Colbert and l Unite For World Hunger.....

Today marks the day that bloggers Unite for Hunger and Hope around the world. I read somewhere the other day that 2.5 million children around the world will not eat today. I don't know if that statistic is correct, but regardless, there are millions of people today who will not eat. Our dog, AKA the old chinese man, will perhaps eat more today than some children in the most impoverished parts of even our country.

Which is why I have become such a huge fan of Heifer International. See the so aptly titled, Heifer International post from my first fundraising effort here at From a Desperate Housewife for more info.

Or, you can even check out Heifer International on The Colbert Report. You might find Colbert more enlightening than the drivel I come up with here at From a Desperate Housewife. (Is that even how you spell drivel?) Anyway, I think it's a toss up on who will rot your brain more, Colbert or your friendly neighborhood Desperate Housewife.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
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I know that it is so wrong, but I love Colbert. I just cannot not love him, if that makes sense.

But with the fact that I sometimes have to dig through Kaydn Rye's piggy bank to scrounge up enough quarters for his gum and fruit snacks addiction, I'm not exactly looking to fund an entire third world country's hunger effort, but we all have something we can give. Like, you can give $20 towards a flock of chicks for a needy family, or $10 towards a pig, which will sustain and feed a family for generations.

Think about even making a donation in honor of your grandmother, mother, sister or friend for mothers day.

For everyone who makes a donation and lets me know in the comments at the bottom of this post, I'll enter your name in a drawing for my last C28.com gift certificate. C28.com has some really great stuff, go check it out.

And I guess we'll have the give away up through, oh let's say, the 3rd of May at midnight. I'll even enter you into the giveaway if you can post a comment at the bottom of this post about another way you know of that is combating hunger in the world right now. So, you have two ways to get yourself entered - donate or educate.

Oh, and you can check out Heifer's online catalog of all things farm animals at Meaningful gifts and make a donation.




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Confessions of a Four-Year-Old

This week's installment of Confessions of a Four-Year-Old comes complete with insurance agents, flooding, popcorn and dead cats.

The past couple of weeks have been rife with flooding around these parts, and we've spent a few nights eating popcorn and watching the flooding on the news. The one night I had actually made the popcorn for our eating pleasure during that night's edition of Law and Order (for details on my Law and Order obsession, see There Will Be Order) but it was one of those nights when I was pretty much too tired to get off the couch and go to bed, so we were stuck. I should install some kind of lift chair to get me up the stairs, but with my luck hubby would try to sit in it and he'd probably end up taking the chair and the wall down with him. With him, we must be mindful of weight restrictions.

So hubby, myself and the dog are all chowing on popcorn when little Kaydn Rye appears at the top of the stairs.

"What are you guys doing?" he says.

"We're just sitting here. What are you doing?" I ask.

"Well, I was sleeping, but the popcorn smell woke me up," he responds. "Can I have some popcorn?"

So he ended up sitting on the ottoman shoveling popcorn in his face and watching the flooding on the news with us, which he thought could be completely solved with the purchase of flood insurance.

He said something like, "They should have bought some flood insurance. Maybe their dads could get them some." Keep in mind, I am married to an insurance agent.

If only flood insurance was the answer to all of life's problems.

Speaking of problems, we still can't seem to get rid of all the cats in the yard, and as I should have guessed, Kaydn Rye and I found another dead cat in the flower bed while we attempted at cleaning all the dead leaves out from under a row of wonderfully treacherous rose bushes (Every rose has its thorn....). Hubby figured that with all the freakin snow and 50 below wind chill weather we had last winter, the cat probably fell asleep there one night, became buried under 5 feet of snow and couldn't make his way out. So we found the cat, scrapped it off the rocks and put it in the trash bag. Kaydn Rye took a good look at it, said, "How did it get dead?" and "Where are its eyes?" and apparently chalked it up to the wonderful circle of life because he wasn't too stressed about it.

And last but not least, the newest and greatest thing to happen to Kaydn Rye is that he now has a girlfriend. Or a little sister, one of the two. One of the little girls from our church has now been deemed his official girlfriend, and I of course told him that he's going to need to quickly decide whether she's a girlfriend or a little sister. He didn't quite understand just then why she can't be both.

We'll see how that all pans out.




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What Have You Done For A Tax Deduction This Year...

So this week marked the end of our week and a half long battle with the taxes until next year. Taxes are always a pain with my business and all. And myself being master accountant, I don't even balance my business check book for the year until April rolls around. It's my once-a-year checkbook balancing extravaganza. Good thing my husband actually is a master accountant and can turn the shady revenue/expenses excuse for a balance sheet I hand him into a wondrous piece of fill-in-the-fields art for the enjoyment of all the schmucks working for the man at the IRS.

Put all his hard paid off, because he had a thought. Albeit a stupid one, but it was a thought.

That night, after we had put in a full day of trying to get as much money out of the IRS as possible, he said to me, "Let's have another kid."

"What in the freakin world are you talking about?"

"Well, we would have gotten $2000 back from the IRS for the child tax credit," was his explanation.

"So, you want to spend thousands of dollars next year on food, diapers, hospital bills, clothes, car seats and whatever else babies require these days for a measly $2000 tax credit?" was my reply.

"We'd hardly spend any money. The baby could wear all of Kaydn Rye's clothes, use all his old stuff, and we'd get $2000 out of the deal."

"Yeah, that's how it works. This magical cash cow of a baby won't require any new stuff and will only eat Kaydn Rye's regurgitated food for nourishment, so it won't require any food, any clothes or any diapers..."

I wasn't being roped into that like I was the first time. And I have had four years to work on arguing my point in support of more pets over children.

If he had his way we'd be on some TLC show with 18 kids, me in a mumu and all of us living in Arkansas.

I always wonder how those crazy baby making people remember all those kids' names. I saw a clip recently of the mom on that one show, whatever her name is, Lillie May, Sally Sue, something like that, telling the camera guy about how her exercise routine consists of simply keeping up with the "little ones." She started going down the list of their names and after two or three she just finally gave up.

I do the same thing with the dog already (if you don't know Gertie, you need to read this blog more often, see Gertie, our old Chinese man). Gertie has to sit and beg before she gets anything, and Kaydn Rye has to say please and thank you before he gets anything, and it is not difficult to get the two confused. Like when Gertie needs water (like she can't wait a day or two until I'm not busy), she has to sit on her butt until I say, but on a few occasions it has been known to go down like this, "Gertie, what to you say?? What do you say?"

I then remember that she cannot speak and that she has no idea what I'm saying.

Or sometimes Kaydn Rye needs to "sit" before lunch will be served. Or just the other day I was yelling at Kaydn to come so I could put him in the dog kennel.

So needless to say, we won't be needing a conversion van anytime soon to cart around our 18 kids, all just for the tax credits.




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I Must Have a Cracker, I Must Have a Cracker

While you were out chasing bunny rabbits and going on wild and crazy easter egg hunts, we over here were busy eating matzoh and sweeping leaven crumbs.

See, we celebrate the biblical feasts, and with the highest feast of the year for us being Passover, it gets a little hairy around here during the week of Passover.

Passover is a little like Hannukah, with its "eight crazy nights," so we celebrate the death and resurrection of Jesus beginning with a big feast called the Seder and we continue the celebration by denying ourselves crackers and a good dinner roll for the entire week. Spring cleaning was originally a Jewish idea, since you'll find traditional Jewish people cleaning every tiny spec of leaven from their house for weeks before Passover.

See, yeast, or leaven, is the biblical symbolism for sin, partially in that it "puffs things up," yet Jesus was completely without sin, so in commemoration of not only the Israelite's escape from the bondage of slavery in Egypt and the bread not having time to rise before they left, the lack of leaven during Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds us of how Jesus lived without sin in his earthly body.

And leaven is in absolutely everything, I kid you not. It's in soups, in pasta, in tortillas, in salad dressings, in deodorant (don't worry, we still wear deodorant during Passover) and its even in dog food. But because Gertie, our little chinese man, is not required by biblical law to go kosher for Passover, we choose to live dangerously and bravely feed her leavened dog food all year round.

And while I absolutely love Passover, really I do, never in my life did I understand the depth of a cracker craving until we began celebrating Passover. But we make it through, poor us.

Like today, we decided to treat ourselves to a little no-kosher meal. Because we live a million miles away from civilization and have to "go into town" for church, which is about an hour away, after church we just go out and eat, rather than get home at 1:30 and have to start dinner. And because there are no "kosher for Passover" restaurants in town, we happily made our way to the mexican place and absolutely pigged out on chips and dip and tacos.

Good times.

But anyway, the big meal kicking off Passover is called a Seder, which consists of a Seder plate with foods commemorating the Exodus story and matzoh (the tastless unleavened bread/cracker). Matzoh is that stuff you probably have at communion at church that tastes like air, which is symbolic body of Jesus.

The Seder doesn't begin until sundown, and without any dinner in our bellies until around 9:30 that night, and with the ceremonial four glasses of wine that must be drank during the ceremony, let's just say that the morning after the Seder is not always a good one. And of course, we had some friends over that night for the Seder since it's Jewish tradition to party with all your friends during every single biblical feast.

This year was our third year of celebrating the feasts, and I branched out into some new foods this year for the seder, which made Wednesday an interesting adventure in Jewish cooking.

First I made a pan full of brownies made out of matzoh meal, which is basically ground-up matzoh. To get the matzoh completely smashed to a pulp and ready to put in the brownie mix, Kaydn Rye basically stood with his finger on the button on my little food processor for about a half hour. I realized the brownies were going to be a shot in the dark when I pulled out the boxes of matzoh (the last three in town) that I had my mom pick up for me and saw they were actually garlic and onion matzoh.

Well, I dowsed the matzoh meal in sugar and prayed we wouldn't be eating garlic brownies for dessert.

And actually, those brownies were the bomb. If anyone is allergic to wheat flour, these matzoh brownies might be the answer to your problems.

Passover Brownies

PREP TIME 10 Min
COOK TIME 30 Min
READY IN 40 Min
Original recipe yield 16 brownies
SERVINGS
(INGREDIENTS (Nutrition)
• 4 eggs
• 2 cups white sugar
• 1 cup butter, melted
• 6 tablespoons matzo meal
• 1 cup cocoa powder
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
• 4 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate, melted
• 1 tablespoon butter, softened
• 1/8 teaspoon water
DIRECTIONS
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease an 8x8 inch baking pan.
2. In a medium-size mixing bowl, blend eggs, sugar, and butter. Mix in matzo meal, cocoa powder and walnuts (if desired). Transfer batter to prepared baking pan.
3. Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 minutes.
4. In a small mixing bowl, blend chocolate, butter or margarine and water. Spread over cooled brownies.

This recipe comes courtesy of Allrecipes.com.

Of course, the next day, when we hadn't just had four glasses of wine in about an hour, the brownies did have a little different after taste.

Life lesson number 2 million five hundred and twenty three thousand- make sure you find non-garlic matzoh for Passover brownies next year.

Then I ventured out into some matzoh dinner rolls, but we won't get into how that all went down.

We had a nice cajun chicken and vegetable main dish with an apple, grape and whipped cream fruit salad on the side. Cajun isn't exactly traditional Jewish cooking, but we like to mix it up a bit.

The Seder plate with all the traditional foods also needs preparing the day of the Seder. One of the items needed is a lamb shank bone, which is a reminder of the original passover lamb, and that needs to be roasted and deboned. But let's just say that at about 6 o'clock I finally remembered to take the shank out of the freezer to start thawing out. We somehow got that shank bone de-frosted and roasted just in time for placing on the Seder plate.

Here's our beautiful passover tablescape, complete with tons of activities to keep the kids occupied for the entire three hour Seder, which Kaydn Rye loves. He'd do the whole Seder once a week if he could.



And here's the after picture...



This was actually taken the afternoon after the Seder. I still hadn't recovered enough from the night to actually get up and around enough to clear the table.

And in case you're thinking about becoming a Passover family, I'll leave you with the Top Three Reasons for Celebrating Passover....

3. Save money by using last year’s Matzoh (it won’t taste any
different and you probably haven’t thought of eating it since then)

2. The required cleaning of the refrigerator gives you a reason to
throw out that old milk container.

1. To remember that Charlton Heston (and his wife, Lilly Munster)
led you out of Egypt.





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Houseparties, Escaped Mental Patients and Plastic Surgery??

This week has been rife with house parties, escaped mental patients and tummy tucks gone awry.

No, not me - my jury verdict cases this week.

As you may know, I spend much of my days writing tort jury verdict summaries for a verdict publication.



Most weeks are full of slip and fall cases, malpractice cases with doctors operating on the wrong eye or the usual motor vehicle case (oh no, somebody bumped my bumper in the parking lot and now my entire body is paralyzed), you know, the usual stuff.

But dude, this week was really crazy.

First off, we had the case of the house party gone awry in New York City. Apparently the 19-year-old plaintiff offered to help out another, also under-aged teenage friend, at his birthday party, held at his mom's house. The kid claims that the mother of the birthday boy purchased a butt-load of alcohol for her kid to sell at this birthday party (don't worry, I don't write things like "butt-load" in my work summaries). She apparently told him that he could keep all the profit for his birthday present.

I know, I know, but it just gets worse.

The 19-year-old claims that the whole town ended up showing up and that he was cut with a knife while trying to break up a fight with some gang-bangers, as he describes them. He sued the mom for providing the alcohol that got everybody drunk, which led to a fight with a knife, which led to him getting sliced like a pepperoni. He won his case and hopefully the mother is in some kind of insane asylum right now.

And if that wasn't gorgeous enough for you, I then stumbled upon the case of the escaped mental patient. The girl in this case (another teenager, what is going on with all these crazy teenagers??) kept running out of the mental institution she was living in and into the nearby lake while claiming she was going to kill herself. The police kept having to haul her out of the lake and back into the mental institution. She finally gets tired of trying to pull a Virginia Woolf and decides she is now going to kill herself by jumping off a balcony at the mental institution.

Apparently the fall wasn't much because she jumped and they just hauled her back to the mental institution. The next night she must have been much more serious about it because she found a much higher balcony to jump off of and ended up causing a burst fracture in her spine. As her attorney explained, "there were bone fragments flying everywhere."

The mother of this girl sued the mental institution for not locking her in her a room where she couldn't run into the lake or off a balcony, and they won like millions of dollars.

But the really crazy part of this story, after a million spinal surgeries, the girl is just peachy fine today. Crazy.

Oh, and we can't forget the tummy tuck in which the lady stated she was "gutted like a deer" by her plastic surgeon. This one was earlier in the week so it's a little fuzzy right now, but essentially the lady had gastric bypass and needed to get rid of all that saggy skin you see on those Fattest Man and Woman shows on TLC. And she apparently was hoping to go from fattest woman to Kate Moss status in record time.

The surgery in question was one of many for this lady and despite attempts by her plastic surgeon to talk her out of another surgery, one in which she wanted to have her belly button removed, she insisted. According to the doctor's attorney, "this lady thought it would kind of sexy to not have a belly button."

So the plastic surgeon performed the surgery, got rid of the excess skin and ditched the belly button, all while the lady was under local anesthesia in the guy's office. At first our little Kate Moss in the making thought that was a great idea - ditch your belly button and head back to the office that afternoon - but I guess it's not just the thought that counts.

She sued the plastic surgeon for malpractice, claiming that she could feel all the tugging and pulling on her skin and that she felt "gutted like a deer on the operating table."

She lost her case.

So, good times were had by all this week in the world of jury verdict summaries.

So how was your work week??



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