your dreams of wedding a brilliant, teenage doctor)? Multiply that by the factor of Holy Shit My Third-Grader Is Watching Porn And Her Super-Catholic Friend Is Watching It With Her. The resulting sum might begin to approach the level of apoploxy my mother exhibited. Natalie had to go home immediately and her parents banned her from coming over to my house to play for a year. My parents insisted on pre-watching every movie I expressed an interest in until I was fourteen. Worse, I never did get to find out what happened to the nice people in the film. They all seemed so happy.

As I look back, I have to confess that it was a memorable - if emotionally scarring - way to find out what we all find out some day: my parents watch porn. It could have been worse. It could have been home-made porn and not, as I later came to find out, something a friend of theirs taped off Skinemax one night. But still, to this day, I have not seen The Boy Who Could Fly. I just have too much related guilt to ever be able to watch it. Natalie at least got to go to Confession, eventually.

I was born in an old boarding house

If you ask me what my favorite holiday is, I will say Christmas. It's not a lie; I love all the baking and gift giving and, God help me, carol-singing. But if there is a holiday that I love almost as much as Christmas, it's Thanksgiving. It's got it all! Cool weather (not this year), family, and best of all, tables and tables of food. I am a fan of any holiday which revolves primarily around being a glutton, and T-day fits the bill. Despite my misgivings about Pilgrims and genocide and canned cranberry jelly, I am here to say: I love the shit out of Thanksgiving, y'all.

My mom's family tries to get together every year for at least Thanksgiving or Christmas. This year, we're having a family reunion for Thanksgiving. I can already predict that we will have a roasted turkey, a fried turkey, and a ham, that the desserts will flow like the River of Life, and that we will all gang up on my grandfather and make him sing the Tater Pie song.

You see, my mom's side of the family is not what anyone would call vocally talented. As a group, we could probably audition for American Idol and be one of those acts who's brought back during the finale to be humiliated some more. We. Cannot. Sing. But that doesn't stop us from cajoling, bribing or downright threatening the Callahan patriarch into singing the Tater Pie song. The holiday just isn't the holiday without it, and no sweet potatoes can be consumed without the blessing of the Tater Pie song. It goes like this:

Well, I was born in an old boarding house
And they fed me on cold tater pie
I thought to myself
Surely I would die
Choked to death on that cold tater pie

Tater Pie (Tater Pie)
Tater Pie (Tater Pie)
Choked to death on
That cold Tater Pie

That's it. That's the whole song. And believe me when I say that when my grandfather sings it (with the kids and grandkids [and now, great-grandkids] as backup), it sounds like nothing so much as an alley full of feral cats, howling about yams. It's not pretty, people.

But the song is important, because without the song it just wouldn't be a holiday feast, and without the feast, we couldn't have Sweet Potato Souffle. Sweet Potato Souffle was a recipe some member of my family cribbed off of some Southern cookbook long ago, and it has been our constant and faithful companion, lo these many years hence. It is fantastic: light and fluffy, sweet but not rich. I personally am not a fan of drowning sweet potatoes, who have never done anything to anyone except provide them with excellent nutritional value at half the carb-price, in a purgatory of mini-marshmallows, which is why Sweet Potato Souffle is so appealing to me. Plus, this is the dish that my aunt Gina makes every year (Aunt Gina: Friendly and Great At Math. Not So Much With The Cooking, Though.), so you know it's pretty much impossible to fuck up. Try making it for yourself this holiday season!

Sweet Potato Souffle

Ingredients:

4 large sweet potatoes
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 c. sugar
3 eggs
1/2 c. milk
1 stick butter

For Topping:

1 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. melted butter
1 c. chopped pecans
1/3 c. all-purpose flour

1) Poke holes in the sweet potatoes with a fork and bake at 400 degrees for about an hour. (Make sure you bake them on a pan/wrapped in foil so that the sugar doesn't drip all over your oven.) Let cool enough to peel skin off.

2) Mash sweet potatoes with ricer/fists of vengeance.

3) Add butter, vanilla, eggs, sugar and milk. Beat well until light and fluffy.

4) Pour into buttered casserole dish and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

-Meanwhile, back at the lab-

5) Mix topping ingredients together; toss to make sure everything is well-coated.

6) Spread over sweet potatoes. Return to the oven for another 10-15 minutes, or until firm.



et, voila! Simple, easy and delicious! Find an octogenarian to sing you the Tater Pie song and dig in!