Chubby Girl Brigade

Confession: This may come as some surprise, but I'm no supermodel.

I've never been very good about taking care of my skin, but recently I've found myself exfoliating and moisturizing like a supermodel. This is because I've recently discovered Burt's Bees Citrus Facial Scrub and Carrot Nutritive Day and Night Creme. Before you all start thinking that a youthful complexion and glowing skin is my only motive, I must confess that the nutmeg in the facial scrub, combined with the carrot extract in the moisturizer make me smell like carrot cake all day and there are times when I can barely resist licking my own face.

GAF's Fat Chance Thanksgiving

I get to spend Thanksgiving with assorted siblings, nieces, nephews, stepsiblings, assorted stepnieces and stepnephews at my mother’s house. There may even be an aunt or uncle in attendance. Then in the early evening, I will head over to my dad’s house, where a few of the assorted siblings will congregate and try not to be rude to the host.  

 

Fat Chance:

• I will go home with any of the 6 dozen yummy squash buns I baked for our family gathering. 
• I will not be jealous of my sister in some way—she’s thinner, richer, more organized, more tasteful, cuter, younger, has less kids, has more square footage of house per family member, and she’s spending Thanksgiving here without her children. I’ll have to be with mine, and since there are quite a few of them, I will be telling at least one of them to be quiet and stop fighting every five minutes.
• I will not be worried that my children are annoying someone. My SIL was making jokes about my “millions” of kids and therefore, I’m now paranoid that my kids are too much for anyone to bear. (Sister-in-law, you know who you are, and I know you occasionally read this, and no, I’m not mad at you for saying it. Just paranoid that you think my kids are a bother. I’m a bad parent!)
• I will get out of helping my mother hand wash all the silverware
• I’ll get a second helping of stuffing—there is NEVER enough!
• I’ll not put my foot in my mouth. One year it was calling the cranberry jello salad “Pepto Bismol” salad right in front of the person who made it, last year it was bad-mouthing parents who put their children in daycare right in front of my stepsister, who put her two girls in daycare right out of the womb. I will never learn.
• I will stand up for myself when my dad tells me, “Boy, you’ve gotten fat over the last year.”
• I will get to watch the impending paternal blow-up when my dad finds out my brother’s secret—because my brother probably won’t tell him in front of me. But I wish I could watch. Fireworks are a fun part of any holiday.

Leftover Taco Meat

A generic adult female ponders a meaty problem.

 

Apparently leftover taco meat is a burning issue in the mind of googlers, because we got two hits off of this search. (Side note: to quote Dave Barry, Leftover Taco Meat would be a good name for a band)

 

I assume that the people who googled this phrase wanted to know what to do with it, and weren’t hunting down nude pictures of it. (There are WAY too many people wanting to see pictures of Rachel Ray in the buff—GET A LIFE, YOU P-O-R-N FREAKS! She’s a cook, fer cryin’ out loud! And one that budgets! She can’t be that hot) So I got to thinking, what can you do with leftover taco meat? 

Wracking my brain, it wracks back, and then I throttle it

A generic adult female’s brain refuses to cooperate.

OK. I need to write a CGB article. My writer’s wages are being withheld because I haven’t written very much in the last little while. I’m at the computer, Microsoft Word is open, the daycare kid is down for his nap, and JinkyBean (aka MonkeyBean, alias child #2 who doesn’t have school today) is taking a hot shower after a grueling wrestling match with the haircutting scissors (I won). No excuses. Got to write something.

I'm Giving A Whole New Meaning To The Term "In-Flight Meal"

I recently had to fly.

First of all, I'm not much of a flyer. I actually prefer to drive, partly because I never really go anywhere that's so far away that flying is the best way to get there and partly because I like to check out the scenery and visit tiny towns, and mostly because flapping my arms enough to fly might seem like real exercise (har, har).

So when I heard that my friends had been bumped for chub on their flight to Seattle, I was even more nervous about my upcoming flight.

Kirby? That's not a name, that's a vacuum cleaner!

A generic adult female is trapped in her bedroom for over an hour.

Last night, just after dinner, as I was settling onto my bed to take a brief breather, the doorbell rang. Generic adult husband, who had just put on a McCartney CD and started doing the dishes, answered it. I heard voices of discussion and the unknown voice said, “OK. Great—I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I wondered what was going on, so I went out to ask GAH. He said, “That was a guy offering to clean our furniture for free. I asked him what the catch was and he said that there wasn’t one, he was just in the neighborhood cleaning furniture to get the word spread. He said it would only take 5 minutes and we get our furniture cleaned for free.” My poor gullible husband is too nice. I told him that I would be hiding in the bedroom because I didn’t want to listen to the sales pitch, which I was sure was forthcoming.