Apropos of Nothing

Someone asked me the other day if I had a dog named "Poop". This is an assumption that, while inaccurate, if you read this blog with any regularity, you can completely understand, right?

I was, at that moment, kinda sorry I'd already named Tallulah. I started to warm to the idea of A Dog Named Poop. It sounds at least as good as "Marley and Me", right? I pictured the world sniffling thru the movie version of "A Dog Named Poop": The heartfelt story of poor little Poop who, while her breath was really, really bad, was still super cute and endearing and sorely missed after she choked to death. On her own poop. sob! Oh Poop! We hardly knew ya!

Where was I?

Oh, hell, I don't know. I think my writing is going south, don't you?

For some reason I'm awash in a sea of doubt. I doubt my future. I doubt my past. I doubt what I just said. I've recently been doubting my fashion choices of all things (and ya'll know that's crazy, right? For starters, nobody gives a sh!t what I'm wearing, let's be honest.). I'm sure as hell doubting my blog posts. I just erased an endless post I wrote about my LBD because I doubted it was the least bit interesting (the post, not the LBD. Okay, now I'm doubting the LBD. See?). Really, the post was about doubting the zebra shrug I bought with an eye toward winterizing the dress. It all just seemed suddenly so...stuffed animal like. The dogs kept mistaking it for a new toy and running away with it held triumphantly between their teeth like...Look! Like it's MINE all MIIIINE! Yessss! Plus I couldn't shake the notion that I looked like Charlemagne's grandmother in the thing.

In better news, I lucked up on a hell of a deal on a Fossil purse at Elder Beerman today. It was marked down from $75 to $18.99. I purchased it with a gift certificate I received for Christmas (thanks generous one!). How lucky can a girl get? On the down side, it's awfully tiny. I tend to do much better with purses that are far more suitcase-like so I can thrust my arm in them up to my elbow and fish around, Mary Poppins style, for something obscure, say, a floor lamp, that I'll never find anyway. Here's the new bag:

Is it not delightful? Honestly, it was going to take quite an eye catching satchel to pry me away from The Sac I've been carrying for nearly three years. Up to now I have not changed purses for that long, so great is my love of The Sac's backpack purse. I'd link to it, but the original version has been discontinued in favor of the new one, much like the old (looks like they've added just the o-rings at the bottom). Not surprisingly, the thing has sold out everywhere, making me want to immediately drag out my old The Sac (that still looks nearly new) and reload it again.

In other news, a BFF and I made our first attempt at home made sushi last night. It was disastrous but fun. We were doomed to failure from the start largely because nobody in this backwoods town carries sushi rice. (But look no further for your smashed barbecue sandwich-- O the humanity!) Additionally, there was an incident involving prematurely chopped cucumber that I'd rather not go into.

We didn't fail for lack of trying, I can tell you. We spent better than an hour preparing the smallest rice per the instructions of Alton Brown . This means rinsing (endlessly), boiling, simmering, soaking, and then, yes, FANNING (and not stirring, James Bond) the rice. Oh, all right, I'll confess to blow drying the rice with my Conair on the "cool" setting. We got tired of fanning, okay? And ya'll know I'm all about a power tool.

Despite all this enthusiastic effort, rather brilliant improvisation, and wine consumption, we ended up with rice pudding rather than sushi rice. It was sorta the consistency of school paste.

This did not stop us from refilling our wine glasses and smearing the rice pudding on to our seaweed, adding our stuffings, and rolling it in our rolling mats. A skill remarkably like a skill that used to be handy in the 1980's. One of us was far better at it than the other. I'll leave it to you to guess which one.

Surprisingly, the rolls while far from presentable, were really pretty tasty. If you closed your eyes, they were actually fairly delicious, if a little hot. We got carried away with squirting wasabi out of the wasabi tooth paste tube--fun on the front-end/eye-bulging skull-blowing hot on the back end.

Rest assured: THIS IS NOT OVER. We haven't survived big hair, mood rings, motherhood, divorce, The Bay City Rollers and stirrup pants to be bested by some mushy rice. Oh, HELL NO. We plan to conquer the sushi challenge with or without Alton Brown.

The proper rice has been ordered. It's ON.

Stay tuned.