Day 17: Want better cookies? Eat a brownie

My friend Starfish posted an article on Facebook the other day about a new strain of pot called Sexxpot that made me wish, and not for the first time, that I could smoke pot. This new type of pot apparently causes women to have better orgasms. You heard it right here. Now you can add female Viagra to the impressive list of benefits Ms. Mary Jane has to offer.

I do not smoke pot, a fact which surprises a lot of people, including me, and it's not because pot is illegal here in the heartland. I don't really care about that. In fact, one of the reasons I wish I could smoke it is so I could say "Fuck you" to The Man. The reason I don't smoke is because it gives me panic attacks and paranoia. And since pot tends to slow everything down and make it last longer .... you guessed it: a panic attack while you're stoned is endlessly excruciating.

Paranoia isn't an uncommon side effect of marijuana, although in my experience it didn't happen every time. I couldn't predict when it would though, and eventually it wasn't worth taking the risk of not knowing whether I'd be giggling, shoving nacho cheese Doritos in my face, drinking Dr. Pepper and vodka, and singing along to the Beatles' "I Get High with a Little Help from My Friends" or sitting in the corner of the couch in utter silence because I wasn't sure if people were really saying what I thought they were saying and worse whether I had answered, and if so, if I'd said what I thought I said. And what if I have a heart attack and I can't talk and tell anybody, because my heart seems to be racing and I could die and then my parents would find out I smoke pot and I'd be dead and everybody would hate me for being such a buzz kill ..... It was like pot intensified whatever I was feeling, and if what I was feeling was anxiety, BAM. I was feeling anxiety on steroids. For hours. Hell, it happened even when I wasn't anxious. Like a lot of people who suffer the same side effects from weed, I'm not sure which came first.

To get back to the subject, I never do remember weed making me horny, much less giving me better orgasms. So I think I would like to try this new pot, which is made possible through a lower lever of THC. I mean, assuming someone would actually consider blazing a blunt and then having sex with a 50-something-year-old overweight redhead who has a 5-year-old sleeping upstairs and a 90-pound autistic poodle who gets excited and pees whenever someone visits. Hmm. I might have some other barriers that a hit on the old bong wouldn't eliminate.

Even so, I'm trying to imagine tying my experience with being stoned to more powerful orgasms. Because I used to sit around for hours struggling to keep up with conversations, second guessing whether someone had actually said what I thought he said, and trying to remember if I'd replied and if I'd actually said what I thought I'd said. Or if I'd just sat there like an idiot for 10 minutes, and I should reply or everybody was going to find out that I really don't handle being stoned all that well sometimes, which would make me a total loser because everybody else loves getting high so much. And .... Oh, no. Somebody's rolling another joint and I'll have to take at least one hit or they'll all think I'm a lightweight. And have we smoked 2 joints or 3, and can someone die from being too high, because maybe I'm too high and I'll never come down and I'll be stuck in this place where I can't tie my thoughts to my actions, so I don't know if I just thought I'm too high or if maybe I actually said it which will totally blow my reputation as a hard partier and did he really ask if I wanted to order a pizza because I'm starving, but I don't know if I answered him or not and shit, my mouth is so dry I probably can't even swallow one bite of pizza, but I'm too stoned to get up off this couch and get a glass of water so I guess I'll just drink some beer, which I hate. And did I ever say I wanted pizza? God, I want some pizza ......

See what I mean? Nothing about a blazing vagina there. Just paranoia and dry mouth and munchies. Not that hot. Most of the time. Sometimes I had fun. Lots of fun. Once I even played the guitar like a rock star even though I didn't really play the guitar back then. I would smoke pot every day if I could be assured one of those good highs that were all too rare. Maybe I just needed some horny dope.

So let's say I got some of this sexy weed, and I got somebody to smoke it with. I can just imagine what would go through my head while he was satisfying his munchies. I think he was on the right spot. Did I tell him where it was? Or did I only imagine I told him? What if he doesn't find the right spot because I thought I told him, but I didn't really tell him.Did I say mmmmm? I want to encourage him, but I don't want to make him think we're there yet .... Is it too late to tell him how I like it? Was he on the right spot just a second ago or was it 5 minutes ago. Five minutes! I thought this pot was supposed to hurry things up. Has he been down there 5 minutes? What if he hates being down there and now we're stoned and time is moving so .... fucking .... slow for him. Why does time have to move so slow? Does he think he's been down there for .... like .... an hour? What if he's stopped breathing? What if this stuff is so good I can't stop once I get there and I'm stuck in an orgasm for hours? OK, that's not the worst thing that could happen .... 

Sigh. It's not easy being me. Much as I'd like to try it, even if I could score some horny weed, I'll have to give it a pass and get my orgasms the good old-fashioned way. Now where's that vibrator?

Day 12: Cauliflower stuffing my way

Stole this. Mine looked
 just the same.

I owe a post from this past Saturday, so I thought I'd take advantage of Wordless Wednesday to catch up. I haven't posted a recipe yet this month, so I'm going to do that. But I'm going to go a step further and tell you how I made the recipe with what I had in my kitchen. I know a lot of people are afraid of cooking, with or without a recipe. I thought I'd share a recipe called simply Cauliflower Stuffing that paleo or low-carb readers might like to make for Thanksgiving, and give it a few twists that might not be obvious.

(Note: I'm not a food blogger. A good food blogger would have taken a dozen photos of the process of creating this recipe. I don't have time for that shit. I even stole the one photo I did use. I'm not always a good person.)

I'm going to start with ingredients. A friend posted this recipe this afternoon, and I didn't have everything it called for, so I made a couple of substitutions, usually with things I had from my CSA that I need to use. I had a large head of cauliflower that I wanted to use, so I had to adjust the other ingredients to fit.

Ingredients

• 4 tbsp. butter 3 Tbsp butter plus 3 Tbsp olive oil
  
• 1 onion, chopped 1 leek chopped
  
• 2 5 large  small carrots, peeled and chopped
  
• 2  4 celery stalks, chopped or thinly sliced
  
• 1 small large head cauliflower, chopped
  
• 1 c. chopped mushrooms  1 small eggplant, peeled, sliced, salted for 1/2 hour, rinsed and cubed
  
• kosher   sea salt
  
• Freshly ground black pepper
  
• 1/4 c. Freshly Chopped Parsley 1/2 tsp dried thyme
  
• 2 tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary
  
• 1 tbsp. chopped fresh sage or 1 1/2 tsp. ground sage (too lazy to go outside in the dark and cut some fresh)
  
• 1/2 c. vegetable or chicken broth 3/4 cup beef broth (because that's what I had open in the fridge)
  

I followed the cooking directions pretty much as they were given in the recipe. It's a standard order of operations that didn't need to be tweaked even though I made so many changes to the ingredients.

My review: I give it 5 out of 5 stars. The original and my adaptation. Coraline and I both liked it. It's a rich, nutritious, warm blend of vegetables, and the recipe could be adapted in many ways. We ate it with some left-over roast beef, and that was all we needed for a balanced meal. Really the only downside to the recipe is that it takes about an hour to make. Lots of chopping and sauteing. 

Would I stuff a turkey with it? No, it would get too mushy. Would I serve it alongside a turkey? Sure. The sage gives it a Thanksgiving dinner flavor. For those who avoid bread or grain, it's a better-than-satisfactory substitute for traditional bread stuffing. For those who don't though, it's probably not going to satisfy.

I can imagine a lot of other variations for this recipe, depending on what you have in your fridge or pantry. If you like spicy foods, throw in some heat -- chopped hot peppers would do the trick, although I'd leave out the sage in that case. Add some garlic when you cook the onions if you love garlic. You could also add sweet red bell peppers or cubed winter squash or sweet potatoes. The mushrooms are optional, but you could use any variety for a rich, earthy flavor. I have several eggplants in my fridge and no mushrooms, so I choose to just swap them out because they're of similar color and texture when cooked. If you've got fresh spinach, kale or chard, chop some up and toss that in toward the end of the cooking time. You could even add cooked white potatoes and make a sort of hash. If you don't like the herbs or don't have them, add a cup of shredded cheese just before serving. Finally, if you want a one-pan meal, add any kind of cooked, chopped meat, from chicken to sausage to leftover turkey, during the final 15-minute cooking period. And for vegetarians, add some beans or chick peas, or even cubes of seitan or sauteed tofu.

That's it. I'm all out of ideas for how this recipe could be twisted and shaped. Let me know if you try it, and if you make any adjustments yourself. And, of course, if you have questions, you may call the emergency hotline at 1-888-reticula any time after 10:00 am.

Bon appetite!

Day 16: Wordless Wednesday: Self-portrait

Note: My apologies to those of you who read on Feedly or through email. Blogger played a dirty trick on me tonight and posted this several times. Obviously.

Day 15: Going Native

No doubt about it, I've been feeling a little cray cray this past week. So tonight I did what I said I was going to do: I asked my daughter Elvira to cut all my hair off. There it is. Enough to make, as Elvira said, about 2 1/2 toupees. Tomorrow the color goes on. Not blue. Something else. Something radical. I'm still thinking about the "Fuck the patriarchy" tattoo. Bet Coraline would be the kid with a grandma who has that tattoo.

But this post isn't about that. On my Facebook page for this blog -- you've liked me on Facebook, right? -- I promised I was going to write about deodorant tonight. And not, as you might have hoped, vagina deodorant. Just the regular pit stuff.

Here's why. I have tried dozens of the so-called natural deodorants and all of them leave me smelling like a hamster cage by the end of the day. Except for that mineral stone. That worked, but it left a rash from my elbows to my ribs. What can I say? I'm a redhead. I'm sensitive. I hate the idea of using something that might give me cancer or Alzheimer's, but Secret was the only one that worked, so a Secret unscented girl was I. For years. My black t-shirts showed it too with their stiff, white pits. 

A few months ago, a friend posted on Facebook that she'd found a natural deodorant called Native that really worked. Uh huh, I thought. Blah blah blah. Where have I heard that one before.

But she insisted she'd tried all the other too, and none of them worked until this one. I decided to at least check out the website.

And .... holy shit. Twelve dollars for a stick of deodorant! That's a hell of a lot more than a stick of Secret. But free shipping. And a full refund if I didn't like it. And the list of ingredients looked like I was probably going to get a refund. I could find most of them in my own kitchen. But, hey, paraben and aluminum free. If it worked, I wouldn't be risking cancer and the dreaded Alz. Fine. I decided to try it.

I usually get unscented everydamnthing, but I decided to get lavender and rose. They do have unscented, as well as eucalyptus and mint, coconut and vanilla, jasmine and cedar, and oakmoss and basil leaf. So delicious! I'm glad I got the lavender, which smells like real lavender, not the sickly fake stuff. I can't even smell the rose, and the scent fades away shortly after I put it on. I haven't had a problem with it like I do most scents.

I was still stuck on the price though. $12! That's a lot. Then I thought about how often I buy deodorant. One stick usually lasts me at least 8 months. Sometimes longer. So how much was I really going to spend on it in a year? $15 at most? Put in perspective, it didn't seem like too much. So I sent off my order.

And guess what? It works! It really works. I was skeptical for about a week. I thought my Secret was still lingering in my pits, working its secret magic. I could usually go a couple of days without reapplying the Secret before I started to smell like one of the guys who push shopping carts through the alley behind my garage. I went on a 19-mile bike ride. No B.O.

The big test came a couple of weeks after I started using it: Ecstatic dance and the temperature was close to 90 that day. Surely no deodorant could stand up to that, and I was sure the Secret was out of my system. My shirt was soaked through with sweat after 2 hours of dancing. I surreptitiously sniffed at my pits while I danced. Nothing. Not even a whiff of litter box odor.

Later a few of us walked to a local brew pub. I was telling my friends about this new deodorant. They were skeptical too, but I lifted my arm and let them smell. No smell! Would you dare let your friends stick their noses into your pits after 2 hours of sweaty dancing at the end of a long day? I'm guessing the answer is no.

So, what's the downside? For me, Native only lasts one day, which is just as it's advertised to do. Twenty-four hours on the dot. If I try to squeeze an extra few hours out the next day, I can smell it. It's easy enough to re-apply though.

Another thing is the emails. They send a lot of them. If you give them your email address though, you can win a 12-month supply. I don't know how much they think that is. For me, maybe 2 sticks. Emails are easy enough to stop if you don't want to get them though.

And, like I said, the price. I'd love to try all of the scents, but it's too pricey for that. I am happy with the one I chose though, so I'll just have to imagine what oakmoss and basil leaf smells like.

More benefits. If you make a video, you can get a free stick. I haven't done that, but it could be worth it.

No more white pits. At first it felt a little stickier than Secret, but I got used to it. Now I'm glad it doesn't feel like I can't get if off in the shower like an antiperspirant does.

That's it. After all my ragey political posts of late, all I'm doing tonight is recommending a new deodorant for you to try. Isn't that relaxing?

Also, please send hats. My head is going to be cold now.

Disclaimer: I'm not getting paid to write this post, nor have I been offered any free product. I wish! I'm just sharing my experience with a product you might be interested in.

Day 14: An acceptable rape joke

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