Dear Boodie…

(This is a very special letter to my cat – my love, my joy, my giant-hernia-producing-pain-in-the-butt, cat.)

Dear Boodie,

I saved you from sure extermination. That day I first saw you with your big red eye (that had been injured when a nail somehow got in there) and so tiny I could fit you in my hand. You stole my heart with your aloof and feral ways. I had to take  you home and make you my own.

At first you were shy and would wait until I was half conscious on the couch before you would venture out and crawl up on my chest, where you would sleep, issuing forth your little snore. Fur soft as silk – a funny face with yellow eyes that said ‘I have no brain cells’ I quickly came to love you.

We had many adventures, and you learned how to be a dog from the old girl – who we finally had to put asleep. But we fared well for that year when it was just  you and me. Then came the puppy, who you in the tradition of our family, taught to be a cat. To jump up on counters and perch on the back of sofas and chairs. To prefer eating from your cat box, rather than her dish. Oh sure, there was sibling rivalry but secretly, I knew you loved each other. As evidenced by the good morning kiss you give each other every morning. Followed by a barking and yeowling tussle.

But much as I love you my dear, overweight, obese and funny cat there are a few things we need to get straight:

1. When my eyelashes flutter at 4 a.m. I am not awake and getting ready to feed you, I am dreaming.

2. When the first fingers of sunlight filter through our guazy curtains, it is not time to feed you.

3. When I get up in the middle of the night to pee, it is not midnight snack time.

4. When I come home from work and I turn on my computer,  it is not dinner time.

5. When I move, it is not feeding time.

6. When I speak, it is not lunch time.

7. When I turn on the shower it is not time to feed you.

8. Are you sensing a pattern here?

I know that you don’t like Roomie’s cats and therefore you refuse to leave our room, with all your hiding places and the doggie to protect you from the evil ones. But seriously, you need to go to Jenny Craig’s. You need to get a full length mirror and look, really look at yourself. It is time for some real tough love here. You are FAT. Yes, you are. You are F.A.T. fat. You must brave the great outdoors and chase some mice or lizards or spiders or whatever it is you like to chase. You must go out and kick some Roomie Cat butt and make a space for yourself in the yard, with it’s big trees and green grass and several patio chairs just right for napping in the sun.

You must, my cat, come to know that there is more to life than food.

Love,

Mom

Bad Thoughts

 Okay, I admit it – I’d sell out a friend just to get rid of my fat ass. Shallow, huh? Still, the fantasy of wearing a size 8 again makes a woman do desperate things. What’s your bad, evil wish? Hmmm? 😉 I know you got one. Eveybody has at least one. Right?

WC

I Love Me Some Thin Mints! Don’t You?

I don’t know about you but every year right about this time I start to get a little excited. Not because Spring is right around the corner or because a cute guy has moved in to the house across the street but because the cookies of all cookies are about to go on sale.

Yep – I am a girl scout cookie junkie. I just can’t help myself. If there is even one thin mint within a 20 mile radius I can smell it, hunt it down and take it for my own. Since I don’t even smoke any more I figure I am entitled to just this one little obsession.

Also too there is just something sweet and nostailgic about them. They have been around since I can remember and I can remember pretty far back. Always somewhere around spring break you would start to see little cardboard table and folding chair sales stands cropping up – in front of super markets, laundramats, banks and even street corners in some suburban neighborhoods. Naturally when I was a kid I knew many of the salesgirls 😉 now, not so much.

However, I do have one little friend who is probably one of my favorite cookie sellers:  

Let’s call her Cookie-Girl – she does a bang up job, according to her mom and troop mama. But I mean who has to be told, check out that stand, nice display, clean, neat with lots of variety but no clutter. Poifect.

What many of you may not know is that there is a whole lot more to selling girl scout cookies than meets the eye. In the words of my favorite Girl Scout Mama:

Cookie sales gets so much negative crap that people don’t see the good it does. On the money side, it funds the whole Girl Scout program and it helps troops earn money for their activities. (camping, horseback riding, community service projects [one troop paid their way to Build A Bear to stuff and dress bears then donated them to the Fire Department to give to kids that needed them])

On the “Where Girls Grow Strong” side of it (a Girl Scout saying) cookie sales gives girls a chance to learn so much in a safe environment. Sales, money handling, responsibility, people skills, persistence, goal setting, etc. When it’s all over, they have such a sense of achievement! You can see the change in them. They’ve grown!

Also, especially in recent years, there are many troops who are selling cookies in order to send them to the troops. The way it works is this: you buy a box of cookies and instead of taking them home and eating them and making your thighs and butt even bigger, you tell the troop to go ahead and send them to the troops overseas. In addition to this, the kids take a lot of the money they make and send additional cookies to the troops. For example there is a relatively well known program called Operation Cookie Drop, which is a program started by Girls Scouts who managed to send bagillions of cookies to our young men and women in Iraq and gave them a  taste of home.

If you see a local troop selling in your area, ask them what their ’cause’ or program is that they are selling for – I’m sure you’ll discover that they are not in it for a beach chair or so they can all go to Chuck E. Cheeese for a weekend. They are going to do something special with the money for someone who needs it, senior citizen homes, the troops overseas, underprivilidged children and so forth.

So the next time you see that little cardboard table and chairs set up, don’t hide your face and mumble something about being on a diet. Chat with the girls and find out what they intend to do with their proceeds. And don’t be so darn stingy, give them a five-spot and tell them to give a box of cookies to their favorite shut in, kid stuck in a hospital, or a kid in a uniform overseas and far far away from home.

If you want to know when the cookies are going on sale in your area you can go here – type in your zip code and councils in your area should come up, with their schedules of sales.

Heck there is even a myspace girlscout page here.

So for pete’s sake, get some Thin Mints, Tagalongs, Samoas, Trefoils or even som DoSiDos and know that you are likely contributing to something worthy and worthwhile. Heck if you are really worried about your diet they even sell some fudgy sugar free numbers AND all the cookies have Zero trans fats. So let’s not sweat the small stuff, otay.

For pictures, descriptions and nutritional information about the cookies go here

Also, if you just want to help and contribute to a troop who is sending cookies to the troops, I personally know of such a troop and I’d be happy to hook you up with them. If so, feel free to email me.

Okay, let’s get our fat asses down there and be loading up on the damn finest cookies ever made in America. Sound good? 😉

WC

I Was Doing it Wrong!

Who knew all this time I was weighing myself the wrong way! Apparently, I only weight 17 lbs. For cripessakes I am practically anorexic! I need chocolate and ice cream immediately – it’s a matter of life and death. I guess the big fat ass is an optical illusion. It’s all a matter of perspective, doncha think? 😆

WC

Writer Chick Predicts…

You know when I was a kid I used to love to read or hear about all the crazy, whacko predictions the psychics of the day would make about the coming year. What was really hilarious was how they would (later) try so hard to make the facts of something somehow mold into a prediction they’d made.

So in the spirit of that – I, Writer Chick, shall also make a few predictions sure not to come true – and if any do, it will be purely accidental.

I predict that in 2007:

1. Fat people will be outlawed in NYC and if apprehended with a box of oreos, booked for possession of trans-fats.
2. Teddy Kennedy will become the new spokesperson for Jenny Craig (maybe Kirstie will lend him her old body shapers?).
3. Global warming will cause hot, fresh pizzas to rain from the skys during hurricanes that rail for 30 minutes or less.
4. Britney Spears will create her own underwear line called Now you see it – Now you don’t.
5. In a tell-all book, Madonna will reveal her favorite moisturizer is embalming fluid.
6. Al Gore will invent a hybrid vehicle that runs on gas and electricity and call it the Priestess.
7. The ACLU will file a class action lawsuit against the State of Texas in behalf of beef cows, citing slavery and wrongful death as key points.
8. Apple will unveil its latest innovation, the BlogPod.
9. Stem cell researchers will successfully replicate a conscience and offer it to Hillary Clinton for beta testing.
10. Arnold Schwartzeneger will ‘come out’ as a Democrat.
11. Rosie O’Donnell will admit on Oprah that she is the victim of a botched sex change operation.
12. The first transexual Miss America will be crowned.
13. The New York Yankees will win the World Series – by accident.
14. Scientists will discover that land masses and ice masses surrounded by water experience erosion, thereby diminishing the size of said mass.
15. Inexpicable accidents and scandals will befall any opponents to Senator Clinton in the bid for the Democrat candidacy.
16. Barak Obama will blame his ears on President Bush (why not? everything else is his fault.)
17. In a daring move, CBS will replace anchorperson Katie Couric with Barney the purple dinosaur – hoping to capture the heretofore untapped demographic of oversized stuffed animals everywhere.
18. The medical community will unanimously agree that living is dangerous to one’s healthy and Congress will pass a law that all newborns henceforth will be tatooed with the Surgeon General’s warning of same.
19. Michael Moore will premeire his first film based on fact in his biopic called Fat Like Me.
20. Maureen Dowd will marry Jim Gilchrist and become a born again Libertarian and start her own newspaper called North of the Border.
21. Bob Woodward will admit on 60 Minutes that everything he has ever written is lies and promote his upcoming book, All I know is I Can’t Tell the Truth.
22. In an attempt to increase environmental awareness, major designers will develop a machine that can make fabric out of matter recovered in landfills. And use the fabric in their new spring lines. (clothes pins will be issued to all attendees at the Spring showing.)
23. Jimmy Carter will become the new spokesperson for Jiff peanut butter, making the claim that it has a little known use as mortar (as demonstrated in the habitat for humanity model homes).

and finally….

We’ll all be going to Hell in a handbasket. 😉

Okay, those are my predictions…anyone care to offer some of theirs?

Lotsa Pasta (Holy Spaghetti, Batman!)

You know, I’m a pretty nice person. I am really am – I do good deeds. I try to help people whether they are friends or total strangers. I send my mother cards on her birthday, Christmas and Mother’s Day. I share my lunch with my co-workers. I try to encourage other writers to keep at their work. I make Christmas dinners and decorate the house for roomie. If I see a movie or something I know a friend wants I pick it up for them. I listen to telemarketers before I politely end the call. I recycle. I clean up after myself. I pay my bills, balance my checkbook, apologize when I act like an ass. I’m even nice to liberals…

After all that, you’d think that God would let me eat pasta. You’d think that he’d give me a pass on that one thing. (at least Angel Hair)That he keep it from settling in my ass and thighs. I’m not even talking about adding garlic bread here – just pasta.

But no. No such luck. I am destined to eat pasta and be the size of a city bus or pass on it and force myself to eat the lousy anti-pasto. And what’s up with that. Since when do you name foods for being pro or con? Anti-pasto always makes me think of anti-freeze. I suppose the comparison is about right. Pasta freezes up in my system for sure, where anti-pasto slides right through.

But oh to give up pasta…alfredo, bolognese, carbonara, lasagna, manicotti, vermicelli, primavera – red sauce, white sauce, clam sauce, meat sauce….the list goes on and on. And don’t even get me started on noodles and macaroni! It tastes so good going down but once it hits the old metabolism it acts like cement and mortar. Unfair. Totally, completely and absolutely unfair. And really illogical.

Genetically speaking I’m Irish and German – lots of starch in those diets. Shouldn’t my metab be geared to suck that stuff up? Shouldn’t it have the enzymes and whatever to use that fuel instead of storing it for a famine. Hmmm….well there was that famine in Ireland way back…do you think?

So God, I’m asking you puleeze, let me have lotsa pasta. Any time. Anywhere. Let it be the fuel that my body thrives on. Let it go in and let it go out. Instead of it stopping and forming mass in the ass. Let your glorious light shine down on my spaghetti bowl – lead me not into protein but good old fashioned starch. Open up your loving aura and lead me not to covet thy neighbor’s ravioli. Pray with me people. Help this miracle happen! Together we can do it. Let’s all lobby for linguine. Sing for spaghetti. Praise the pasta, people! Let it ring forth from your very souls……

Can I get an amen?