There are no bad owners, only bad dogs

2005-08-25

Someone should probably warn Ira Glass...

Yesterday morning while driving from the monkey school to work, listening to NPR, I began to cry. I�ve been trying not to cry for weeks because once I start, it�s time for some short-term disability. Let me preface this by saying I am fucking queer for NPR. I love NPR. I want to marry NPR. Not as much as I want to marry Jon Stewart, but I would be all over Ira Glass in a heartbeat. I would hump his leg like a Boston Terrier in heat.

But, I digest. What prompted the weeping was a story about a dead soldier. A young woman from Baltimore was the first female soldier from Maryland killed in Iraq. She sounded like a wonderful person. She loved being in the Army. She was black and from Baltimore. Her dad was a cop, her brother, a Marine. This is a family who serves the needs of the rest of us. She had come home a couple of weeks ago for a visit. There was a big party in the back yard, with tents, extra chairs, and a lot of barbeque. She was happy to be home, but not afraid to return to her job. She was killed by a roadside bomb. Her family used the party tents and chairs for her funeral. The story broke my heart.

The thing about it, though, is that the soldier�s name was Toccara. Her mom sells Avon products. Toccara is the name of a perfume sold by Avon.

There�s this weird juxtaposition of the tragedy of her death and the damned goofiness of naming your children after consumer products. It made me cry even more that this hero whose life shames most of us was named after an Avon perfume. I don�t know what any of it means. I�ll ask my son, ICan�tBelieveIt�sNotButter, what he feels about this.

I wrote some time ago about the fat-ass miracle of having an ice cream freezer in your home and how miraculously delicious the nectar of the gods known as homemade ice cream is. But I never told the tale of how on only the THIRD time (I swear) we used the ice cream freezer, the motor fried itself. There was this delicious cream/sugar/vanilla mixture being stirred at a VERY slow speed, refusing to freeze at all. I let that mother fucker run for like THREE HOURS and it was still just delicious, cold, vanilla soup. Eventually I just stuck it into the freezer. The next day I investigated � it was just as suspected. A very crystally mess with no mouth-feel at all. The solution was obvious: Get another ice cream freezer NOW. Target: Sold out. Wal-Mart: Not only did I get hives and slap a couple of people, but no ice cream freezer. BedBathBeyond: Dick. Have I mentioned how much I hate the Bataan Death Shopping Trip? On to Dillard�s. There we found a KitchenAid mixer attachment (pasta, sausage, ice cream, delicious female pleasure � is there anything you can�t do, O KitchenAid?) that freezes ice cream. Fabulous!! Except that the attachment itself is a liquid-filled bowl that has to be frozen SOLID before it can be used and that takes like 15 hours o my god why would you make people wait that long? Shouldn�t the department stores keep this attachment frozen so you can use it immediately? (yes)

But when there is something that makes you fatter involved, the greggers and I will find a way. Dry ice.

It took about an hour at -140 degrees (that�s like the temperature of outer space) for the bowl to freeze. We dumped a new batch of vanilla yumminess in, and in about 20 minutes, it was ready to cure. Bliss.

Then, then, we were betrayed. Last weekend we found a JULIA FUCKING CHILD (aka God) recipe for orange sherbet. It sort of seems like it�s healthy because it has the name of a fruit in its name, but it�s still delish.

It turned out TOO SWEET and it never really hardened satisfactorily. Perhaps my freezer�s normal temperature of hardly anything below 32 is not adequate. So I have a freezer full of crystally nasty vanilla yuk (of course I didn�t throw it away � I�m a moron) and too sweet, too zest-y orange sherbet.

I think what I need is some kind of skanky punch recipe that calls for scoops of sweet frozen crap to be dropped into it. Any brides out there?

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