Meet Miranda.
She’s my first official guest writer. Yeehaw.
Following the lovely photo of her hands and her offsprings’s feet, there’s a story. And while this is me babbling, her babbling begins there.

So back to Miranda. Besides meeting her, you’re going to meet her grandma. And you’re going to meet her version of Chuckie.
Miranda’s a Machine, so I’m going to call her The Machine. She’s a writer, a mom, a wife, an extreme couponer, a funny person, and 1000 other things. She does all of that, plus the 1000, because of that whole Machine thing. She’s a Machine. But I already said that.

Her baby has lips that you could kiss forever and still not run out of prime real estate. If he were normal, or my girls were, I’d be working on an arranged marriage. But as it is, he’s a little wacky and my girls are a lot wacky, so it’s probably best that all three of these cherubs try to find someone that can ground them.

At any rate, when we started talking about Doll Week, The Machine sent me the following story. I tried to find a real picture of one. You know you’ve got a very VERY unique toy when you can find NO TRACE OF IT online. All she has left is her memories. Before her story, I’ll post a picture of her hands and her baby’s feet, because it’s one of my favorites. After her story, I’ll post my photoshopped attempt of…The Miranda Doll.
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Let me open with this: I heart my grandmother. I didn’t just love her….I hearted her, which carries a meaning unto itself nowadays. She was not the Donna Reed type. Not by a long shot. She smoked for many years, made very large, baubly jewelry to sell at the flea market each weekend, took me out to eat, and played Bingo. She always made sure there were tiny glass bottles of Coke in the fridge and plenty of game shows to watch on her 1000 inch television.

And she loved us so much.

That being said, she was not a natural gift giver. Some people have a talent for that sort of thing. Finding some rare trinket, wrapping it in an emotionally-significant way, and passing it along at just the right moment, with just the right expression.

Nope, not MawMaw. She seemed to really enjoy buying things from infomercials. And no wonder, really. Bad gift ideas just seem better on a 1000-inch television.

And so this is how it came into my possession—“the monstrosity,” as I like to call it. It was Christmas, some year, and we were opening gifts under the lovely tree (one of the greatest things about the holidays at her house). And I pulled out a perfectly wrapped package, tore into the paper, lifted the lid…and froze in terror. This was not a too-small sweater, or too-bold nail polish, or too-old candy.

It was a baby doll screen-printed with my own face.

And not my baby face, either. No…my teenaged smile captured in a senior picture just weeks before.

I like to think of myself as a decent actress when it comes to gifts. Good, bad, mediocre, I can pretty well feign surprise and delight. But in this case, I remember only choking out a “Oh…wow. Thanks,” which was a feat, since every cell in my body was screaming at me to fling the unholy thing from my person.

Somehow we made it through the Christmas Day, with the Baby-Adult Miranda doll grinning from the corner. But you can bet she lived the remainder of her days under my bed.
Behind a bag of clothes.
With a box resting on top of her.

I’ve seen movies. I’m no fool.

And then I moved on to college and she went the way of all old toys (Toy Story 3, all the way). But every now and then, I think about her. Not the doll…my MawMaw. And how she perhaps saw an emotional significance in that gift that I could not.

At least, not until now. Now that I am 30. Now that I am a mother, and a wife, and an employee. Now that there is no baby left in her only baby granddaughter. Perhaps “the monstrosity” was just a reminder to stay young. Stay fresh. Stay sweet and innocent.

Or maybe it just gave her a good laugh.

One of our faithful readers just sent me a real link to these disturbing dolls. If you are disturbed and want to be further disturbed, visit http://dollsbylisa.com/Little_Me.htm

Not so long ago we were eating out. I was just thinking fondly of restaurants because I am hungry and about to eat an all-white-turkey-meat hotdog of sorts. Mmmmy. Right. So that led my mind to wander to a better food day in my life. My mind wandered right down to our favorite Sonny’s BBQ. We used to go there a lot.

I love their food.
I do not love their restrooms.

But when Sister Tinklepants asks to go to the potty, you don’t say no. So we went.

We’ve all had them: creepy bathroom experiences in public places. Maybe it’s walking in on some sort of aftermath that leads you to wonder if the previous occupant had been raised by wolves. Maybe it’s wandering into a restroom of a dollar theater and being 100% certain that you’ve interrupted an animal sacrifice or a terrorist operation.

I’ve had my public restroom moments. I am not a germophobe, which might account for my kids having had their share of airborne diseases. Still though, I have standards. One of the rules I have for myself in public bathroom stalls –call me crazy– is that I must shut and lock the door when I’m going to disrobe and relieve. There are at least 150 very obvious reasons for this, most basic, of all rules. But there is at least one person in the greater Tampa Bay area that does not share this particular policy. So as I walked into the Ladies’ room in Sonny’s BBQ that day, I was surprised to have to force myself to look away as I walked past an open stall with an oldish woman using the toilet. Oh. I didn’t see a whole lot, as I managed to snap my neck in the other direction very quickly. The girls gawked as long as they could in that second and a half as I rushed them by into a stall of our own. I had just a moment to gaze upon the old woman’s feet as I could see them from the next door stall. Oh, the horror. Feet are inherently ugly. You should have seen these. Words cannot support the task of describing these feet. Sister Tinklepants was marching back and forth inside this stall singing at the top of her lungs. I’m sure everyone in the restaurant knew that I had two toddlers in the bathroom with me. And as I was waiting for Beloved to be done and pass the torch, the hand that accompanied this gnarled set of pantyhosed feet reached under my stall partition and grabbed hold of Tinklepant’s fat baby leg. My eyes immediately humongosized as I grabbed my baby back and moved her away from the Crazy Toilet Troll. Then came the questions from the girls. Who is that? What was she doing? Why does she pee with the door open? Look at those FEET. We waited for her to move on before we did so ourselves. I was out of stock reactions to horribly awkward moments, so I could not risk facing her at the sinks. Sinks? She potties with the door open! She wasn’t going to wash her hands. Well, either way. That was that. It seemed the price we had to pay for sweet sauce and the moist towelette.

We eat in a lot more often now. And when I have to use the restroom–when I absolutely have to–I always check the feet under the next door stall. You just never know, apparently.

Let’s begin with a cheer, shall we?

We’re Number 1, We can’t be Number 2,
Cuz we’re gonna beat the whoopsies outta you,
The Whoopsies outta you.

OK. So are we Number 1 because you are Number 2 already?
Why can we not be Number 2?
Is that BECAUSE we are already Number 1 or because we are beating your Whoopsies?  Also, what is a Whoopsie? I doubt that is the word that would escape someone being bludgeoned by my team.

Here are a few things I learned today that are of very little consequence, but I will pass them on nonetheless.

1. If you are going to sing “I love you a Bushel and a Peckeroo”, changing the words into a shameful version of wackadoodle, be aware of your surroundings. Ensure that the lady in the Toyota Tercel is not waiting on you to strap in your child so that she can get into her own car 2 feet from you.  Also, do you sing well enough to sing loud in a parking lot?
2. If you have 34 different documents, programs, or processes running on your laptop, it will take you about 5 minutes to complete a mouse click and 10 solid minutes to close all of those windows. Then, your operating system will begin sending you hate mail about what you have been doing for 3 days without a re-boot.
3. Apparently, I forgot we still receive mail. My son came in and said, “We got mail. You better come see.” I thought maybe that meant an exciting shaped package was in there. Maybe there was a ferret hiding in the mailbox. There was a package all right. But it was smashed up against the inside of the mailbox with about 82 other unopened items. Coupons, special and meaningful correspondence from banks and credit card agencies telling me how much they’d love to have lunch with me, fliers, 4 thank you notes from real people, and a mouth-watering life sized pamphlet for Smoothie King. Man, I’m hungry.

So to sum up, watch where you sing, run fewer than 5 applications on  your computer at a time, check your mail, and watch your back for Cheer Babies trying to beat your Whoopsies.

I am afraid the Informinator is not happy. Doll Week wasn’t a week. Or even about dolls entirely. Organizers and Informinators do not fly by the seat of their pants. That’s why they have knowledge and order. I do not have knowledge and order. I have a chaotic brain. And four kids. And one with flu. And another one with a fever that I’m watching. And a very ancient body that just wants to sleep ALL the time. I bet I’ve taken 5 hours worth of naps in the last 3 days. And still I am tired. And so, with all of that said…which sounds like a lot of hooey…Doll Week will march on. Randomly. I’ll get better at all of this. I will. I still have at least 3 doll posts in the hatcher. One of them is psychotic and worth a good nightmare.

Yesterday, during some of my waking hours, I took my daughter to the Organizer’s daughter’s birthday party. Watching people with no arm strength try to throw even a 6-lb bowling ball is a hoot in any culture. I fear that, at some grotesque moment, a child may forget to let go and that ball just takes them away. But then I realize that the ball they throw only rolls at 2.5 mph, so it’d be pretty easy to retrieve the child before they hit any pins. And if they did hit pins, at that speed, there’s little hope any of them would fall. My own daughter, who is 4, is spindly at best. She is the teensiest bit of nothing I have ever seen. I must learn how to mask the chortles that inevitably follow when she spikes the ball and it comes to a complete standstill 6 feet down the lane. This is funny to adults.  Not so much to a 4-yr-old. But we had a great time in spite of a total lack of strength and skill.

The best laugh of the day came when all of these tiny people were signing a bowling pin for the Birthday Girl to take home as a forever keepsake. I am posting the picture. You don’t need me to point out the awesomeness of this.

These are kindergartners, most of them. Phonetic spelling comes and goes. Correcting them is unnecessary. If someone had corrected this little angel, I would have missed out on a moment I will remember for the rest of my life. I would have missed an honest glimpse back into childhood, into friendship, into the innocence that children have before the world smacks them around a time or two and takes that part away.  In that one moment, I relived a lifetime of dest frenbs and I still have that fuzzy feeling with me, 30 hours later. I’ve been blessed with the dest frenbs on the planet. Everybody should have one. And if you do, tell them without spell check. It won’t matter.

But don’t tell them on a bowling pin.
They might think that was weird.

I am about to call this a day. I wonder where that phrase originated. Elaine, get on that one. If it’s interesting, tell me about it. If it’s dull, I don’t care. I imagine a greasy old dude walking over to his kerosene lantern and saying, “This is a day.” And then he exchanges his overalls for a nighty and climbs into bed.

That’s not exactly how I will do it. I will just announce it on a blog. But the reason I would call it a day is that it is a day. A day that is done, but a day nonetheless. It is what it is called.

This brings me, albeit awkwardly, to things that are called the wrong thing. Or perhaps I should say that they are irresponsibly defined. A baker’s dozen. Why do people DO that? Why do I have to know that a Baker’s Dozen is 13? Why can’t that just be called 13 of something? A dozen is 12. A Baker’s Dozen should be 12 of something that belongs to that particular baker.

Really. I mean this.  This is hard for people like me. People who struggle to read the recipe right are certainly going to be challenged by the cutsie colloquialisms that belong to real cooks, don’t you think? The jargon is staggering.

And not that this is really related, but just walk alongside me for a second. A cake mix.  Wouldn’t you think that is just for cakes?  Is everybody supposed to know that you can use a yellow cake mix for yellow CUPcakes? There aren’t separate mixes for cupcakes?

Well, maybe that just seems really, REALLY obvious to every last person that is over 11 years old. Maybe even to people who are under 11. Or maybe to people who are over 11 but don’t speak a lick of English. Maybe I’m the only English-speaking, over-11 person in the free world that would question whether there’s such a thing as a dedicated cupcake mix.

The answer was as disconcerting as the fact that there are two kinds of dozen.

And so with that, I will call this a day.

Day.

I recently acquired a new doll. This one belonged to the Informinator’s daughter. We’ll call her InformiJunior. While I laughed my head off when I first heard what this doll can do, I must sincerely acknowledge the following:

• InformiJunior loved this doll.
• My own girls now love this doll.
• I think I love this doll, too. Just enough so that I panicked when I couldn’t find her today. There’s a lot to be said for a person, or a toy, that can cheer for you while simultaneously mocking the other team.

Anyone that can get by with these cheers has my vote. So to kick off doll week, we’ll start with my favorite cheer and the other four will follow each day this week.

Just to be very sure you understand what Cheer Baby is saying, I’m posting the lyrics. Chant along. It’s a tad addictive.

Riding on a donkey, sitting on a cactus.
We think your team needs a little practice.
Jump in the tub.
Pull out the plug.
There goes your team,
Chug, chug, chug.

I wish I could extend the hand of friendship to the man or woman that wrote those words. I mean, cactus and practice? Pure genius. And then, with a stroke of vengeful rancor, Cheer Baby wills the other team into the tub, where she sends them spinning down the drain with a triple chug “take that!”  Awesome.

And just for my own edification, I did a Google Images search on Cheer Baby. It didn’t turn up my baby, but it turned up these little gems.

Some Teletubby Cheerleaders…

And then this one. Little too much mixture of doll and reality for my taste.

Here’s Bad Hair Cheer Baby in a laundry basket or something…

And here’s one in a perpetual squatting position. She must have great quads.

And a shout out to the Longhorn fans…

Whoa. I’m going to stop after this one, because there is just nothing else to say. What in the world?

It all started with one recipe.

The Italian Meat Roll.

It was 1995.

“This is either divine or we’re going to spew it out of our mouths the first bite we take,” I said to Kelley, my sister-in-law, who was joining me on this grand cooking adventure. We were carefully perusing the pages of our new Cooking-Once-a-Month book. And dude, if we were not excited about it! This was going to revolutionize our lives. This would feed our families (three people, total) for a month and would require no thought from us beyond that first day of cooking. This was awesomeness, Missy-style.

Then I started reading my menu choices. Split pea soup. Lentil stew. Corrugated Cow Tummies. Spit in a bucket. Why would you split peas anyway? They are already so tiny.  And I still do not know what a lentil is. I just know they shouldn’t be eaten. In stew or elsewise. But we jumped in and started making our month’s menu plan and accompanying grocery list. We had committed. There was no turning back.

I have no memory of what would have to have been a massive trip to Publix. I suspect that the part of my brain that protects me has suppressed this memory forever. As much as I hate the grocery store, I can only imagine how painful it must have been for me to shop for a month’s worth of ingredients for recipes that I was already questioning. Beyond acquiring groceries, the next step was to plan a Saturday when Kelley and I could both be available to cook all day. Doesn’t that sound fun? Stand up all day on your only day off work and do the thing that you absolutely hate to do for even 15 minutes at a time. But in theory, this was going to save me from doing it every night when I was brain dead and unmotivated. In theory.

I have only a few sketchy memories from that day of cooking 16 years ago. One is that my feet hurt really, really bad at the end of it. I had recently injured my ankle and I think it was swollen up like an old lady’s in pantyhose by the end of it. I also have a flash of memory about the split pea soup and lentil stew. I remember cooking it…stirring…smelling…squinting…trying to cook with my head and nose at a complete right angle. This is the color of the Incredible Hulk. And I bet this is what he smelled like when he was mad and beating people up. I’m never going to eat this. And I didn’t. Ever. I threw out a frozen block of Hulk Stew 6 months later. It landed like a brick in the bottom of my trash can. I think I heard it crack on impact.

And, of course, I remember the Italian Meat Roll.

I remember that meat roll like it was last night and my name is Giovanni.  The recipe was spread out in front of us in a kitchen the size and shape of a tie box. The ingredients were also spread out in front of us, occupying what teensy amount of counter space we could afford. Thaw dough. OK, Publix took care of that one. Now what? Spread into a 14 x 24 inch rectangle. 14 x 24 inches. That’s 2 feet by a legal sheet a paper. Yowza. That is one big ole dough rectangle. Well, okay. We started rolling that out. It was supposed to be a quarter inch thick and the aforementioned hugeness of rectangularity.  Done. Next…

Brown ground beef; stir in remaining ingredients. Get the beef, I said to Kelley. 2.5 pounds. We started browning. And stirring. It smelled a whooooole lot better than split peas or lentils, I can tell you. On this one point, my memory does not betray me.  Spoon filling evenly onto dough, slightly pressing filling into dough. Hmm, now we are definitely getting more complicated. We’ve gone from objective math to subjective adjectives. And we are spooning evenly ONTO and pressing slightly INTO. We started spooning some cute little dollops onto the dough…very evenly, of course…and pressing those into the filling. And we spooned and filled and pressed and shaped and pressed and filled and spooned, slightly and evenly. And then we wiped our furrowed brows to observe our dough and filling creation.

That is a lot of beef.
And dough.
But mostly beef.

Roll dough lengthwise like a jelly roll and cut into 24 1-inch slices. There’s that math again. It was time to roll. The oven was preheating. We were ready. So we started rolling. We rolled that 24 inch x 14 inch slab of dough up over that warm ground beef. Except that we really didn’t roll it. Because it wouldn’t go. There was no room to roll anything. That was like trying to wrap a giant zucchini with a miniature banana peel. Well, okay. We won’t roll it, per se. We’ll fold it up, ever so gingerly, over the beef. So I tried that for about 3 seconds. That obviously wasn’t happening either.  We had ourselves a big fat 3T Beef Baby trying to squeeze into a 12-month dough onesie.

So, let’s both get on either side of this thing, I said to Kelley. You fold that side, I’ll fold this one. Ready, heave.

Nope. Now the dough was starting to disintegrate completely. It look liked some poor kid’s minnow net. We had caught some beef. And it ruined our net.

What in the Abraham Lincoln is going on here? Shouldn’t this be easier that this? I don’t think it was supposed to take 20 minutes and a forklift. Kelley was perplexed, looking over the recipe for the 7th time.

Wait a sec. How much ground beef did we brown? she asked.

2.5 pounds, I answered automatically. She started laughing. Really, really hard. I was kind of aggravated at the entire process, since as I’ve stated, I already hate cooking. But she was laughing really, really hard and could no longer speak English to share with me what was so very funny. But her finger was lodged on the page in a very purposeful manner and so followed with my eyes. And then I started laughing too. I was also crying, mostly because of the laughing, but also because I hate cooking and split peas and having to make second trips to the grocery store. I plopped down on the ugly tile floor of the tie-box kitchen so that I could laugh properly without further swelling my old lady pantyhose leg.

The recipe called, rather plainly, I might add, for 2.5 CUPS of browned ground beef. That’s quite different from 2.5 pounds. Especially when you start jellyrolling it into mushy pizza dough. When we were all done laughing and crying over the beef that ate the pizza roll, we stood back up, straightened our aprons, and made a new plan. We tossed the abused and evaporated dough into the trash can, went back to Publix for a new one, reduced the beef by more than half, and rolled that meaty deliciousness up into the bread dough like a hand in a glove.

Well, that only took a half day. Cooking once a month was quickly becoming cooking FOR a month. Sweet mother of the Incredible Hulk.

Ah, the meat roll. I never did cut it into 24 1-inch slices. I just couldn’t further press my luck. So we cooked it as a solid roll and cut it as we ate it, in any size slices that we wanted. And though it had exposed the losers in us, we loved that meat roll. With this little dose of honestly, I announce to you some Recipes for the Unskilled and Lazy. I’m 3 parts unskilled and 1 part lazy. But I’m all parts “can’t cook”, so these recipes have been tried and true by a person who truly isn’t intuitive in the kitchen.

And though I royally messed up this first attempt at the Italian Meat Roll, you will not make the same mistake and I feel it is safe to put this recipe into this category as the first meal on the list. More easy meals and leftover creations are coming soon in this category. Also, this is Doll Week. Let the good times roll.